Need for Speed: Payback (2017) - Every PC Rally Game
0Need for Speed: Payback by Ghost Games/EA, 2017.
So, Need For Speed: Payback is NOT a real rally game! But it does have enough off-road opportunities, combined with modifiable cars, to make it look rally enough for inclusion here! It's certainly more rally-like than the previous Need For Speed and Need For Speed: Rivals titles.
However, this game got a very bad reputation, mostly for having a card-based/lucky-dip style upgrade system. However, install a few mods and you can soon be having fun without grimacing too much!
The game also goes into video clips during the mission stages, meaning you feel a bit cheated of big movie moments, but that's less relevant to the rally side of things here!
There are a range of cars here that can be made rally-style, as shown here. Much like Forza and The Crew series, fan-made livery can be downloaded (and easily modified, as I added the Bastos/Motul sponsorship to the BMW based on a community livery!). It's relatively hard to damage your car though, so it's not such a worry slamming into the scenery now-and-then.
Sound is mostly good, and the graphics (powered by the Frostbite engine) can often look stunning, although there is some weird edges showing in the offroad dusty sections (regardless of how you set anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering. Although a lot of the game is in a desert (or near-desert) environment, making things a bit brown/sandy coloured a lot of the time!
Personally I quite enjoyed the time I put into the game, even though I hardly scraped the mission/story mode much (thanks to mods to unlock content early!). Forgive my driving in the panning camera views; there's no TV camera mode, so you have to drive and move the camera at the same time :-D
This is part of the Every PC Rally Game playlist, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYDobL0b26ugFuXASCIC9qmFb9_k4_fqU