Payback (game)/Review by Garrett

Overview
(no overview yet, see the Wikipedia entry for now)

Gameplay [[Image:9 out of 10.png|68px]]
Payback ' s gameplay mechanics are impressive as far as GBA games go. Vehicles can slip and slide on ice (leaving tire tracks as they do) and can make handbreak turns with the touch of a button. Overall the vehicle controls are virtually perfect.

There are also boats and helicopters to drive later on, as well as tanks on some of the rampage maps. All of these control as you would expect. The helicopter is one of the more difficult to fly due to the GBA's button arrangement, but it isn't that hard to get right.

The on-foot controls are not nearly so good, unfortunately; just like the first two Grand Theft Autos, you steer your character like a car, rather than pressing a direction to run that way. Also the grenades are potentially lethal to you; if you don't hold down the button and choose a decent distance the grenade will land at your feet, resulting in instant death.

The weapon selection is very nice, there are a wide variety of weapons available. Each weapon has a particular quality. For example the minigun fires quickly but does little damage with each individual bullet. The shotgun, in comparison, results in an instant kill if both bullets make contact. Unlike shotguns in most games this one has no maximum range; instead the two bullets fired will head out on diagonals from the player's location, allowing the player to sometimes wing enemies before they make contact.

The game is a direct clone of the first Grand Theft Auto game, but there have been additions to the formula. For example in GTA2 running over the driver with their own car resulted in a slight score bonus. However in Payback the player is rewarded with double the points and the onscreen "IRONY BONUS!" confirmation.

Unfortunately because it is a clone of the first two games it is missing things the later GTAs included. There are no police, fire, taxi, or ambulance missions to do on the side, everything is entirely destruction-centered.

The actual story missions are almost entirely payphone-oriented, the player must pick a phone to answer to get missions. Without spoiling anything there are some that involve more than just driving and shooting, including one heart-pumping stealth mission; slip up just once and the alarms go off, and everyone in the area starts to home in on your position. But despite being incredibly difficult this mission is actually one of the most rewarding in the whole game and probably the one you'll replay the most. There are even two different ways to finish it.

The map is easy to navigate, and rotates to be the same direction as that in which you are heading. It shows the entirety of the city, allowing you to navigate to different places easily, but because of its size it does not show the side routes and alleys. Mission destinations are marked on the map with clear dots and in the game world with large targeting arrows, so finding your way around the city during timed missions or races is never frustrating.

Story [[Image:1 out of 10.png|68px]]
Really poor. Basically you're trying to get revenge (the titular "payback") on some people who wronged you. The story is never really made clear, and there is no ending to the game to even explain if he got his revenge. Since this is a clone of the first Grand Theft Auto story only needs to be secondary to gameplay, but they still could have done better.

Graphics [[Image:10 out of 10.png|68px]]
The graphics, put simply, are stunning. All other GBA games that want to use 3D do so using raycasting, which results in some less-than-impressive pixellated graphics. Payback doesn't do this. Somehow with only 32 KB of memory they managed to make this incredible game engine. The entire world is true 3D and yet has high-resolution textures on every surface; never do you see an ugly overstretched texture. Trees, phone booths, smashable snowmen, street lights, all are fully 3D and often cast light of their own onto their surroundings.

The cars are boring and blocky shapes but have full reflection modelling. On nighttime maps all vehicles have actual 3D headlights that can shine off both the game world and each other. Skidding leaves tire marks on the road for a good few seconds, while sliding on the ice leaves large white scratches in its surface. The helicopter's blades actually spin, and are not just simulated through sprite animation. The boats leave a little jetstream behind them. Overall, the vehicle graphic effects are stunning despite how boring the vehicles themselves look.

People are also fully 3D models. They only have a few polygonal body parts but are fully animated and randomly coloured. When hit, they explode into a burst of red gore particle effects.

But the most impressive are the explosions. Rather than a nicely-drawn sprite overlay for cars blowing up, there is instead a full 3D effect. When one of the aforementioned blocky vehicles blows up, each of its panels flies high into the stratosphere and land all over the place.

Sound/Music [[Image:10 out of 10.png|68px]]
The sounds are incredible. Hijacking a schoolbus results in the children in the back screaming with each collision. Horns sound like... horns. People make sounds when hurt, and provide especially gory sound effects when splattered. Bullets ricocheting off walls and vehicles colliding all make the sounds you'd expect. Explosions, rather than being a fixed sound, are actually generated by the same sound played repeatedly and at higher volume depending on the explosion. For example blowing up a car results in a decent explosion sound, but blowing up a bus results in a sound about five times the volume.

The music in the game is equally impressive. All the music is done via MIDI but they are actually very nicely composed and don't get quickly annoying like many GBA tunes do... the music has a light jazz style, hearkening back to those cheesy police shows of yesteryear. Many of them are actually quite catchy, and you may even catch yourself humming them after a few rounds of play.

Replayability [[Image:7 out of 10.png|68px]]
This game can be beaten in any length of time; you only need the minimum bronze trophy to unlock the core cities, and it's only with the last city that things get tough. Of course since you can't save during gameplay and have finite lives it can be difficult to get through the game, especially considering the shotgun-wielding cops, but you'll get through it in the end. I'd say with a little practise you could blaze through this in about two or three hours.

It can be quite fun to replay the missions to try to get the next-level score quicker and thus win a higher-level trophy. The more trophies you acquire and the higher the level they are the more goodies you will unlock. In total the game has three main cities with two mission sets within each (totalling six possible playable games) but there are also something like twelve unlockable multiplayer and single-player rampage cities. There may be more as I still haven't got all golds yet.

The rampage maps are also great fun as you can run around the tiny cities and blow everything up, as well as get random phone missions, some exclusive to rampage mode (in single-player it is predefined as to which phone gives which mission). Also you get to play around with cool things like tanks and RC vans, not to mention that the weapons respawn after collection, allowing for easy refilling of your arsenal.

Multiplayer [[Image:0 out of 10.png]]
I haven't played this game against anyone yet, but judging by how cool the single-player deathmatching is I'd say it would be an enjoyable experience. It supports up to four players so should make a pretty nice deathmatch.

Closing thoughts
Overall, Payback is a model example of how GBA graphics and gameplay should be done. This fan project gone commercial puts a large number of professional GBA titles to shame, as it's both better looking and simply way more fun.

Unfortunately it's not perfect, and it's a shame that more wasn't done to make this game more like the more recent GTAs. The graphics engine is absolutely stunning and some of the missions really creative, but the lack of races and vehicle missions really drags it down as there's not that much to do on the missions besides drive from A to B and killing everyone who gets in the way. This is a great game to keep coming back to, but not one to play for long periods of time unlike GTA Advance, which lacks Payback ' s graphics but has a far better selection of out-of-mission activities.

If you are a big fan of the first two GTAs then buy this as soon as you can, it's everything they are only better, and it's portable. However if you're looking for a proper GTA-style adventure on the go I'd recommend GTA Advance over this, as it has a more interesting story as well as far more side missions.

Final rating: