Onwards, to glory!
Khm khm. Riiiight.
Let's begin with something relatively fresh. Payday: The Heist is an FPS genre representative.
Here, we take the role of a criminal that pulls off "heists" with his crew. The game itself is very CO-OP oriented, and the AI is straightforward stupid so I recommend getting at least one human player to your crew.
If you ever played any classic FPS, you will embrace it's controls and shooting mechanics in a matter of minutes.
There are no cover systems here. It's just you and a billion of cops around you, so f*ck cover.
Actually, Payday is very similar to Left 4 Dead. Except there are no zombies here (not yet, that is).
Another game similar to Payday is the first Kane and Lynch. There is the same "joy" of killing and just being a heartless mercenary that doesn't care much for civilians in his killing spree. It's great, really.
Let's begin with the gameplay itself.
This is no sandbox game, you get the objective and you get s*it done. Old school stuff.
During your heist, the police will interfere and send assaults that you must fend off while attending to your objective. That's about it.
But it's not that simple. The game randomly places objectives, guards, NPC's so that every time you play, the heist differs from the last one. On paper, a great idea. In practice, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Furthermore, shooting mechanics are very likable but don't offer anything new. That's not bad, but something new wouldn't kill us.
Every heist requires a different approach and they are all very intense and engaging. A single heist will take about 20 minutes, 15, if you are skilled. Now, this is the Payday's main flaw. There isn't much content in the game. We have a persistent leveling system (145 reputation levels) that unlocks weapon upgrades, gadgets and stuff. On the other hand, there are only eight weapons, four characters and six heists
But then again, developers promised loads of DLC coming soon.
Graphics aren't really up to today's standards, but this is a download title, and it isn't much of a factor compared to brilliant gameplay.
One thing that I dislike heavily is the lack of ingame graphic settings. Except for the resolution, that is.
But it isn't that bad since the engine is very optimized and runs fine even on older PC's.
Animations, too, are well below the standards, but even here, the game can give a couple of nice surprises in form of NPC's sliding to cover, vaulting across tables and such.
I recommend getting this game. Most of the bugs were eliminated with the first patch, stats were reset and we are set to play.
The cost on Steam is 18,99 euros, and I bet it will drop in following months (it is christmas that is coming, after all).
This is a quality title, no doubt. However, should you be a Crysis-spoiled bratz, dont bother.
One more thing; I love this game.
Cheers.
