Game review: Payday 2 (2013)

The game that I will be reviewing today is one that I have sunk a pretty decent amount of my time into, it's called Payday 2. Payday 2 is a multiplayer/co-op first person shooter/crime game, though it could be argued that it's also a stealth game. The game was developed by Overkill Studios (Who'm you may know of due to the trailer that was just released of their Walking Dead video game), and published by 505 games. (It is the sequel game to the original Payday: The Heist game, if you couldn't tell.) It was released back in August of 2013, and was made available to play on the Steam platform, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Later on in 2015 it saw release/port for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, and was recently released for the Nintendo Switch in February of 2018. 

Now, I personally enjoyed the original Payday: The Heist game, and thought that it was quite a fun experience overall. In somewhat of a way, it let you live out the fantasy of what it might be like to perform some grand, intricate heist. Of course, it never takes itself overly serious and remained just silly/fun game overall. I assume that most people would  tend to agree with me, as the game saw quite a huge amount of pre-orders and has sold extremely well over the years. Payday 2 improved upon the original in a couple of ways in my opinion, but it definitely still has it's prevalent issues just as its predecessor did. And, just like the original game, it's still a ton of fun to play. Well, so long as you don't mind most of the heists turning into a giant hollywoodesque shoot out, and I'm sure that none of you mind that at all. You heathens! 

Payday 2 is set to take place a few years after the original game, bringing back together the original crew for some more high octane action heists. Well, unless you want to be quiet. Then you're just in for a world of hurt. The characters made available for you to play as are Chicago mobster Dallas, crazed Swedish developer Wolf, and rogue navy seal turned mercenary Chains. The 4th character named Hoxton has been imprisoned in between the games, so taking his place is Dallas's little brother taking on his mask and identity for a short while. Later on, Hoxton is freed from prison by the gang and re-assumes his mantle and mask. 

Honestly, there isn't really much of an actual linear story to the game itself. Most of the narrative within the series can be found in other external forms of media such as an online web series, online files, a web comic series and trailers also released online. There is definitely some semblance of a story within the game, but not an extremely cohesive one. With the way the game is set up, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise though considering that the entire game is completing various online missions through different characters and having to fulfill certain tasks to complete each mission. If you're looking for a story driven game, or even a game that has a structured narrative in general, then this probably isn't going to be for you.  

As I briefly mentioned before, Payday 2 had quite a few differences from the original game. Most of which are things I would consider improvements to it. With this game you access your crime missions via the Crime Net, a virtual map which locates and then displays all of the available online missions. There is an offline crime net that you can play on as well should you wanna be on your own or lack friends with the game. However, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're going to be playing on the easiest difficulty, as the AI in the game is really not very good. Rarely could I actually complete a mission on the hard difficulty on my own, anything above that I absolutely failed. So, if you wanna make the big bucks and not be frustrated all the time, you basically have to play online with people. 

The missions themselves will disappear and reappear in real time as other users fill up the lobbies for them. The missions which you can select will vary in type and can range from things such as a simple one day mission (one phase) to more complicated missions that take several stages to complete. Some are more complicated than others, and can require you to complete up to seven different levels just to finish the entire mission. While you get much greater rewards for doing a mission like that, I personally prefer to steer clear of those myself. (They take up a considerable amount of time if you're playing with random people online.)

Speaking of the difficulties of the missions, there are several grades of difficulty for each mission which you can take on as well. They start at the normal setting and go up 6 times to the One Down level which is, surprise, 7 times harder than the normal difficulty. Again though, the harder the difficulty the better the rewards. The downside to this is that you'll also see much heavier enemy spawns with each of the enemies doing much more damage and sporting larger amounts of health. It's also a much more likely possibility that you'll be seeing the big bad enemies dropping such as the heavy juggernaut and other brutal foes instead of just the small fry. 

Each of the heist missions for the most part are designed quite well, with a great sense of the situation escalating once things go tits up. All of the missions have pretty good pacing to them and are mostly varied where they don't all just blend in with one another. To give you an idea of how they're different, there's a mission where you have to go into a meth house and cook up some meth, then you'll find yourself later on in a different mission sneakily robbing an art gallery. You might find yourself inside of a mall destroying $50000 worth of merchandise, then another mission brings you to good old fashioned classic bank robbery. With so many different missions to run through, t'll take a long time before you find yourself getting bored. Especially if you're playing with a few buddies.

You can take two approaches to completing the missions in the game. You can either try to go the stealthy route using your head and proper timing to make sure you don't get caught, or you can just go in guns blazing and fight your way out of the situation while making bank at the same time. If you take the noisy route, you can expect to have to take hostages, defend your position from waves of police onslaught and fight your way to the escape vehicle before you can make off with any of the money. This is typically what happens more often than not when you're starting off, and it's definitely the more fun option if you're wanting to goof around with some friends for a bit. 

The quiet approach isn't quite so simple, involving a lot more strategy and timing to complete that way. You'll have to do a lot of sneaking, knocking people out, avoiding security cameras and finding keys to unlock doors. There are a few aspects of this style which are entertaining and make it easier to go this route, such as when you have to pretend to be one of the guards you've knocked out which provides some funny dialogue. I'll have to be up front and say it's much harder getting a stealth finish, but it does feel oh so much more satisfying when you actually can pull it off. 

To aid you in the stealth approach and just in general overall I suppose, is the class system within the game. After completing missions and earning enough, you level up and earn spending cash which can be used to unlock new skills within your class tree, new guns and also new masks for you to wear while you pull off heists. There are 4 skill classes that you can choose from and either mix and match or fill up entirely within the game. The Mastermind class allows you to dominate your enemies into submission while also aiding your friends, the Engineer class which allows you to drill through vaults quicker as well as using other technology more efficiently, the Enforcer class which focuses more on combat ability and finally the Ghost class which aids you better in being stealthy.  

Now, the class system isn't your only ally in this game. Besides the class system upgrades, you can also purchase new firearms and masks in the game. The guns are all pretty standard in that you get to choose from a rifle, pistol, shotgun and machine guns. There is, however, a massive amount of them to choose from for your character, each of which have their own stats and differences among-st one another. You can also unlock pieces of equipment randomly after the end of a mission to customize them to your liking, which also changes some of their stats for the better or worse depending on what you want to do with your guns. 

The masks are also much more prevalent in the game, with tons of different variations added on top of the typical clown masks which is nice. It's fun at first, but I don't want to roleplay The Dark Knight's intro scene the entire time we play the game. Anyways, the masks have all sorts of varieties such as demons, ghouls, and all other sorts of monsters. There's also more strange things like anime girls and movie characters.  The amount of masks to choose from is even larger than the amount of guns I'd reckon, and that doesn't even go into the ability of customizing your masks from scratch and making whatever you want. Between the skills, guns and masks there is plenty here for make up your own character with, allowing you to choose what kind of play style you really want to have.  

The game does have its issues, however, with the matchmaking not being all that great with how it's set up, sometimes causing huge delays to starting the game due to someone being slow to connect to the server. There are also quite a few little bugs which have been slowly patched over time, but some can still be found to this day and can be a bit annoying if you're unlucky enough to encounter them. The way that stages end in the game is very lackluster and boring as well and they don't really match up with the rest of the experience. In addition to that, there are other elements of the game that feel unpolished that leave you wanting a bit more than what we've gotten. 

So, what's my overall opinion on Payday 2? I believe that the game is quite fun and seen some substantial changes since its initial release. The developers clearly put a lot of work into the game and attempt to keep things as fresh as possible with holiday events and other big changes happening seemingly every few months. While the game has its rough spots, it is a fun and entertaining game to jam on. If you're playing with some of your friends, then it's basically guaranteed to be a fun time for the most part. If you like chaotic situations that involve theft, shooting guns, working with a team and the occasional meth cooking, then this game is probably for you. I mean, isn't that the life that every human being dreams of? Don't let your dreams be dreams. Pick up that sock, huff the spray paint you put in there and get to heisting. Do it! No, but seriously, check out this game if you're interested. You won't be disappointed. 

Well, that's it. Hope you guys enjoyed the review. Thanks for coming by to check it out. 

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