Payday 2 is the sequel to 2011′s Payday: The Heist and it follows in it’s masked, gun-wielding footsteps admirably. I want to apologise for the delay in getting this review up, and if I’ve missed anything in my haste to get it done. I had some technical issues involving my previous ISP turning the damn internet off two days before they were meant to. Which, y’know, helped. Anyway, on with the review.
The premise is simple; you break into places and make money in return. The missions can include you robbing banks, busting up a mall, breaking into an apartment to plant evidence, holding up stores and I’ve not got anywhere near playing all of them. Armed with some guns and other tools of your nefarious trade you, alongside up to three accomplices, are given a briefing, the options to purchase some helpful items, your choice of loadout and are dropped into the scenario. I chose one on normal difficulty, looked at the intel and hit ready.
The first scenario dropped me outside a small bank with the task of breaking into the vault and raiding the safety deposit boxes. I started off playing single player, just to get a feel for the mechanics and see how the game would run. Let me walk you through my first Payday 2 experience.
I was immediately impressed with how good it looks and how well it was running, as I don’t have a particularly great PC. I was faced with a bank and the voice in my ear telling me to head to the car park at the rear to retrieve a drill. Similarly to Payday: The Heist you don’t start off by waving an assault rifle about like a big foam finger. Instead, you start off in Casing Mode. This basically gives you time to examine the layout, choose entry points and how you’re going to approach the heist. All the time being wary of guards and nosey security cameras, which does require some suspension of disbelief.
You’ll see this a lot.
I walked round the back of the bank, found the bag for the drill, put my mask on and got ready. I picked the lock at the back, and sneaked in. I burst into the main room of the bank yelling for civilians to get on the floor, and easily dropped the few guards there were. I dropped the drill, and got to work. Then the fun started. An alarm was triggered and waves of police started streaming in. Through broken windows, through doors and even sometimes spawning behind me. The action was good, the cops come in waves so you’ve got some time to scavenge ammo and breathe whilst waiting for the drill to finish. It was apparently made of brie though, as it seemed to take weeks, but that might have been because of the biggest issue I have with Payday 2. The AI.
I know that this game is meant to be played co-op, and I will get to that soon, but the AI was on a different level of stupid at times. It was the Einstein of idiocy, the Usain Bolt of boobishness, the Steve Jobs of stupidity. It was dumb. Quite a few times enemy NPC’s would rush towards me and then stop, turn around and assume a guard pose. Just standin’, chillin’. Not just one, but three or four at a time and then the rush started again. The friendly AI wasn’t much better, and it was just as inconsistent.
The mission involved me having to pick the lock of many safety deposit boxes in order to reach a target amount of money, something that was made challenging by the hail of bullets coming from the SWAT team outside. I figured I could leave my AI team-mates to deal with at least some of the incoming attention. I was only half right. Some of the time my fellow bank robbers were crack shots, taking down the police with ease. Other times they were so far past useless they were looking at stupid in the rear-view mirror. Stood in the corner facing away from the enemies was a particular favourite of theirs, as was emptying round after round into the wall.
Needless to say, the attempted bank heist was unsuccessful. I went on to do a few more missions with AI partners and it is possible, but can become frustrating. One mission tasked me with causing $50,000 worth of damage in a shopping mall by breaking merchandise and windows, but because you can’t ask the NPC’s to do anything it took me quite a bit of time. It doesn’t help that the only commands you can issue to your allies is a come here/stay put command. If the AI can carry bags of cash, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. One mission was a raid on a nightclub which required at least three cash bags for completion. After it taking ages to fight out with the first one, and just as long to fight back in for the second I just gave up. Enough of the single player, lets get onto the co-op.
Now now, calm down, we’ve all had a drink
The fun I had on the co-op side more than balances out the offline. To get into a missions you use the crime.net system, which flashes up missions in different locations as it finds them. Most of the time it was easy and fairly quick to get stuck into a game. I played for a good few hours and didn’t encounter anyone that was totally obnoxious, but communication wasn’t always the best. Most of the games involved a little bit of planning in the lobby, who should take what items etc, and then at the start of the game a general plan was sorted fairly quickly. A few times someone ignored the co-op focus, chucked on their mask and started shooting before anyone else was ready, but that’s not a problem with the game. Voice chat was fine, and the text chat was just as quick.
I haven’t really mentioned the gameplay because there isn’t a huge amount of real change from the first game, more of an overall refinement. The graphics are more refined, the AI (except when it’s stupid) has improved and overall the game feels a lot tighter and smoother. The animations flow and (this might seem weird) it sounds really good. The gunfire sounds like it’s from a DiCE game which, as far as I’m concerned, is a massive compliment.
The shooting feels good, you’re not a super solider so your aim isn’t perfect, but you’re not shooting with broken arms so you hit more often than not. Two things I really liked were that crosshairs were turned off by default (one of my pet hates is not having the option to turn them off) and your movement changes as you pick up heavy equipment or loot. At the start of the mission when I picked up the bag with the drill, the camera leaned and I immediately slowed down and couldn’t sprint. They’re only little touches, but the little touches give it a bit of extra character.
It’s a very solid shooter, all of the core mechanics work well and are pretty simple, standard FPS staples. The depth in Payday 2 comes from the RPG like customisation. You earn XP alongside money and use them both to upgrade weapons and abilities. The skill-tree system will be familiar to most players of games like Borderlands. You get skill points for every level you reach, and you use these points across any of four skill trees. You can use money to buy upgrade parts that you’ve unlocked either through finding them or being given them as a mission reward. The unlock system can feel a bit tight at times. The missions don’t reward a huge amount of spendable cash,especially on the lower difficulties, and being made to buy parts that you’ve already found seems a bit harsh. You will also be able to customise your safehouse, as well as being able to create custom masks from components you’re rewarded through missions.
One day all this will be money. One day.
It’s worth mentioning that this game is very stable, and it doesn’t take a particularly high spec PC to get it running well. I’ve not got the greatest PC, it’s only marginally better than the minimum specs (apart from my graphics card) and it runs okay on high settings. It runs even better on medium settings, without any real loss to the visuals. This is helped by the graphics being functional, and I mean that in the best possible way. There’s no emphasis on this looking super-duper fancy and it honestly doesn’t need it. It looks good, there’s a lot of detail in the environments and keeping it relatively simple in the graphics department makes it a lot more stable. Despite the few glitches/bugs I mentioned (cops spawning behind me/from nowhere and some NPC’s getting stuck in bits of scenery) Payday 2 ran absolutely fine.
It’s based on the Diesel engine, Payday 2 runs on Diesel 2.0, which was originally used in 2001 as a showcase for the Geforce 3. It’s functional, nothing feels broken or outdated and it works. Ambitious engines, such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R’s X-Ray engine can have rewards, but can have a lot of problems. I think this is one of the reasons that the game is released at a relatively low price, a console retail copy is roughly £23 and a Steam version will set you back £25. I’d say that this is pretty great value for money, especially if you’re planning on playing this online.
The only thing I would add would be a command menu for offline, but that’s only because the game reminded me a little of playing SWAT 4. The planning and intel before, the calm before the storm as you case the area and constantly yelling at people to stay down . I think it would be an interesting addition, but it’s by no means a game defining deficit, more wishful thinking on my part. The biggest thing I would change is the upgrade system, but even then I would just make it a little more lenient. Getting some decent equipment upgrades early on would feel a lot more rewarding. But maybe I’m just going soft.
Payday 2 feels a bit like a hybrid of Left 4 Dead 2, the SWAT games and a healthy dose of RPG. Despite the flaws (if you think they are flaws), it’s a very enjoyable game. I put a lot of time into L4D2 and I can see myself doing the same with Payday. You get a lot of bang for your buck with more than 30 missions, a lot of replayability especially when you play co-op. Unless the AI goes back to school, the single player is a bit pointless. But singleplayer isn’t really the point of Payday 2.
