Rate top gamesNeed for Speed Payback
About
Need for Speed Payback is an action-driving racing game and the twenty-third part of the NFS franchise.
Gameplay
Despite the trend made by NFS' before Payback features an offline mode. The game is set in a fictional city named Fortune Valley. The player can choose between the three individuals to represent. The title features a real car — a total of 74 ones, and crafting system — many car parts can be tuned according to the player's liking.
There is a total of five challenges types: Race, Drift, Off-Road, Drag, and Runner. All the modes share the goal — to reach the finish. However, the initial purpose is altered depending on the race — sometimes one has to drift his way to the finish line, somewhere the manual transmission turns one, and the gear switching comes to be mandatory.
Plot
Payback is one of few NFS' to feature ongoing narrative — the story of this one emphasizes the revenge theme. Three characters — Tyler, Mac, and Jess — are trying to avenge Lina who betrayed the crew from the very start. Each member of the gang has its unique abilities — Jess, for instance, is professional intel gatherer, so she plays a role of inside agent all the time. Guys, on the other hand, are more into races, so they do the dirty job in the trio.
System requirements for PC
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or later
- Processor: Intel i3 6300 @ 3.8GHz or AMD FX 8150 @ 3.6GHz with 4 hardware threads
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 750 Ti or AMD Radeon™ HD 7850 or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 2GB of memory
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: 64-bit Windows 10 or later
- Processor: Intel i5 4690K @ 3.5GHz or AMD FX 8350 @ 4.0GHz with 4 hardware threads
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 480 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 1060 6GB or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 4GB of memory
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 30 GB available space
System requirements for PlayStation 4
System requirements for Xbox One
Last Modified: Mar 29, 2025
Where to buy
PlayStation Store
Steam
Xbox Store
Top contributors
Need for Speed Payback reviews and comments
If you're a more casual player like me, you might enjoy this one. Not guaranteed. I played it on hard difficulty. The game was fun overall, and it lasted me 35 hours. Not the best, but not the worst.
[[ LIKED ]]
- Fortune Valley: This map is stunning. With its varied terrain and gorgeous views, this is the first NFS title where I spent actual time in photo mode trying to get that perfect shot. As for the roads, driving around feels neither mindless, nor claustrophobic. Roads are wide just enough. Sure, the overall map is a bit small, but I don't find that to be a detriment. Especially when the game is going to last you 30 hours. Also, the color palette is lovely, and it even changes based on location. Cool!
- OffRoad Racing: Easy yet challenging. Frustrating, yet satisfying. This is THE racing mode they nailed. First few tracks might not be that crazy, but as the story progresses, you are forced to navigate tight corners near cliffs while battling the overly aggressive AI alongside long jumps in half the races and it's a lot of fun. One negative is that the car selection is very limited. If you were hoping to drive a sedan Impreza or a Huracan through the dirt, tough luck.
- Drag Racing: It's back! At last! - OnRoad Racing This one is a bit circumstantial, but I had fun with it. What I mean by this, is that since I played the game on hard and did not care about grinding unless it was a must; I always entered races with an underpowered car and had to battle my way to the top. Ramming Mustang's into traffic, taking tiny shortcuts by going the opposite lane, drift smashing corvettes out of corners, abusing the nitro in every straight road, pit-manuevaring a Pagani Huayra and causing it to flip 4 times into a truck.... I just love being the underdog and still coming out on top. Though, I had to restart most of the late game races at least 5, mostly 10 times to figure out the best way to win, so this might not be the best playstyle for everyone.
[[ MIXED ]]
- Story / Story Missions: Cheesy, stupid, illogical, but still fun if you let yourself enjoy it. It's a revenge story where you go up against a giant organization; and you do that by defeating various racing teams to gain a spot in a giant fixed race just to beat their favored racer. You could think of those teams like the 'kings' in ProStreet, where you race a few underlings, then go 1-on-1 with the 'king' and take them down, to face the Showdown King in the end. You face 2 or 3 teams in each chapter, and you must beat all to advance. That much is fine, but the story missions in-between said chapters are quite iffy. Most of the cool stuff happen in cutscenes and everything feels scripted (because everything is). Also, some of the actions taken by the antagonist are borderline minus IQ.
- The Upgrade System: Honestly, I think the card system has potential but needs some fundamental changes. I liked the perks, and the brand pairing buffs, but the parts come in way too randomly for these to be truly useful. Also, each card is tied to a single car, so you can't just go buy a new car and then upgrade it as you like using previous cars parts. You are forced to either buy from a tune-up shop (Has a random selection of 15 parts that refresh every 30 mins. NEVER has the part you're looking for), race for the card prize (I once won 5 races and got 5 engine blocks in a row even though I needed an ECU), or spin a wheel for it (the perks will be trash though, and the lvl increase will be minimal). By the way, you cannot buy any cards more than 3 levels higher than what you have. Like, all my parts are lvl 9, but I can't buy the lvl16 parts I need because all my options give me lvl 11 or 12 parts max. I have to upgrade at least half my parts above 12 before they let me get lvl 14-15 cards. This system costed me 6 hours of grinding late-game.
- Scripted Cops: Cop events are fun, but they are scripted to always stop chasing you at a certain point. And you never encounter them in freeroam. Zero immersion, and zero accomplishment.
[[ DISLIKE ]]
- Characters: You have 3 types of characters in this game. Pick your poison. Bland and Boring, Pretentious and Annoying, Stereotypical and Moronic.
- Lack of Map Freedom: Just let me jump down the cliff so I can skip the snake road GTA style without resetting my position immediately! Very annoying! Also, you are not allowed to climb certain parts of the map because... why exactly? Unnecessary limitations.
Overall: fun, but not groundbreaking. Challenging enough in hard mode if you avoid grinding.
[[ LIKED ]]
- Fortune Valley: This map is stunning. With its varied terrain and gorgeous views, this is the first NFS title where I spent actual time in photo mode trying to get that perfect shot. As for the roads, driving around feels neither mindless, nor claustrophobic. Roads are wide just enough. Sure, the overall map is a bit small, but I don't find that to be a detriment. Especially when the game is going to last you 30 hours. Also, the color palette is lovely, and it even changes based on location. Cool!
- OffRoad Racing: Easy yet challenging. Frustrating, yet satisfying. This is THE racing mode they nailed. First few tracks might not be that crazy, but as the story progresses, you are forced to navigate tight corners near cliffs while battling the overly aggressive AI alongside long jumps in half the races and it's a lot of fun. One negative is that the car selection is very limited. If you were hoping to drive a sedan Impreza or a Huracan through the dirt, tough luck.
- Drag Racing: It's back! At last! - OnRoad Racing This one is a bit circumstantial, but I had fun with it. What I mean by this, is that since I played the game on hard and did not care about grinding unless it was a must; I always entered races with an underpowered car and had to battle my way to the top. Ramming Mustang's into traffic, taking tiny shortcuts by going the opposite lane, drift smashing corvettes out of corners, abusing the nitro in every straight road, pit-manuevaring a Pagani Huayra and causing it to flip 4 times into a truck.... I just love being the underdog and still coming out on top. Though, I had to restart most of the late game races at least 5, mostly 10 times to figure out the best way to win, so this might not be the best playstyle for everyone.
[[ MIXED ]]
- Story / Story Missions: Cheesy, stupid, illogical, but still fun if you let yourself enjoy it. It's a revenge story where you go up against a giant organization; and you do that by defeating various racing teams to gain a spot in a giant fixed race just to beat their favored racer. You could think of those teams like the 'kings' in ProStreet, where you race a few underlings, then go 1-on-1 with the 'king' and take them down, to face the Showdown King in the end. You face 2 or 3 teams in each chapter, and you must beat all to advance. That much is fine, but the story missions in-between said chapters are quite iffy. Most of the cool stuff happen in cutscenes and everything feels scripted (because everything is). Also, some of the actions taken by the antagonist are borderline minus IQ.
- The Upgrade System: Honestly, I think the card system has potential but needs some fundamental changes. I liked the perks, and the brand pairing buffs, but the parts come in way too randomly for these to be truly useful. Also, each card is tied to a single car, so you can't just go buy a new car and then upgrade it as you like using previous cars parts. You are forced to either buy from a tune-up shop (Has a random selection of 15 parts that refresh every 30 mins. NEVER has the part you're looking for), race for the card prize (I once won 5 races and got 5 engine blocks in a row even though I needed an ECU), or spin a wheel for it (the perks will be trash though, and the lvl increase will be minimal). By the way, you cannot buy any cards more than 3 levels higher than what you have. Like, all my parts are lvl 9, but I can't buy the lvl16 parts I need because all my options give me lvl 11 or 12 parts max. I have to upgrade at least half my parts above 12 before they let me get lvl 14-15 cards. This system costed me 6 hours of grinding late-game.
- Scripted Cops: Cop events are fun, but they are scripted to always stop chasing you at a certain point. And you never encounter them in freeroam. Zero immersion, and zero accomplishment.
[[ DISLIKE ]]
- Characters: You have 3 types of characters in this game. Pick your poison. Bland and Boring, Pretentious and Annoying, Stereotypical and Moronic.
- Lack of Map Freedom: Just let me jump down the cliff so I can skip the snake road GTA style without resetting my position immediately! Very annoying! Also, you are not allowed to climb certain parts of the map because... why exactly? Unnecessary limitations.
Overall: fun, but not groundbreaking. Challenging enough in hard mode if you avoid grinding.
«Underrated»
One of the best NFS’s! One of the best racing games even! Don’t rate this game based only on IGN review, coz the guys there downgraded it for some reason. Also some people hating on the game for microtransactions, but these are totally skippable. People also hating on speedcards and I dunno why. It’s just kinda an upgrade system that gives you random car parts. You don’t have to grind much either since you can tune up your car with INGAME CURRENCY, so you don’t have to race over and over for better parts and don’t have to spend your real money too. The microtransactions that I mentioned earlier will get you only some things like neon and other parts for pimping your car.
The Ghost Games listen to their fans, so we got a game that NFS 2015 should have been. It's a fun game and I enjoyed every mile I drove. 10/10.
«Can’t stop playing»
«Underrated»
Loot box progression system ruins everything in the game. Gamers are forced to grind old missions over, and over, and over again. Or you can bring in the real cash! And I feel like EA did that on purpose to make you pay, because grinding is very frustrating and boring. Bad game design, no recommend.
One of the best from NFS series for me. There are chases — for now they are not free-roaming, but hopefully will be in the future. There are cars, give a chance to a maximum build for each one. There is an NFS atmosphere and open-world. There is a great upgrade system. Loot boxes seem to annoy people, but hey, original Forza Horizon back in 2012 also had it and nobody gave a damn back in those days. What the heck? What has changed?
Total disappointment. They removed the key feature from NFS - free roaming cops. That is what made an ordinary racing game an NFS game. They replaced it with “follow the checkpoints” chases that completely ruined the creativity you could have evading the cops in any direction. Not only this, but it also ruined the replayability and the open world that is actually quite large in this game is dwarfed, because you have so many ways to go, but you are forced to choose only one. Also, no online free roam. Like, what the fuck?
On the bright side, there is the customization and the world itself. The story is shitty (as always, lol). But come on, it’s like Fast & Furious in games, and you don’t expect a good story from F&S. But the voices are good
Overall this game could be a good racing game if it didn’t have the NFS title. The expectations from the title made the game not what I personally wanted.
On the bright side, there is the customization and the world itself. The story is shitty (as always, lol). But come on, it’s like Fast & Furious in games, and you don’t expect a good story from F&S. But the voices are good
Overall this game could be a good racing game if it didn’t have the NFS title. The expectations from the title made the game not what I personally wanted.