Game Reviews

Payback

Star onStar onStar halfStar offStar off
|
| Payback
Get
Payback
|
| Payback

Go ahead, wave to the elephant sitting in the corner of the room. Its name is Grand Theft Auto. A blast to be around, but getting a little big for its britches. After all, copycats like Payback only serve to antagonise it.

When the promise of a hard-hitting action game devolves into a mess of lacklustre missions plagued with poor design elements and slew of flaws, you'd get agitated too.

Payback starts well enough, initially impressing with its presentation. The game successfully crams a dozen urban playgrounds onto the screen that you traipse about committing various crimes.

While they're not flawless - characters appear as stick figures and there's a noticeable lack of detail in some objects - the whole things runs decently. Problems do manifest in the choice of perspective, however, and it's here that the game begins falling apart.

Situated within each city are sky bridges and walkways that block your view. You can literally lose track of your character as he treks underneath a block-long bridge.

The same occurs whenever you walk or drive through the shadow of a building. This silly flaw causes a lot of agony, especially when you're in the middle of a timed mission.

Quite simply, Payback should eliminate these structures from its levels to ensure an unobstructed view at all times.

Even with a clear shot of the action, you're still going to experience frustration completing missions. Payback presents a story mode that features absolutely no semblance of a narrative: it's just a string of unrelated criminal acts.

Moving through each act doesn't require completing a set of story-driven missions. Instead, you just earn a set amount of points from finishing missions, killing people, and blowing things up.

Senseless violence could be entertaining if the mechanics of play and mission design were solid. However, you constantly work against the game's infuriating mission timer, horrid targeting system, and the bland nature of mission objectives.

Most missions come with a time limit that's entirely too short. One wrong turn or a bump into another car obliterates your chance of completing the mission.

Clearly, more time has to be added to the clock to make some of these missions playable.

Those missions not involving vehicles and timers usually have you shooting up enemies. Weapons, which are found in crates at random locations across each city, are cycled through with a tap of the upper-left corner. Pistol, shotgun, flamethrower, grenades - there's a nice mix.

Unfortunately, using them isn't easy. Firing takes a quick tap of an on-screen button, although there's no functional targeting system. Whatever direction you're facing is the direction you shoot.

This sounds reasonable, but it results in a lot of wasted bullets before you're able to align your movement with a clean shot. Adding a reticle would help, as would some form of lock-on targeting mechanic.

These flawed mechanics only underline underwhelming action they support. Beyond failing to give narrative reasoning for why you're embarking on this crime spree, many missions don't provide sufficient motive to complete the outlined objective.

To its benefit, there are some cool sequences: for example, blasting things with a tank and ridding the world of KKK members is fun. Those moments, however, are exceedingly rare and not worth slogging through the game to find.

By now, our pachyderm pal is about ready to stampede. Payback gives it good reason: a nonexistent story strung together with bland, problematic missions.

There are so many obvious errors here that pointing them out is painful - obstructing the view, no targeting system, not providing enough time to complete missions. The only payback to be made here is the time spent on this flawed homage.

Payback

Payback commits as many flaws as it does crimes; a substandard attempt at free-roaming action riddled with obvious errors and bland gameplay
Score
Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.