Need for Speed Payback was the second installment of this cycle of Need for Speed games. It was expected to fix it's predecessor's failures, and bring the franchise back from years of mediocrity. Finally, it's time to find out if Payback was yet another black mark in a series of failures, or the light at the end of the tunnel that we all want it to be.

Here's my thoughts as to how the design of Payback makes the cars feel slow. I said in the video the physics play their part, but as with all open world racers, the physics and the road are tightly linked. The problem is one part that the roads are too forgiving. You go off in payback, you can drive back on only losing a second or two thanks to the open space and relatively quick driving physics. Unlike any other NFs where going off would usually be a serious crash. Even when you do crash in payback, it's like a 3 second halt. This means there's no fear in the players mind when they put their foot down. You aren't scared that you might crash off if you go too fast. You feel no risk in going as fast as possible. Then there's the smoothness of the roads to consider. They're like butter, and when you combine that with how little the cars bounce, high speed doesn't significantly force you to increase the rate of your inputs to course correct. Going 200 something mph in a game like Driveclub would require you to go like barry allen on the stick to keep yourself straight, or the inconsistency of the roads are going to send you into low earth orbit. Payback lacks all of these traits. A point I didn't raise in the video is the true extent of "kinda". The physics kinda match the roads, but really, it's still not great. There's quite a lot of open road in Payback and while the physics are closer to hot pursuit's to match that, they aren't close enough to make it fun enough. The live tuning doesn't make large enough changes for you to ever come near the spec you'd want to take on Payback's desert roads properly.

A clarification as to what I meant regarding the pay to win stuff. Payback shockingly isn't pay to win. You carry the base cars into multiplayer but not the speed cards. I think. I haven't messed around with it.