Everyone keeps saying that Payback takes huge inspiration from the new Fast and Furious films, but if you dial time all the way back to the original releases including 2 Fast 2 Furious (still one of best sequel names ever, shut up it’s brilliant) and Need for Speed has ALWAYS been on the same wavelength of the series. However more recently they ditched that in favor of trying to make better racers vs cops modes and zero’d in on that. Even the new 2016 self titled sequel had a hard time breaking the mold. But the continued success of the newest generation of Fast and Furious films have given rise to a better Need for Speed experience.
As far as reviews go, many reviewers weren’t too into it, but Vega disagrees.
Hey everyone, the new Need for Speed reboot just came out, and so far reviews are spectacular. What could be a better way to celebrate by talking about the last game and its competitor? I was recently able to obtain both Need for Speed Rivals: Complete Edition and The Crew: Non-Complete Edition for a pretty decent price. It’s been close to a year since Crew came out, and much much longer since NFS:R launched. Both of these games feature a sort of MMO-lite element similar to Destiny where you get to play on a map that’s occupied by other players you may or may not encounter, and may or may not bother interacting with. How do they hold up to newcomers? Is their multiplayer community still thriving? Let’s start off with the old one.
Need for Speed: Rivals is dogshit, first of all. I don’t know how or why the NFS franchise fell from grace so hard, but this game is an exemplar of all the bad design decisions of recent titles. The racing physics are sloppy and unfun to start with, and nothing really feels fast like it should be. The second problem is that it has the crash physics from the Burnout games, which works out fantastic… in the Burnout games. Having my car crash from tapping a nearby fence post and then facing the wrong direction when I respawn is not fun. Also on top of the not-fun list is the absurd difficulty curve.
