Payback
..Wotcha gonna do when they come for you?
2001-11-11
After getting a chance to see this baby running (update 5 on PPC hardware) at WOA SE I decided to bump up the scores a bit here and there - mainly in the graphics department.. This is a brilliant GTA clone and visually about equal to the Dreamcast/PC version of GTA 2. It's also great to see James Daniels continue to improve the quality of the game and to see that he does so free of charge to early buyers. Go buy this game.. NOW! If you haven't read the review before feel free to do so now: ----------------- Apex Designs recently released their much awaited game Payback. For those not familiar with it (yes, both of you) it is a game in the style of Grand Theft Auto. You might even go so far as to call it a clone. It would be unfair, however, to label it as being just a clone as it is really much more. Grand Theft Auto was actually originally developed on Amiga, but the designers apparently saw it fit to move development to Windows. In those days the general level of cpu power on the Amiga was also lower than now, where PPC upgrades have caused many high-end 68k accelerators to be available at an affordable price and this has caused the general level of cpu power to rise on the Amiga platform. The bad news for PPC owners is that Payback will currently not take advantage of your lovely PPC processing power. The good news for them is that Payback runs fairly well on even 25 MHz 68040s on the cheaper PPC boards. You would generally be better off though with at least a 40 MHz '040 though, as this is the speed at which the game gets really playable. And playable it certainly is... The intro is a bit of a let-down and fortunately doesn't represent the overall quality of Payback. It looks very dated and except for a few nice effects disappoints on the whole. It doesn't even play 100% proper on an '060 with graphics card. The game is mission-based, and you will start the game by answering a payphone where you will get your first assignment. This could for instance be to act as a get-away driver, courier, car thief or other non-legal doings. During the missions you have the possibility of picking up some weaponry, and you'd better do it as soon as possible, as the police will quickly be on your back. You can either try to outrun them or take them out (and I don't mean for dinner). If you get caught by the police or get killed, you lose one of your lives and have to go pick up the phone again to get another mission - something you will also have to do if you complete the mission in order to get your next assignment. In order to move on to the next level you have to reach a certain amount of points. You get points for completing the missions of course, but you can also score additional points by killing, stealing and maiming everything that gets in your way. You do need to be careful though, as you will get more policecars following you. There are some nice touches along the way such as the Irony Bonus you get when you steal a car and kill the owner with his own vehicle. Graphically the game is very impressive. It easily beats the Playstation version of GTA and looks far better than the non-3D accelerated version for Windows. Unfortunately the game does not support any 3D accelerators for the Amiga currently and I suppose that in order for Apex Designs to add this it would take a substantial amount of sold copies. There are some things in Payback which aren't even in the original Grand Theft Auto, such as lens flares, motion blur (quite sickening and fortunately an option) and more advanced control of the car. There are also some very cool explosions which slow down the game on even an '060, but it doesn't really matter much because it means that you will have a better chance of enjoying them. The game is capable of running in high-res, but I can't really recommend this option because when you get into a really fast car the screen updates aren't fast enough so you won't be able to control your vehicle and will unevitably crash into a wall or other non-pleasant things. This experience is based on an '060 with a CV64 and this is one of the fastest 68k options at the moment. Possibly a Picasso IV or a Permedia 2 graphics card will be faster when combined with an '060, but I doubt it will be by any great margin. Actually the game runs nearly as well in low-res on an '040/40MHz and AGA as on the '060 system, so maybe the graphics card is the bottleneck. I do doubt that anyone will be able to play the game in the supported 1280*1024 resolution any time soon though. Some other nice features of Payback are the weather effects. If you try the playable demo you will be able to see the snow effect for yourself. I did find one minor fault in the engine though; when you walk/drive across a crossing you will notice that the lensflares created by the street lights disappear while you are in the field. This is a minor niggle of course, and does not really detract from the overall impression. There is another thing which on the other hand annoys me to a great extent. I'm sure Brits and people in the few other countries who drive in the "wrong side of the road" i.e. the left side of the road will be thrilled by this, but everyone else will most likely experience more than once to miss the opportunity to steal that really nice car because you go to the left side of the car to open the door and it just drives away. Granted, your character will attempt to go to the other side of the car, but apparently this is something that was not coded so well, because instead of slyly sliding across the hood of the car, he usually just tries to do some quick exercise by trying to run though the car - which rarely gets you anywhere. Even worse, if there is a car behind you the game will assume that you are trying to get into that even though your back is turned to the vehicle in question. This basically means that instead of getting that cool Ferrari look-a-like you end up in an icecream truck. Another point of criticism is that sometimes there are just no cars around whatsoever! That is really annoying if you're in a hurry to get somewhere. Another slightly disappointing point in the game is the uneven learning curve. It seems that Apex Designs have worked on it by supplying some training missions, but some of the later missions are simply too easy compared to the difficulty level of the first. A very cool feature of the original game was that whenever you entered a vehicle, appropriate music would start playing. This meant that if you stole a pick-up truck you'd be listening to country music, in a porsche-like car it would be e.g. rock, in a taxi pop and so on. Alternatively you could just let the music play continuously. Payback tries to do the same and also lets you select between radio and continuous music. It would be nice to have even more features, but I'll get back to that in a minute. Unfortunately Payback just didn't start my cd drive even though I selected the correct device and unit number, so I wasn't able to tell how well it worked in the game. Fortunately the audio plays just fine in a normal CD player, so I listened to the tracks on my stereo. The Payback cover even contains a track listing with a little info on the artists, and that's a nice touch. The choice of artists, however, is the downfall of the audio side of Payback. Around half the tracks are non-distinct hip-hop/rap music, and although the gangsta-quality of some of the tracks suit the theme of Payback very well they are generally quite boring and some sound rather dated (on one of the tracks you actually hear '1997' in the stereotypical track intro). The other audio tracks were in the styles of alternative, pop and some extremely boring cross-over rap-metal. There are 3-4 ok-to-good tracks on the CD, but in general the soundtrack does not live up to the quality of GTA. A greater variety of styles would have worked wonders. The thing I was going to get back to was that games like the Dreamcast's excellent Metropolis Street Racer has a radio function that allows you to choose the style of music you'd prefer to listen to. This is getting more common in games these days and would have been nice to have in Payback so you could chose not to listen to hip hop if you dislike that or any of the other genres. The sound effects of the games are just fine, although the yapping phone voice is as annoying as the one in GTA. There is nice feature in Payback that allows you to play against human opponents in split-screen mayhem. Multiplayer support always adds to the replay value of a game so that's clearly a plus. Another thing that adds to the replay value is the ability to create maps. On the Apex Designs website there is a download section that contains maps ready for download. There are plenty of options to get the game running optimally on your Amiga, and for the low-end machines there are even more in the recently released second update to Payback - an update which also fixes some other minor problems and adds some improved textures. What you really want to know is "should I buy this game?". If you want to support the Amiga market: yes. If you've already played GTA to death and you are tired of that sort of gameplay: probably not. If you loved GTA and GTA 2 to pieces: yes. If you want one of the best and most humoristic action games for your Amiga: absolutely. All in all it is a worthy addition to any self-respecting Amiga gamer. Appeals to beginners and hardcore players as well.
Thomas Würgler
Graphics
Looks nice, but some 3D acceleration and prettier textures would be cool.
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9.0
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Sound
OK sound effects, but disappointing soundtrack.
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6.0
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Gameplay
Easy to pick up, hard to put down.
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9.0
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Overall
Another fun and playable action game for the Amiga - and what a looker it is too!
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9.0
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Info
Title
Payback
Official site
Apex Designs
Publisher
Apex Designs
Developer
Apex Designs
Genre
Crime Sim
Release
01/02/15
No. of players
1-4
Supports
CD32 pad,
PSX Joypad
Requires
16 MB ram,
68020,
AGA or GFX card,
CDROM drive.
Tested on
A3000,
060/50,
CV64.
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Pictures
A night level..
Gotta watch where you point that flamethrower!
This game should be called Skidmarks really.
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