Game review: Payday 2

The game that I'm going to be reviewing today is one that I have sunk quite a few hours into, it's called Payday 2. Payday 2 is a co-op First Person Shooter game with stealth elements, and is the sequel to Payday: The Heist. 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 was released back in August of 2013, and it was made available to play on Steam, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Later on in 2015 it saw release for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, and will see a release for the Nintendo Switch in February of 2018. 

Now, I personally enjoyed Payday: The Heist and thought that it was quite a fun game. In a way it let us live out some of our fantasies of being able to perform some grand, intricate heist while not taking itself too seriously, just being a big chunk of fun overall. I assume that most people agreed with me, as this 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 few ways, although it still has it's prevalent issues just as its predecessor did. Just like the original game, though, it's still tons of fun to play. Well, so long as you don't mind most of the heists turning into a giant shoot out, since most players just wanna shoot everything and everyone. 

Taking place a few years after the original game, this game brings back together the original crew for some for high octane action heists. You play as 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. 

There really isn't much of an actual linear story to the game itself. Most of the narrative of the series can be found in other external forms of media such as an online web series, FBI Files, a web comic series and trailers also released online. There is some semblance of a story within the game, but not much else 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 normal, basic narrative to it then this probably won't be for you. 

Payday 2 had quite a few differences from the original game, most of which being 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, however I wouldn't recommend it unless you're playing on the easiest difficulty, as the AI in the game is not very good and I could very rarely actually complete a mission on hard on my own. If you wanna make the big bucks, you basically have to play online. 

The missions themselves will disappear and reappear in real time as other users fill the lobbies for them. The missions which you can select vary in type and can range from things such as a simple one day mission 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 mission. While you get much greater rewards for doing a mission like that, I personally prefer to steer clear of those myself. 

As I mentioned before, there are several grades of difficulty for each mission which you can take on as well. They start at normal and go up 6 times to the One Down level which is 7 times harder than the normal difficulty. The harder the difficulty, the better the rewards. However, you'll also see much heavier enemy spawns with each enemy 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. 

Each heist mission for the most part is designed quite well, with a great sense of the situation escalating once things go tits up. All of the missions have great pacing to them and are mostly varied where they don't all just blend in together. 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 another mission robbing an art gallery. You might find yourself inside of a mall destroying 50k worth of merchandise, then another mission brings you to a classic bank robbery heist. It'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 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 the police onslaught and fight your way to the escape vehicle before you can make off with the money. This is typically what happens more often than not, 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. One entertaining element of going this route is 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 do. 

To aid you in the stealth approach and just in general overall, I suppose, is the class system within the game. After completing missions, 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, as well as mix and match with in 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. 

As I briefly mentioned already, besides the class system 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 with their own stats and differences. 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 though, with the matchmaking not being the best and sometimes causing huge delays to starting the game due to someone being slow to join. There are also quite a few bugs which have been slowly patched over time, but some can still be found to this day and can be a bit annoying. The way that stages end in the game is very lackluster and boring, and there are other elements of the game that feel unpolished that leave you wanting a bit more than what we've gotten. 

Overall though, the game is quite fun and has changed quite a bit since it's initial release. The developers clearly put a lot of work into the game and keeping things fresh with holiday events and other big changes happening every few months. While the game has its rough spots, it is a fun, entertaining game to play and can produce some fun times with you and your friends trying to pull of heists. If you like chaotic situations that involve theft, cooking meth and working with a team then this game is probably for you. I'd personally recommend it, especially since it goes on sale all the time and can be found for pretty cheap. Check it out if you haven't already. 

Anyways, thanks for checking out my review. Hope you've enjoyed it!