There's nothing more boring than watching the standard, cliche heist movie. It's over 90 minutes of watching actors work out a gameplan with witty dialogue, knowing that everything will work out in the end no matter what snafu they get into during the attack.
Mercifully, Payday 2 takes all that garbage out. Everything is planned out at the beginning, leaving just the execution as players step into action in first-person perspective.
The heist simulator has all the seriousness of an actual heist before it happens, but then it resembles a more cartoon-like atmosphere in action. Players can absorb multiple bullets in normal difficulty heists, and some of the masks that are available can reach the ridiculous.
There's a lot of details in the environment, but the game can get bogged down at certain places or when there's too many things going on at once. Nearly every time I head to the bottom level of the safe house, the game pauses for about 5 seconds without a loading indicator.
Enemy police and hostage NPCs take a design hit to keep the FPS level. They lack fluid motion when chasing after the robbers, especialy further away. There's no animation when tying up hostages, leaving little satisfaction as the ring meter circles around the action being done.
Despite some performance shortcomings and having armor as strong as a tank, it's fun to pull off all the objectives, keeping the police at bay while stealing jewlery, robbing a bank, or sabotaging certain areas. There's nothing too complicated to get tasks done, simply a press-and-hold of a trigger button while not getting shot at.
There is no campaign mode or main story to the game. Missions are selected via the Crime.net computer in the safe house, and players can practice with using tools and their arsenal with unlimited ammunition during down time; a welcome addition.
The game is basically pick-up-and-play. Players can selct to play online or offline, although playing it with team AI is equivalent to a 5-year-old picking up the controller. They'll barely take down enemies and they won't aid the player in stealing loot and throwing it in the back of a van.
Methods on how to do a heist aren't completely explained, which is why I opted for the offline mode in the first couple of runs. But it's worth looking like a dumbass and trying to figure out certain methods to do a heist while playing with humans instead of bots.
The problem with some heists is that while players can be sneaky, there's not enough penalty to just get in the building that's being robbed, putting on the mask, and going to town. It takes a long time for the health bar to go down, but perhaps this isn't the case in harder difficulty leves (which I haven't played yet).
Payday 2 may tire in repetitiveness, but it's a game that's better taken in small doses. There's a lot of value to come back and play as four different levels of skills can be unlocked and plenty of weapons and gadgets can be obtained and upgraded. Some items or upgrades are a lot of cash, but the harder the difficulty of the heist, the bigger the payout.
The verdict: Three out of five stolen bags of cash. The game is for first-person shooter fans that love multiplayer, and don't want all the stealth that's involved in similar games. Just don't expect a graphical beast or any form of a campaign mode. Which could have bogged this down into a boring heist movie anyway.
Payday 2 is developed by Overkill Software and published by 505 Games. The PlayStation 3 version has received positive cumulative scores of 70 percent on GameRankings and a 74/100 on Metacritic It's currently available for free on PlayStation Plus' Instant Game Collection for a limited time.
Image credits: Flickr
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