YMMV / Need for Speed Payback

• Accidental Aesop: There is no short path towards success, and selling out your friends for it is not going to pay off in the long run. This is played out in two sides by Lina and Tyler:
  • Tyler and co had to start from zero after Lina sold his crew out, and all they did- any cars they got, any friends they got from the seven non-House leagues, are all purely from their own hard work. It pays off nicely when they beat the Outlaw's Rush, winning vast fame and fortune for themselves and benefactor/ally Marcus Weir.
  • Lina, by contrast, sold out her friends for everything the Collector can offer to her- a high position as The Dragon, a Cool Car (her P1), and everything she has achieved from that point on. When she loses a large sum of the Collector's money due to overconfidently accepting Marcus' wager, The Collector ditched her as a failure, no better off or even worse off than when she was still in the Barrio.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: One story mission requires the main characters to steal two cars: a Mercedes-AMG G 63 and a Lamborghini Aventador, both completely wrapped in gold and part of The Collector's collection and have mysterious technology under their bonnets. Gold-plated luxury cars actually do exist in real life in places like UAE and Saudi Arabia, albeit as a status symbol of the rich.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • If Natalia Nova's personality got on your nerves during the One Percent Club's questline, take solace in the fact that her, Holtzman, and Vasilev will try to stop you in the first leg of the Outlaw's Rush, meaning that you can wreck their cars like you would any pursuing police or House vehicles. The same goes for the other two House-owned League bosses, too.
  • After spending the entire game running circles around Tyler's crew and basically parading her connection to The House, it's nothing short of satisfying to see Lina get her comeuppance after beating her in the final section of the Outlaw's Rush fair and square. Doubly so if you used a restored Derelict against her!
  • Relating to the above, while the performance system leaves much to be desired, tuning a Derelict car (the '65 Ford Mustang, Chevrolet C10 Pickup and Bel-Air, Nissan 240Z, or Volkswagen Beetle) to the maximum spec of 399 (also earning the "Another Man's Treasure" achievement in the process) is both satisfying and hilarious if it means watching the look on other players' faces as you speed past them in an old beater!
• Cliché Storm: Critics widely panned the game's plot and characters for being unoriginal derivatives of action and heist films with a focus on cars (most notably the later The Fast and the Furious films).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Drifting the Block and Hyperspace Circuit are the most used events for money and card token grinding for their short length and lap-based nature, which makes restarts easy and negating the need to go all the way back to the starting line after finishing.
  • Outlaw, Chidori, and Nextech are the most commonly used part brands for car builds due to their bonuses that boost acceleration, speed, brakes, and nitrous. You'll very rarely see Americana and Carbon-based builds in multiplayer as Jump is frequently seen as the Dump Stat. Outlaw (Speed/Nitrous) is used for speed-based builds, Chidori (Acceleration/Brakes) is used for handling-based builds, and Nextech (Speed/Brakes) is used for more balanced builds.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Curator. See Most Wonderful Sound below. It helps that she's got a voice that's very fit for commentary and is nothing but supportive of Tyler and his crew throughout the game. She even calls him personally and lets him know that he's in the Outlaw's Rush with sincere congratulations on her part.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Really, Lina? What made you think that afrohawk was a good look?
• Game-Breaker:
  • Currently, the two most dominating cars in multiplayer are the Koenigsegg Regera for Race class and the Chevrolet Bel Air for Off-Road class. The Regera - unlocked after completing the story mode - is already the most powerful car in the entire game when stock with a rating of 393 - but when tuned to 399 it can reach incredible speeds and even has Drag-class-level acceleration despite having just one gear. The Bel Air, when first restored/bought it has the lowest performance rating possible, 100, but when tuned it gains incredible stability on dirt roads while still packing a good punch on the straights.
  • The 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 2.8 retains its status from the 2015 reboot as a game-breaking car in Race class. While the Regera dominates in high-speed courses, the Carrera RSR excels in technical courses due to its tight handling and insane acceleration on par with the Regera despite having less than half of its horsepower when fully upgraded. The same thing goes for the Lamborghini Huracán, which still holds on as the best drift car in the entire game, with the derelict Nissan Fairlady 240ZG not too far behind in that class.
  • The Acura NSX reigns supreme in Drag class thanks to its explosive acceleration - the best in the entire game when fully upgraded, AWD drivetrain - which prevents wheelies, and its 8-gear transmission which makes it easy to gain back Nitrous with perfect shifts. The Lamborghini Huracán, the Nissan GT-R R35 and the Porsche 911 GT3 RS (991) aren't too far behind, though.
  • Since Jess doesn't have access to the above-mentioned 911 Carrera RSR (or any supercars, for that matter), either the Bel-Air, BMW M5, or the Porsche Panamera Turbo are your best bet for those harder Runner missions.
• Inferred Holocaust: While usually wrecking cop cars has them ultimately land right-side up and not much worse for the wear, in cutscenes the protagonists end up smashing a pursuing helicopter, dropping a pair of bombs right in the middle of a pursing pack of police, and even t-bone several with a semitruck. It's left complete uncommented that the heroes most likely killed people over the course of the game.
• Love to Hate: Natalia Nova/SuperNova, big time. Her very insufferable and arrogant personality makes her quite the punching bag in the NFS community. Not even Tyler can stand her when you race against her in the final part of the One Percent Club's questline!
  Tyler: (after ramming Nova's car) Sorry. I had to do that.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Whenever The Curator talks. "The Voice of the Street" may be Miss Exposition recapping the events that just happened in the game, but God does she make it sound so cool. Especially when she's providing color commentary during the Outlaw's Rush and is nothing but supportive of Tyler throughout the entire thing.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The performance upgrade system got some flak from the players mostly because of it being overcomplicated and its randomized nature potentially proving a fertile ground for microtransactions. Not even saving up your Trade-in Cards will be enough to mitigate the absurd amount of RNG in the Slot-style trade-in system.
• So Okay, It's Average: The common consensus on the game as a whole seems to be this. It's held back by its painfully clichéd story, cringeworthy characters and dialogue, lack of non-scripted police chases, randomized performance upgrades, use of microtransactions, and loot boxes. It did, however, carry many of the pros from the 2015 reboot, as well as some new ones such as being able to store an unlimited amount of cars instead of just 10 in the 2015 reboot.
• Special Effects Failure: The Koenigsegg Regera is seen after-firing from its large, central exhaust. Said exhaust outlet is actually where heat from the car's hybrid components exit the vehicle, and there are two additional exhaust outlets for the car's gasoline engine. There's also the fact that, after Lina absconds with the car after betraying Tyler and his crew, it can be heard switching gears, which normally wouldn't be an issue... unless you know that the Regera doesn't have a traditional multi-gear transmission, but instead features a single-speed, fixed-gear transmission called a direct-drive.
• That One Level:
  • Any of the sprint races or time trials in the Drag questlines, primarily because they require you to navigate through courses with corners in them, which Drag-spec cars are not built for due to their poor turning radius. The worst offenders are Safety Last and Razor's Edge from the Diamond Block questline, both of which can get very twisty and technical in the corners.
  • The penultimate mission in the final Runner questline, Transmission. Cops all over your ass? Check. Windy and twisty uphill roads? Check. Said roads being very narrow and difficult to avoid any incoming Rhinos in? Check. Off-road sections that much of Jess' selection of cars have no business being in? Check. Good luck!
• That One Sidequest: Crosses with the above in Drift races/Challenges, not because drifting or the courses are that difficult, mind you, but because of the AI controlled civilian cars, who, almost always seem to be positively choking the twisty roads you are currently trying to drift down, causing you to have to swerve and break the drift string to make sure you don't slam into them.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The entire Drag class. Most of the Drag-focused leagues don't quite do as much Drag racing as they let on, pitting you instead in various other events that you've already done such as Sprint races or Time Trials. Only thing is, given that Drag racing cars are designed for straight stretches of roads, good luck on the more technical circuits mentioned above in That One Level with the awfully nerfed handling of these cars.

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