Review

Payday: The Heist

One of the best things about video games is that they allow you to do things you can’t do, or would never do in real life. Gamers can go from being cowboys and hunting bandits to becoming a space marine and fighting aliens. While those options are nice, sometimes I want to play the role of a criminal. No, I don’t have a deep desire to knock off a bank in real life. It boils down to wanting a change of pace; an emulation of the cool bad guys we see in movies.

This brings me to Overkill Software’s new title, Payday: The Heist. This game tasks gamers with pulling off crazy heists by working as a team. With that being said, these aren’t Ocean Eleven style capers. They are the edge of your seat, bullets flying, C4 detonating, mask wearing hoodlum type of heists. Take the best action scenes from movies like The Town and you’ll see what I mean. Payday features six heists, ranging from a bank robbery to attacking a convoy of prison vehicles to free a wanted criminal. I had a blast (no pun intended) emptying a bank’s safe and then running for my life as SWAT closed in. If you let yourself get sucked in, Payday can have some of the most intense moments in gaming and none of it is scripted. It is truly blockbuster stuff! With that being said, it seemed that Overkill tried really hard to make me frustrated with their title. For all of the things done well in Payday, there are plenty of issues that mar the experience!

Before talking about the negatives, let’s talk about positives. Payday plays like Left 4 Dead, only without the zombies. Just about every aspect mirrored Valve’s title; not a bad thing mind you, as Overkill took these elements and made them their own. After choosing one of the four characters and their equipment, you’ll transition to the game map. Once the heist starts, you’ll have to fight off enemies (drug dealers, police, etc.) while completing a list of objectives. The objectives tend to make sense in a Hollywood-summer-film kinda way. One mission, for example, requires you to plant C4 on the roof of a building so that a panic room (full of money) can be air lifted to your hide out. In the midst of completing objectives, you will also have to look after hostages and fight off the police. When a teammate goes to another room (or behind a wall) you can see them via a green silhouette, representing their body. If someone goes down, you will have a limited amount of time to get them back on their feet before they die. Once all of the objectives are completed, you’ll then need to escape. A timer will start counting down to let you know how long it will be before you’re overwhelmed by the cops. Each teammate has to pull his/her own weight if anyone is going to make it out alive. Just like in L4D, running off and completing objectives by yourself is a quick way to get killed. There are even special cops that have debilitating weapons (like a tazer) that requires help from a teammate if you get caught by them. Overkill did a great job implementing a tried and true formula that leads to fun times for everyone!

Unfortunately, there are a couple of troubled areas that need explaining. One has to do with the lack of information given to players; Payday is lacking when it comes to explanatory text. While I don’t require hand holding, I feel that there should have been something in the options that explains the in’s and out’s of this game. For instance, Payday features three different character classes, each with their own progression/skill trees. Gamers are able to level up each class by completing challenges and objectives, unlocking new weapons, items, and skills. The problem here is that nothing in the game explains how to change from one class to the other. It doesn’t even tell you what class you’re playing as during matches. Weapons and items are not restricted to specific classes either. So there is no indication (based on your loadout) of what class you are playing as. The only way I found out what class I was using was by what upgrades I unlocked after the matches were over. I had to look up how to change classes online; even people I was playing with who were ranked high didn’t know how to do it. Just so you don’t have this issue, you have to press and hold the select button during a match (not before) to bring up a menu in which you will get the option to view and change your class. Not intuitive at all. What made things more confusing was the fact that you can view your upgrades for each class in the options menu. I thought, maybe this is where I would select my class for each match (or at least what upgrades to put on/take off). Once here you are shown that you can select them by pressing X. Only, X doesn’t do anything. The only thing you can do is view the description of each item/weapon/skill. That’s it.

The issue comes up again when it comes to your objectives. It can be hard to understand exactly where you need to go to complete them sometimes. The pointer that pops up on your HUD only points in the general area of objectives, making it real easy to get lost. Sometimes it only points out half of the objective. Let’s say you need to get a key and use it on a door, the pointer will hover in the door’s area only. To be fair you are given audio cues from a third party, the person who arranged the heist, which can help. However, they tend to go unheard with all the gun fire and people talking on their mics. I wish I could say that all you had to do was to play offline to learn the maps but that’s not the case. I mean, you can play offline to learn the maps, it’s just a chore to do so. When paying offline, not only do your AI partners fail to actually complete objectives on their own, forcing you to soak up bullets as you run from one end of the map to the other, but you can’t pause the game. If you have to go to the bathroom, you might as well end the match and start over when you get back. This game was built with co-op in mind, so if you’re not playing with humans then you aren’t going to have fun. Throw in the fact that there are issues with connecting with people online (who aren’t on your friends list) and you’ve got enough reasons to hang up your controller!

The good and bad go hand and hand in Payday. There is an interesting way of dealing with partners who die in a match. The game tells you that they have been arrested and that you can trade a hostage with the police for their return. While this mechanic fits the game’s overall theme, it could have been implemented better. As it stands, you can’t move hostages. Once you tell them to hit the floor, you can tie them up. This means that in order to make a trade, you have to run to where ever you left them. You can imagine how this can be a real pain. Especially since the police could care less how many hostages you have; they attack with little regard for civilian casualties.

There is a lot to like in Payday: The Heist. Even though I had some complaints, I still had a great time being the bad guy. The co-op gameplay, cool scenarios, and exciting moments go real far in selling this title. Overkill even went a step further by randomizing the enemy encounters each time you play. You should definitely play this title. Just understand it is flawed before dropping the cash for purchase!