Need for Speed Payback E3 2017 Impressions

Need for Speed Payback was one of the many games I got to check out while at EA Play 2017 and honestly I wasn't too thrilled. I've never been too into Need for Speed, but I've played past games and enjoy some fun racing at this point. With that, I thought I might as well check it out since the line was minimal and I had high game hype coming from Star Wars: Battlefront II. What I played while at the show was essentially just what they had during their conference reveal and it wasn't too interesting. There's this crew that have come together to get payback and it feels somewhat like The Fast and the Furious to a degree.

That aspect is fine, promising story and it's the gameplay that wasn't interesting. It looks visually fine as you flew down the desert, but the car combat was bad. There are sequences where you need to knock enemies down and I was constantly driving past them or I'd slightly go to the side of the road and be warned about being off-course. Not only were they slow, the enemy cars were awkward to hit and instead of feeling as part of the action they took me away from it. It should feel natural slamming into them while driving towards the goal and it didn't since they were essentially stupid AI.


Most of this demo was just a sigh about having issues hitting those cars, but the destruction was interesting once you did. There's a slow motion segment where they explode with pieces of the vehicle flying off. There are some overly dramatic aspects to it though I imagine many will find it cool. After taking out some waves of enemy cars we eventually reach this large semi and then drive close so our friend can hop on. We drive off to the side and then eventually switch perspectives to that car driving out the back end and racing away. It was somewhat interesting to see in action yet I wasn't entirely sold on Need for Speed Payback being something I'd like to play.

Read our Star Wars Battlefront II Preview (E3 2017)
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