First let's get this straight. I'm very very picky about racing games and car games in general. I played 2 or 3 Gran Turismo games, 2 Driver games, 1 NASCAR game, and 3 GTA games. I barely even played Mario Kart. It's very difficult for me to find a driving game that I like and it's even harder to find one better than the ones that I like. Up until now, my favorite racing games were NASCAR 98 and Gran Turismo 2. I didn't even like other Need for Speed games. Then I decided to get this game and it quickly became my most favorite car game of all time.

GRAPHICS: 10

The graphics are amazing. The map looks amazing first of all. Lots of mountains, water, buildings, and countryside to drive through. They all have a ton of detail and look very realistic, a lot like GTA V even. The cars and characters all look great as well. My favorite part of the graphics though is the animation. The controls are so smooth and fluid and and it's so easy to drive with precision. You can't have this much perfection driving if the animations weren't super crisp and clean.

SOUND: 10

The sound is amazing and is also very similar to that of the GTA games. First of all you have a tom of great and diverse voice acting. All of the main characters have hours of dialouge from some great actors and lots of other characters have great vocing as well whether it's mission based characters, the police, or whatever. The cars themselves have some great sounds too. You can hear the engine and the boosts perfectly and if you crash it actually sounds like a crash. The game also has a great radio with songs and talk shows. All around great to listen to.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9

The game is so much fun and you will really find yourself doing some races over and over again. Whether it's to keep earning money so you can upgrade your cars or for the thrill of the race, you won't be able to stop. Even when you're not racing, you're going to have so much fun exploring the giant map and doing all sorts of mini games like collecting car parts, or doing different speed based missions. You might even find yourself doing those more than once.

STORY: 9

The story isn't bad at all. It's built around a group of street racers who like pulling off heists and stuff. They do a big one but get stabbed in the back by one of the drivers they hired for the job. The game takes place a few months after and is about the group trying to get revenge on her while also trying to get the streets back. That's a whole other aspect of the story that's fun to follow. The story definitely gets a bit emotional, has some cool drama, and is fun at times.

DEPTH: 9

The game has so much to offer. Just the fact that you can do each race a million times over and keep getting paid is a huge factor. The giant map with lots of different areas to explore is another big factor. You can drive and drift around the city for hours and the city only takes up like 10 percent of the entire map. Then you have the selection of cars. There's lots of cars that you can buy, win, and find. You can upgrade them in lots of different ways and you can customize them a lot with different pains jobs, decals, parts, and more. I spent about an hour customizing one of the starter cars and it's my baby now. The game has so much to offer.

DIFFICULTY: 5

The game isn't hard but it isn't easy either. Challenges that make you score a certain amount of points from drifting might be really difficult to some and some races might be just to hard to stay in first. When those types of races happen, you're going to have to grind a lot and re do lots of races to get the best car and best upgrades possible. Even then, it's still going to be hard. Oh and don't get me started on the police, they're the real nightmare.

OVERALL: 9.4

Overall if you like the GTA games, then you will probably like this one. If you like racing games then you will probably like this one even more. This game is just as fun for casual drives through the mountain side as it is for thrilling death races through the city. If you like fun, then you should give this game a chance like I did. My overall score of Need for Speed: Payback is an amazing 9.4 out of 10.

Nice review! I was never too big into racing games but Need for Speed was always enjoyable for me to play.