Need for Speed™ Payback — レビューStunning nighttime lighting and detailed car models define this open-world racer, which suffers severely from unskippable cutscenes and a gacha progression system.

I stepped on the gas under the neon lights of Fortune City, breaking 100, police cars catching up in the rearview mirror—then the screen went black, and the camera cut to a rooftop view. My hands were still on the wheel, but control was no longer mine. For the next thirty seconds, my car executed a combo of drifts, crashes, and jumps on its own while I could only sit and watch. This is the first lesson Need for Speed: The Run teaches you: you think you're playing the game, but the game is performing for you.

The biggest problem with this game isn't that it's hard—it's that it doesn't want you to play at all.

Every time a chase reaches its climax, the system forcibly takes over your car. You watch helplessly as Tyler's ride automatically executes a perfect 180-degree drift to ram a police car, or threads precisely between two trucks—the visuals are cool, but you didn't do any of it. These "auto-cutscenes" happen dozens of times throughout the game, each one reminding you: for these exciting moments, you're only fit to be a spectator. Even worse is the upgrade system. Want a faster car? Go grind the same race, open loot boxes, pull cards. Yes, pull cards. You might open five boxes in a row and get duplicate air intakes, or you might get lucky and pull a turbocharger on your first try. This mechanic is so obviously transplanted from mobile games—it even keeps the pay-to-accelerate option.

The deep customization system from the 2015 version has been gutted. You used to be able to tune parameters for every part; now you can only change colors. Vehicle performance is entirely determined by card pulls, and the only thing you can do is grind races repeatedly, praying for good RNG. Ten hours in, I realized the core gameplay of this game isn't racing—it's grinding.

Fortune City is indeed large. Driving from the neon forest of the casino district to the desert edge, there's no loading screen in between. Racing through the city at night, with wet asphalt reflecting the glow of neon signs, you'll feel for those few seconds that the game is worth the price of admission. But these "wow" moments don't last long. The seamless scene transitions are real, but switching between them reveals just a few terrain types—urban areas, industrial zones, desert, airport. By mid-game you'll notice that those seemingly different tracks are actually reusing the same set of building modules. The open world has scale, but not density.

The vehicle modeling is thoughtfully done. Each car's modification parts have independent models, and the hood vibrates slightly during nitrous injection. Unfortunately, these details can only be properly appreciated in cutscenes—during actual races, your attention is entirely on dodging police cars and watching the minimap.

Tyler Morgan, the protagonist—I finished the game and still have no idea what kind of person he is.

The game opens with a baffling betrayal—your crew leader sells you out, and then you seek revenge. Why the betrayal? No idea. Why did Tyler trust him? No idea. The entire story is just "betrayed → form team → revenge → the end," punctuated by dialogue so cringe-worthy you'll want to skip it.

There's a scene where Tyler and his teammates discuss "what family means" in a car, and those lines sound like AI-generated inspirational copy. The voice actors tried their best, but when the script is this bad, not even talented VAs can save it. This game clearly wanted to emulate the Fast & Furious "family above all" approach, but ended up as a poor imitation.

The only character I remember is the villain—not because he's well-crafted, but because his motivation is absolutely absurd. No spoilers, go see for yourself. I guarantee you'll laugh out loud.

The engine sounds are decent. The turbo whine, the nitrous backfire, the tire screech on asphalt—all the expected elements are there. But that's exactly the level it's at: "all the expected elements," nothing particularly impressive in the design.

The soundtrack goes for an electronic rock vibe, which does get the adrenaline pumping during races. The problem is the track list is too small—by the twenty-hour mark you'll realize those few songs have looped countless times. Now whenever I hear that opening synth riff, I reflexively want to quit the game.

Already mentioned the dialogue earlier—the actors did their best, but the lines read like they've been run through translation software. Some of the slang is used bizarrely, clearly the writers forcing street culture references they don't understand.

The main story takes 17 hours, considerably longer than the 2015 version. But half of those 17 hours are spent doing repetitive tasks.

Fortune City's open world is crammed with question marks—parts in abandoned factories, roadside challenges, randomly spawning police chases. The first ten hours feel content-rich, but by the second ten you realize all these question marks follow the same template. Another three crates, another identical bandit camp, even the enemy spawn points are exactly the same. Side quest quality is inconsistent. A few convoy challenges are well-designed, but most are just "go here, drive that car, do a lap" filler content. The game tries to mask lack of quality with quantity, resulting in premature fatigue.

Most critically, this game doesn't respect your time. Want to upgrade a car? Grind and open loot boxes. Want to unlock new events? Grind for reputation. Want a different mod? Grind and pull from the gacha. It stretches what could be a 17-hour experience into a 40-hour grind, but those 40 hours only contain about 20 hours' worth of fresh content.---

The game's greatest tragedy is that it didn't have to be this way. Fortune City's framework is solid, the vehicle handling is passable—if they'd cut the forced cutscenes, replaced the gacha system with a normal upgrade tree, and hired a writer who can write actual dialogue—it could at least be a competent 7/10 racing game.

But in its current state, it feels like a half-finished product mangled by product managers. Every system screams "we want you to play longer," but not one says "we want you to have fun." I did finish the 17-hour campaign, but at the moment of completion I felt no sense of accomplishment, only relief that it was finally over.

If you're a diehard Need for Speed fan, this entry will likely disappoint. If you just want a racing game to kill time, there are far better options available. Wait for a deep discount—not because it's worthless, but because paying full price will feel like a rip-off.