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Replay: Payday 2

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Payday-2-Career-Criminal-Edition-logoMy interest in the Payday series was first piqued a few years ago when 4-Player Co-Op was the flavor of choice among my gaming buddies. Left 4 Dead, Borderlands and all games of that ilk were getting weekly sessions dedicated to them and soaking up hours between exam study and assignments. It was a simpler time, before League of Legends brought the MOBA to the top of the gaming table. I loved, and still love, those games and their more recent installments, but after a while the grind did begin to feel a bit samey; get gun, get better gun and proceed to mow down wave after wave of enemy while you press on from objective to objective. While I enjoyed the 4-Player Co-Op format, I wanted something different, even if just a little.

Payday2-PlanningEnter Payday: The Heist developed by Overkill, another member of the FPS 4-Player Co-Op group (say that 3 times fast) – but this one comes with a slight twist. Players weren’t just meant to mow down wave after wave of faceless enemy. Instead stealth, planning and constant communication were greatly rewarded, with the firefights usually only beginning once someone has made a bit of a cock up. Even then, it was all about holding the position while the team completed tasks rather than pushing forward endlessly. It may sound like only a small variation, but as a lover of the Hitman series this stealthy approach was right up my alley. Unfortunately, shortly after first getting to grips with Payday: The Heist, League of Legends began to gain traction and most of the weekly sessions were dedicated to the new toxicity pot. If you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it then. I still can’t get back into it, despite the massive respect I have for it as a game from a design point of view. Fast forward a few years and Overkill release Payday 2. I was pretty chuffed about the news since I still ached for the occasional bit of heist action and Payday 2 promised all of that and much more.

Payday2 - Rainbow UnicornPayday 2 opens a few years after the close of Payday: The Heist, with three of the four playable characters returning, namely Dallas (the mobster), Wolf (a software engineer gone mad) and Chains (an ex-Navy SEAL). The former 4th member, Hoxton (an English thug), is serving jail time and has been replaced in the crew by Dallas’ younger brother, Houston. Along with the returning gang members, Overkill pushed out a meatier game engine with heavier reliance on stealth, more options for covering your tracks and keeping things quiet and a larger variety of mission types, bank heists, store holdups and drug thefts from rival gangs or organizations. Other improvements came in the form of enhanced character customization, both visually and in terms of the skillsets available as players level up. There’s certainly a lot on offer, because dammit, if I want to break into a nightclub wearing a rainbow unicorn mask wielding a minigun then I’m gonna bloody well do it!

Payday 2 is vastly superior to its predecessor, in terms of both gameplay and extracurricular production. In addition to the gameplay outlined above, Payday 2 improved upon the original’s over the top style with one batch of DLC even tying into the movie John Wick, introducing the titular John as a an old friend of one of the gang members and providing him as a playable character. Alongside this movie tie in Overkill outdid themselves with their own video escapades, releasing a number of high quality webisodes to promote DLC along with a Payday webseries. Among the actors involved are Giancarlo Esposito and Mira Furlan, each playing the parts of in-game mission contractors, The Dentist and The Butcher respectively.

For those of you looking for something new to check out, especially if you’ve got a group of 3 or 4 wanting to get involved, Payday 2 is well worth checking out. More content is constantly being added and right now is the perfect time to get involved since there have been multiple huge updates released this past month to tie in with Overkill’s Hype Train event.

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