Need for Speed Payback

Need for Speed Payback is a continuation of the arcade racing series in third-person view. The action takes place in the underground world of Fortune Valley. You and your team are united by a thirst for revenge. Your goal is The House, a cartel known in criminal circles that has taken control of the gambling establishments, criminals, and police of this city. Your car is always at the center of events. Create unique cars, more beautiful and powerful than any that came before. From crazy missions to heated car battles and stunning moments — the game will fill you with adrenaline and keep you entertained every minute.

The racing arcade Need for Speed: Payback is developed by Ghost Games for PC, PS4, and Xbox One and was released in 2017. Unlike previous games in the series, the main focus is on the story and character development through a variety of races on asphalt and off-road. There is a sense of returning to the spirit of the original Most Wanted, but without police pressure — chases are given much less attention.

Payback is one of the few games in the series with a huge game world, almost without restrictions for movement. The developers have fully mastered Frostbite and created a beautiful seamless world with quality graphics and effects, detailed car models, and arcade driving physics.

In Payback, players have at their disposal the fictional state of Fortune Valley, divided into 4 different gameplay zones in design and landscape. There is the densely populated city of Silver Rock with skyscrapers, hotels, and casinos, the spacious Liberty Desert for off-road driving, the Mount Providence mountains with winding roads and tunnels, as well as the Silver Canyon gorge with both simple and high-speed, as well as challenging road sections.

To make the game world interesting to explore, "collectibles," billboards, and short mini-competitions of easy, medium, and high difficulty are hidden throughout. There is a day and night cycle, but the weather does not change. Free racers roam the map. Unlike other Ghost Games titles, the world of Payback can be paused.

In the story of NFS: Payback, there are three main characters who depend on each other, as each is a specialist in a certain type of racing:

The conflict in the game revolves around the criminal cartel The House, which controls illegal street racing, the gambling business, and the police. The cartel has turned street racing into a lucrative business, rigging the results of every race and driving all dissenting racing teams out of Silver Rock to the outskirts of the city.

In the prologue of the game, the heroes attempt to set up the House by stealing a Koenigsegg during a "bandit race," but they lose and scatter. Now the player must gather the team again, defeat 10 street racing leagues of the state with their leaders, and together take revenge on the cartel.

The gameplay is tied to the storyline — a new event is initially played as a story-driven mission, and then can be repeated with random racers. Each team specializes in one type of racing — sprint, drag, circuit racing, off-road, drift. Winning a race brings experience, money, and provides cards that modify various elements of the car. Certain missions are dedicated to the police, but there is no police presence in the rest of the game.

In Payback, there are many cars of various brands and models. Cars are divided by levels and categorized according to different types of races; it is not possible to complete all races with one car. There is an option to change the body shape and its paint job. The higher the player's level, the more cars, tuning parts, and races can be unlocked. The game features a wide variety of races, and completing it will take about 15-20 hours.

The online game is designed for four players and operates through Speedlist. Each session contains different competitions, from sprints to drag races, where players earn their network rating by winning. Racers create competitions in Speedlist themselves by voting for the desired mode.

In addition to regular competitions, there are ranked races where players earn their place on leaderboards by winning and losing. There is also progression in multiplayer, which is similar to single-player, but can be accelerated by injecting real money into the game.