Robbing banks and jewellery stores has always been fashionable. And Payday 2 picks up exactly from that point. You’re put in the shoes of one of the four in-game crooks – codenamed Dallas, Hoxton, Chains and Wolf, to perform a heist. And this group can be either random online strangers, your friends (friends are recommended), or the sheepish AI.
Together, you take on from a selection of available heist jobs on Payday2.net, the game’s online lobby. The number of jobs available are plenty, varying from a selection of heist jobs such as robbing jewellery stores, breaking valuables in a mall, stealing paintings and even planting drugs at a senator’s mansion; take your pick! Some jobs have higher paydays, but they carry a greater risk, other are easy but grant a lower pay. Failure to complete a job lands you no payment and meager experience points. The simplest of jobs are one-day affairs. Go in, loot whatever the eff you can, and get the hell out. Easy peasy, but the pay is limited. Complex jobs involve several stages, spread across multiple in-game days. There might be only a handful types in the heist jobs available, but random events within each job including random loot drops makes sure the experience doesn’t get too repetitive.
Each member of the four-man crew have their own set of necessary skills that is bought in by the class they belong to, which there are four. The Mastermind class specialize in crowd control and is the team medic. By ‘crowd control’ we merely mean turning unwilling hostages into accomplices while dealing with police and S.W.A.T. forces. Enforcers are the tanks of your abiding crew, who don’t hesitate in either taking or giving damage wherever required. They also take responsibility of providing your crew the ammo it needs during a heist. Technicians can lay mines, transponders, pick locks and drill through safes with ease. Ghosts are the stealth equivalents, with the ability to avoid suspicion when dealing with civilians before the masks are put on and the heist officially commences.
Each class has a skill tree, and the real fun begins when you’re unlocked two or three levels of skills. You also have the ability to take back your skill points and start over with your build, if you’re willing to try something different. This is a nifty feature, and you don’t have to think hours into which skill point you’ll be spending where, which is an obsession I personally face.
Once a mission is started, police forces appear in waves, intensifying as your crew gets closer to stealing the goods, or whatever might be the case. Drilling through safes, hacking servers, all take time, ranging from anywhere between two to eight minutes. Police forces come in from all the directions, and your four man crew has to keep them out. Drills break down from time to time causing the timer to stop, so you’ll have to repair it for the countdown to resume.
After the sole purpose of the job is completed, you’re supposed to take your goods to your getaway ride. This can be challenging based on the difficulty of the job you’re doing, so good co-op play between your teammates is must. Many times, you’ll be doing well till the end, until you’re making your way back and sh*t hits the fan. You see, this is what is so awesome about Payday 2, you might feel everything is going perfect but moments later your entire job is in jeopardy. The amount of cash you rake in is dependent on the loot you eventually drop-off in the getaway car. Dead teammates don’t bring in any loot.
Completing jobs will earn you good money, and Payday 2 offers countless options for the rich and not-so-retail-shopper. A variety of guns, attachments, modifications, skills are available at your disposal, provided you have the finances to back them up. After every job, each team member picks a random card which unlocks new material/weapon/modification. Materials are used to craft masks. Masks, although purely aesthetic, cost more than top-notch weapons, but they’re totally worth it as they make your character look totally bad-ass.
Payday 2 is best when played online, but you have to option of playing offline too. Only catch is, the Artificial Intelligence in the game is Originally Dumb. Your AI teammates never pick up loot bags. NEVER. I seize to understand this. Stay away from the offline mode, this game deserves to be played with friends.
The game is pretty bug riddled. From the occasional tri-colour polygon syndrome, to landing right back on your desktop screen randomly, Payday 2 has a series of nuances that hamper the experience to a degree. Level design is funny in a way that there are some destructible objects, like windows which can be shattered, while some windows cannot even be scratched. There were also many instances where the game disconnected me from my job randomly, making me lose all the my progress. In the mall mission, where your crew has to destroy valuables worth $50,000, there’s a swanky sports car, which cannot be destroyed. These are small things, the game could have done better with some finesse.
But where Payday 2 really shines is in those intense moments, where teamwork is key. The pressure is high, unforgiving, and random encounters are plenty. Performing a clean job is utterly satisfying, and being pinned down during encounters is mercurial. Communication between your crew is must, there are moments where the sense of urgency matches to that of Left 4 Dead.
Payday 2 might be bug-riddled, might have questionable AI, but it provides you with characteristic moments that exhilarate and thrill. This is a fantastic original co-op multiplayer game, which is both challenging and satisfying. All it asks from the player is a little forgiveness for the fine tuning and finesse it lacks, and once you’re over that, you have a great package waiting to consume hours of your gaming time.
This game was reviewed on PC with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 770.
