PAYDAY:The Heist developed by Overkill Software, comes to our consoles (or PC, whatever is your cup of tea) with an original concept that is certainly entertaining, this time we get to play as the bad guys, and oh boy… It is fun!
With a unique style that reminds us of a lot movies like Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs or Point Break. PAYDAY: The Heist offers very dynamic gameplay and action that is clearly influenced by Left 4 Dead (by no means this is bad at all), i like it.
Gameplay
This is a cooperative FPS featuring 6 different heists with a good variety of objectives, from robbing a bank, hunt down a traitor in the streets while you face the cops or even taking money from a meth lab and more. As stated before the L4D influence is undeniable, but instead of brainless zombies you have to deal with waves of cops and swat teams.
This is more evident if you decide to play offline teaming with the AI to complete a heist, just like in L4D the AI can heal you if you are injured. This option is not bad although an AI cannot beat playing online with other players. Co-op is the strong point in a game like this and you should aim to play online. Advice to grab a mic as communication is important to assign tasks and complete a heist smoothly, specially in harder difficulty.
Four difficulty levels ranging from Easy to Overkill, here comes something interesting, some of the latter heists dont let you pick easy or normal, you have to choose hard or Overkill. This sure gives you a nice challenge and believe me… hard will give you a run for your money, and good luck picking overkill!
There are four characters to choose: Dallas, Wolf, Hoxton and Chains. As far i can tell there are no differences between the characters stats wise, except of course the masks they are wearing. Dallas mask being my favorite.
With that said from the main menu you can check both, active and completed challenges and the upgrades you obtained throughout the game as your reputation level up.
As you obtain upgrades your choices before a heist increase considerably, so you can either pick to carry more cables to tie hostages, bags with extra ammo or meds, or obtaining boosts such as “thicker skin” to increase your health, accuracy and armor bonuses, etc.
There are three different categories of upgrades: Assault, Sharpshooting and Support. So you can build a character based in your very own game style, in the end the choice is yours.
The music score fits like a glove, with intense rhythm that keeps an atmosphere of tension in each heist.
Downsides
The lobby not always has a good amount of games to join, around 5pm i tried for a bit and gave up.. ending playing offline with the AI, this changed the next morning and was able to select from a fair amount of games. So give or take seems you can’t always find a game to join.
Are there plans for cross platform in the future? Having this on both Playstation 3 and Steam, this is an option that should be included, it would benefit the community increasing your chances to find games to join.
Overall
PAYDAY: The Heist offers tons of replayability and multiplayer feels just great, kudos and praises to Overkill Software, they did a game that really is a blast!
So really if you are a passionate gamer into FPS’s and like games in the style of Left 4 Dead or Team Fortresss you must give PAYDAY: The Heist a chance, im sure you will not regret it. Available for the Playstation Network and Steam for $19.99.
We give the game an 8.5 out of 10
~Mario
