I don't really post reviews, but after finishing this game, I had to. This game sucks for a lot of reasons, but some of the reasons that made me actually want to write out my feelings are the following:

1. The handling is bad, and I really mean it. Maybe in the RACE category you could pass on it, but if we talk about DRIFT and OFF-ROAD it sucks so much. On Off-Road you either understeer or oversteer. There's no in between. You'll feel that the braking is sometimes useless and you'll have a high chance of spinning, or even worse, not even getting the timing of braking, which will prompt you in the closest stone or guardrail.
2. The AI is alright on street races, but you're going to peel your hair off when you'll encounter it in off-road. They go full kamikaze on you, especially on the Outlaw Race. I ended up getting so many restarts in that race that I was so close to actually stop just close to finishing it.
3. Who decided that putting a street race on a DRAG category is going to be good? The AI doesn't get the drag category, the wheelies being the only thing present from that category. Good luck trying to steer a car tuned only for drag racing. I promise you it's really "fun". And who thought putting that rev counter at the top of the screen is going to be a good placement? Good luck watching for traffic while you're looking at the rev counter too.
4. Whoever decided to make the dust particles/smoke in off-road events should have a hot pillow every single night. Trying to fight against the AI and barely seeing the roads because of those awful smokes and particles is not a good combination.

It's a mediocre game with a soundtrack that you barely give any attention to because it's bad and with a lot of flaws.

NFS Payback has its moments. There was a sequence with a drift on a canyon at nighttime that reminded me of NFS Carbon. The police chases included the Rhino Heavies from the original NFS Most Wanted. It hits the mark here and there. But overall, this feels like some strange bastardized ripoff of The Crew. Especially considering that you can't upgrade your cars in the normal way but have to use "speed cards" which function pretty similarly to the loot drops in The Crew. The story is mid, not particularly great. In 2025 and beyond, I would only pay around $9.99 for this. 6.5/10.

For me the story of the game isn't attractive.
The fact that we have 3 different drivers isn't appealing because we have to change them all the time for the different races and we need to have different cars for each type of race (only make sense change the car on the Off Road races), and that for me does not make sense.