payday 2 the continuation of a bank robbery game

A few years back a game called payday the heist was released by overkill software a slightly indie studio, shortly followed by an immediate cult following to the game. The reason being its uniqueness this game had one objective and that was to rob whatever place you were in of all its valuable. Now a few years later the sequel came out and with a multitude of improvements.

The four characters of the game are Dallas: a patriotic mobster like person who belives his ways as a robber is just another way to make money rather than criminal acts, Hoxton: The original hoxton was a short tempered young british man but for unknown reasons is mia in this game and is replaced with a rather lame sounding american man who is dallas' brother, next is chains at a younger age he could never stay out of trouble and at an older age was kicked from the marines due to his violent ways and was eventually hired by a criminal group leading to his joining of the payday gang. And finally wolf, wolf used to be a regular man he lived in sweden and owned a computer software company but after his company went bankrupt and his family left him wolf went insane and acted out robberies and other things of violence that he had seen in movies eventually leading to his realization that he liked that way of life.

Payday 2 starts off with you master planner (who calls himself Bain) welcomes you back from your vacation saying your "services" are needed once again and after getting your starting kit and a short but to the point tutorial you thrown into the game. The mission browser is stylized as a special network for criminals called crime.net and its here where you will select the heist you will take part in. After getting into a game or making one you wait a bit to have the game filled with other players and then once started you are taken to a briefing screen where you will get info on the heist its here that you also select your weapon and equipment to take along. The missions vary from a 1 day bank heist to (the longest ones so far only reaching 3 days days being individual missions inside the mission) and dealing with money and jewelry to making meth and transporting cocaine and even stealing paintings.

while the first game was an amazing work of art it was lacking a very major component, customization. The game had variablility in the placement of cameras, workers, guards, etc but there was no customization, this has definitely been fixed in payday2. To start there are about a dozen primary and a dozen secondary weapons each with weapon part customizations from sights to barrel extensions all of them show up as a unique model on the weapon in game too.And they also added mask customization to the game as well, now you can collect masks and customize their looks with materials patterns and colors which can lead to some very creative masks! all unlocks are aquired through a literal pick a card system at the end of each heist where longer and more difficult heist reward you with a rarer bounty than an easy short mission.

The gameplay is very tight the controls are very convenient and can be remapped to your liking if wanted. The enemies (fbi, swat, gang members, etc) come in waves with breathing time to secure loot heal yourself and scavenge for ammo between each wave. sometimes the ai is a little brain dead on easier missions but on the more difficult ones they seem to work fine (this will hopefully be improved on in a future update) Along with all of this the game is accompanied by the musical works of simon viklund who made the soundtrack for both of the payday games (and both soundtracks are definitely worth listening to!)

overall I would give payday 2 a 7.8/10 its a great game but it needs to improve a few things before it can truly reach its full potential.

a website used by players to plan out their skill trees http://www.pd2skills.info/

Pics:

From left to right: Hoxton, Dallas, Wolf, Chains
:




some masks





A screenshot from the standard bank heist mission