Need For Speed: Payback hasn’t had a ton of good trailers made for it. The only substantial thing we’ve seen so far is the original trailer for the content that they showcased when it was announced, and the E3 gameplay demo that featured gameplay from the announcement trailer. Well, the latest trailer reminds gamers that there’s customization in the game, but it also introduces a few more details about the card system.
The minute long trailer for Need For Speed: Payback is pretty simple and covers the starting concept of acquiring a car and then supping it up with awesomeness by adding all sorts of fancy aftermarket parts to it. You can check out the trailer below.
Now I’ll be honest: I’m torn on this game.
Part of me really likes the idea of the large world with a wide variety of different tracks and racing disciplines to engage in with a nice assortment of different road beasts. The customization looks hearty and robust, and the ability to deck out your car with the sort of livery details you would expect from Forza Motorsport is an added bonus. The extra individual bodykit parts that you can use to give your car a visual bit of identity is a nice touch, as well. And the physics look decent.
However… there’s the other part of me that absolutely abhors the concept of the card system that carries over from Need For Speed World. For those of you who didn’t play that game, the card system allowed you to stockpile parts, gear and in-game abilities by winning races or by buying the actual card packs. You could spend real money to get a random assortment of cards to help you out, whether it was upgrades for your car or things like cooldown cards for your special abilities, or boost cards that allowed you to turbo-charge your way through the race. The thing is… the card system was grossly abused by the typical cash shop kiddies.
If EA is going to carryover the card system, then the only way it’s going to stay fair is if you can’t buy any from the cash shop. But we all know that EA wants their money, so it’s practically guaranteed that the cash shop cards will be purchasable as microtransactions.
It’s impossible to get excited for Need For Speed: Payback when you can clearly see how many different ways it’s going to be used and abused by the post-launch monetary meta-game.
On the upside… there is still the option to win races the right way and use the credits to buy upgrades for the car. We call that the old fashioned way of progressing through a game.
You can look for Need For Speed: Payback to launch on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC starting November 10th later this year.
