Like Fast & The Furious? It Looks Like Need for Speed Payback Was Made For You

This November, the twenty-third title in the Need for Speed series will launch in the form of Payback. A handful of NFS titles in recent years have looked like, and in some cases, felt like, a Fast & the Furious game, and Payback pushes that to the limit. The entirety of the new gameplay trailer (seen below) feels like 2009’s Fast & Furious (the fourth movie in the series), although that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Payback is an open-world racing title that similar to the likes of The Crew will have offline single-player support as well as online multiplayer, although it’s still too early to tell exactly how the online interactions will happen (eg: will real drivers be seen around the in-game world as you drive around?), but the fact that it’s open-world should mean that there is going to be a lot of driving to be had, and a lot to do, in general.

In the trailer seen above, a couple of characters have learned of a Koenigsegg Regera being transported, so naturally, they jump into their best car and take to the highway. After dealing with a handful of enemy drivers, the transport truck is overwhelmed, and within seconds of one of the protagonists jumping successfully into it, the 700hp monster comes tearing out of the back of the truck, and then drives to safety. With a cost of about $2 million, stealing one of these Swede rides would make for a good Need for Speed “Payday”.

Payback is one of the rarer Need for Speed games in that at its release, it will have been two full years since the previous iteration was released. 2015’s Need for Speed enjoyed the same long(er) developer cycle, with Rivals having come out in 2013.

Based on the number of likes on the YouTube videos above, it seems clear that many are keen to have more of this kind of Need for Speed gameplay. For old-school NFS fans who played the series long before it was Burnout-inspired, that might feel like a bit of a sting. However, we’re still a ways out from launch, and it’s hard to gauge gameplay based on a single 3 minute video.

Also EA: if you’re listening, please for the love of racing add NFS Underground, Carbon, Most Wanted (the 2005 original) and any other NFS of that era to Origin. I’ll be the first to pick them up, just to be able to avoid having to use so much trickery to get the games to run when installed off of the original media (Underground 1 and 2 account for 40% of the PC game boxes I still own).

On the Payback front, there’s no word so far on what perks will be coming to the PC version, but hopefully it won’t prove to be delayed like the last one was for that single platform. At the end of the day, though, if a company wants to add more polish to the PC version, it’s hard to complain.