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Review - PaybackReviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.4 Review Date: March 17, 2002
By show of hands, who out there remembers the game Postal? It was released in the mid to late 90s, I believe, and featured a guy who was...well...with apologies to my good friend Jon Hodges who now works for the U.S. Postal Service...postal. Upon release, the game drew a lot of heat for both its name and its content. The whole point was to kill as many people in various locations as possible. I think there was a percentage of people who had to die before you could progress. Even worse, your victims would scream and crawl around a bit before actually dying. "I can't feel my legs!" "I can't breathe!" You had to kill a marching band, which is never justified when the band isn't playing "Hang On Sloopy." Postal was the kind of game that senators and soccer moms loved because they could use it as an excuse for their bad leadership and parenting skills. Me? I just thought it was fun. The novelty of it wore off after a while (I wasn't disappointed when neither the expansion pack nor its apparent upcoming sequel were announced for the Macintosh), but it was entertaining enough for me to bother finishing it (which, before I started reviewing games, didn't happen very often).
There's not much story to Payback. Indeed, everything you need to know is written on the box cover; "Unwanted by Society. Wanted by authority." Seeing that, I actually thought Payback was a biography on MacGamer's Corey Tamas, but no. Corey's name isn't mentioned at all in the game. So, the game starts with you answering a phone and accepting a job. This must be some kind of town, as there are quite a few public phones and all them ring with illegal jobs you can execute for fun and profit. These jobs range from stealing cabs to transporting packages across town to--my personal favorite--killing klansmen in the park. I guess that's thrown in there so you don't feel too bad about your character. Sure, he runs over pedestrians and kills policemen and tears up the grass in the park, but at least he's not a biggot! Getting most of these jobs done efficiently means carjacking. Sometimes, you're given cars. For the most part, however, you'll need to acquire one of your own. This is quite simple, as the other drivers will happily stop if you stand in their way. You then just hit the proper button to steal the car, leaving the driver lying in the road. There are many different cars from which to choose, each with its own characteristics, but I found that just about any job could be accomplished using whatever vehicle I first happened to come across, save for vehicles such as boats and tanks. I mean, yeah, you can't get up enough speed to jump over a river in a public bus, but you're otherwise good to go.
Anyway, sticking with the KKK rally as an example, you can either kill them on foot with any of the various weapons scattered across town, or you can drive a car into the park and just run them over. Your choice. The same goes for just about everyone, actually. Cars are faster, but more difficult to control. Also, some areas can only be accessed on foot, while others require a helicopter or boat. Although it's roots are in driving, Payback likes to change it up every now and again. Even in the missions that are car-based, you'll most often have to get out to accomplish your goal (weapons can't be fired from within automobiles). You get points for killing and destroying everything, so the more havoc you wreak, the better. The police cruisers scattered about won't take kindly to this, of course, but they're actually fairly simple to avoid. I found myself losing missions by getting stuck in traffic jams or blowing myself up with grenades more often than by getting caught by the po-po (until I reached the later levels, anyway). I enjoyed getting chased by them, though, because of the cool doppler effect of their sirens as you leave them behind. Having accomplished or failed a mission, you're told to head back to the phones to get another. An on-screen arrow points out the direction you need to head, and the map will show you the quickest route to get there. Once all of the missions have been attempted, it's time to move on to more phones or to another map. When you're done with these missions, you can replay them to see what you did. Eventually, perhaps before I die, someone will successfully explain to me why replays are either fun or useful. My guess is that it must just be an incredibly easy feature for game developers to incorporate.
This sounds like it may get old pretty quickly, but it doesn't. Unlike with Postal, the missions in Payback are varied enough to keep the action interesting throughout. I did find myself growing bored with some of the maps before I moved on to the next, but the benefit there is that the longer you play on a map, the more familiar with it you'll become. I'd usually drive around each map for a while to grow accostomed to it before I took on any missions. For those inclined to do such a thing, there's also a map editor included so you can build your own towns. I didn't test this, though, so I can't comment on its functionality. I prefer to leave the game development up to the game developers. That's why they get paid, isn't it? The graphics in Payback are ; your typical arcade/action fare with some improved lighting effects and such. They're colorful and clean, furthing the cartoonish feel of the game. I would have preferred it if the camera were pulled back a bit further from the action. I was able to get used to the cramped roads of the various locations, but I would have liked to have been able to see more of them at once. As it stands, the game feels too cramped considering its penchant for wide-open action. The sound is what really shines in Payback. The engines, crashes, explosions and squealing tires are all of the exaggerated Hollywood effects type. Only the screams of the pedestrians and unfortunate bus passengers seem muted or canned. The music is also top notch. Indeed, Payback may have the most interesting soundtrack since Redneck Rampage featured the Reverend Horton Heat and rock 'n' roll legend, >Mojo Nixon. I have no idea who any of the various artists are performing in the soundtrack (and none of the developers or publishers seem to want to let me know), but it's mostly pretty good...a fun combination of Brit pop and hip hop...and a couple of those godawful angry frat boy hard rock songs that pollute sports and wrestling highlight clips these days. The music changes as you get into different cars, and most of it fits the mood of the game. Just make sure those who won't get the joke aren't in the room when you're playing; the lyrics of some songs are more likely to upset someone than the gameplay itself.
Payback was originally developed for the Amiga, you see. I'm not sure what their guidelines for user interface were, but they sure weren't up the Mac standards. The menu system is quite clumsy, and I never knew if the return key, space bar, or a mouse click would select my option. Configuring the controls of my Macally iShock was a frustrating task in that the game didn't identify the buttons on the controller. Selecting the ones I wanted was a matter of trial and error. But hey, at least the dang thing worked, and that's an improvement over most OS X games. These gripes aside, Payback is an entertaining enough game. Yes, it's violent and the songs lyrics are coarse, but even Tom Jones sang about a man killing his girlfriend for cheating on him. Yes, you get rewards for killing pedestrians and police officers (bonus awards if you run the cops over with their own cars), but isn't that what the evening news programs highlight to garner ratings? Yes, you traffic narcotics and firearms, but so did Tim Allen and he ended up with his own family T.V. show (thereby punishing us for his crimes). No, there's nothing in here to worry about; nothing worse than a clumsy menu system and some awkard controls, anyway. It's certainly nothing worth getting all "postal" about. Sorry, Jon.
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I see a lot of Postal in Payback, now distributed in the U.S. by Freeverse Software. It has the same top-down view, it has a similar variation of locales, and it has the same over-the-top violence that ultimately feels no more aggressive than a pillow fight.
The bus, by the way, is quite interesting in that you can hear the passengers scream as you smash into stuff. Their screams come in quick, polite bursts as they're apparently otherwise content to be kidnapped across town. It's somewhat unsettling, like watching the reserved crowd reaction at a professional wrestling match in Japan.
Oh, there are some bonus missions as well. While driving around town, you may come across another ringing phone that's separate of the main bank of phones and not pointed out with the handy arrow. It'll have a mission for you, too, so you may as well take it. You're in this for the money, after all.
Payback does allow up to four gamers to play at once, but only in split screen mode on the same monitor. Unless you've got a big, big monitor...like maybe two Cinema Displays melted together, this is difficult to pull off. It also complicates game pad set-up, which is fairly complicated to begin with.