Zoroark Cutie
The Illusion Fox Skyfarer
- 2,511
- Posts
- 9
- Years
- Age 29
- Auguste Isles
- Seen Dec 13, 2017
Due to the recent Steam Summer Sale, I was able to repurchase Payday: The Heist and Payday 2, although I purchased the games on sale the day before the Steam Summer Sale and got them much cheaper than they were on that Steam Summer Sale, although it wasn't that much of a price difference (Like a penny difference).
Now I love cooperative shooters, I love Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, but for some reason I sort of prefer the Payday games more than the Left 4 Dead games, but I do love both series. Now I just want to mention, this is just going to be all about the first Payday, I want to save time for another one of these just for Payday 2 since Payday 2 is much larger than The Heist. Now I remember back before The Heist was released, I was excited for it because I always wanted a game where your goal was just to rob places and Payday: The Heist was one of those games that excelled my expectations, but it wasn't without it's few bumps and flaws.
My first issue isn't really with the game, but back when I first played this game on PSN, the download for this game was one of the worst experiences I had with downloading. I had the game fail on me twice while downloading, one of times it was near done and failed while I was sleeping and in total I took me about a day of downloading just to play it.
Going back to this game, I remember how weird this game was. It was weird back then and it is weird now. I don't mean weird in the sense like crazy stuff happens, more like weird in that game didn't make a whole lot of sense with its mechanics. The skill trees is one of the most blatant examples of the game being weird. It has 3 skill trees, but if it was your first time playing the game, you would not know how to even switch which skill trees you wanted to level up because you are not told how to unless you see a prompt on screen that says something like "Press Tab To Switch Skill Trees" and I think it was "Select" on the PS3 and this could only be done in game and switching skills trees really didn't do anything since all you were doing is choosing what unlocks you get, not how you want to play. Then there was the concept of stealth in the game which you do get silenced pistols, however, pretty much every heist with the exception of one, maybe two, none of the heists can not be completed by using stealth. The skill trees also are okay, you do feel like you are progressing and getting better as most of the unlocks are buffs to something like increased accuracy to one weapon and stuff like that, and the only unlocks that weren't those were weapons and gadgets like ammo bags and doctor bags as well as stuff to add on your guns, but each gun didn't have many different stuff to unlock, like the default assault rifle has only one unlockable scope and the same goes for the only marksman rifle in the game. Another weird thing were the cameras as they did nothing, they do serve a gameplay purpose, but if you were thinking that stepping in the line of sight of one of them was going to get you caught then you are sadly mistaking.
That's not to say that the game is terrible, this game is really good. For one, I do like the mission varieties as it is not just robbing banks. There's only 6 missions in the game, 2 DLC ones, and one PC exclusive mission, if you were to have all of them, you would have 9 missions in total. First World Bank is your standard bank heist level where you go in a bank and steal the cash that is in the vault and then you escape by blowing up a wall and going through another building and into a parking garage. Heat Street has you chasing after a guy who has double-crossed your team by stealing some plates so you must gun your way through the streets to him, capture him, and extract him out of the streets. Panic Room has you go to a drug deal at a run down apartment complex and steal a panic room. Green Bridge has your team intercepting a prisoner convoy by blowing up part of a bridge, finding a certain prisoner and having him extracted. Diamond Heist has you infiltrating a privately owned skyscraper and stealing numerous jewels from the vault and outside the vault in the main areas. The last heist being Slaughter House where you have to intercept a convoy and steal the gold that they were carrying.
Should you happen to also buy the Wolfpack DLC, you will get access to two more heists those being Counterfeit and Undercover. Counterfeit has you going to a suburban housing area and impersonating as a pool repair crew and you have to steal some money plates that have been used to make counterfeit money. Undercover has you abducting an IRS agent and having him having him hack and transfer $25 mil to your team and you have to use violence to keep him hacking, or at least that is what I heard. I do not have the Wolfpack DLC and I'm just going by the Payday wiki description. Should you also get the PC version, you'll get the No Mercy heist. If No Mercy sounds familiar to you, it should as it is a heist based off the first Left 4 Dead campaign, aka No Mercy. In the No Mercy heist, your crew needs to find, who I can only assume is Patient Zero of the Left 4 Dead series and extract his blood samples which has the Green Flu in them. I have not played this heist yet so I can't say much on it even though I now do own the PC version, I just never got around to it because I've been playing other games I got during the sale, namely Payday 2, but apparently the cameras do act differently in this level as they will raise the alarm if you do not shoot them out in time.
As for the rather you should get the Wolfpack DLC, if you can play Payday 2 on your rig and you only want to play the heists, then I say skip it since the heists are available on Payday 2 in its very own Wolfpack DLC, it's also cheaper on Payday 2. If you would rather play them with the original Payday mechanics and stuff or if you can't run Payday 2 then yeah you could go for it. If it's for the weapons, maybe, but I would personally still say no.
Now the one thing I'm thankful about is that there is enemy variety in this game so you're not just going to be having just regular police enemies. You'll have regular guards, SWATS, Snipers, Shields, and Tasers who you can all guess what they do. There's the FBI who will run into areas and try to sneak out hostages, Cloakers who are fast and can instantly put you in DBNO, and Bulldozers who wear heavy arm and carry LMGs. Personally the only one I disliked are the Taser enemies, they're sneaky and if they get you, you're just going to be left standing and you'll start shooting wildly and you'll need to wait for someone to kill the taser and if they take too long then you're instantly going to be put down.
As for civilians and hostages, all I'm going to say is that I hate them. They can easily be taken away from you, but the most aggravating part is their AI. I can not say how many of them I accidentally killed. I'll be across the street on Heat Street, shooting at enemies on the other side, and a civilian will just run straight into them. I even had times where they would be in front of me and duck down, and then for no reason they'll start darting right towards my gun and die. It's not like the enemy or team mate AI are even better as well. Enemies will stand right in the open sometimes, charge right towards you, or just even derp around. Team mate AI on the other hand, that's a different story, I mean they are useful for killing enemies and soaking up damage like it is no one's business, but that's it, they can't do anything else except for getting right in front of my gunfire causing me to shoot them by accident.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the waiting. You'll be waiting for many things to get done in the game. Thankfully for a lot of it, you'll know how long you'll need to wait, but it will take a long while for stuff to get finished and you'll need to restart items if they break down. The only difference is something like fire, where you don't know how long it will take.
As for the cameras mentioned before, well they only appear in a select few levels and their only purpose is that if you destroy them you make it hard for the police AI to know what to do, or at least that is what the game tells you. They still act very aggressive and according to the Payday wiki again, destroying cameras causes something to happen in the level and it depends on what level it is, what they are I don't know. As for the Stealth, it's only really possible to do stealth in one mission, Diamond Heist, and from what I heard it is possible to do stealth on Counterfeit and No Mercy.
Now it sounds like I have nothing, but negative stuff to say about this game, but I do have some positives. The core game itself is fun, especially on coop. The guns sound are good enough to make me feel like I am really firing a gun. Pretty much all the heists are really fun, my personal favorite being the Diamond Heist level. The game does have a solid amount of enemy variety so it doesn't feel like I'm just fighting against just one or two types of enemies each time. It definitely does have some challenge to it as you do need to maintain hostages should you or a team mate go into custody, and it definitely does have some intense fire fights in it.
Honestly, I can look past its many flaws that it has. If I had to pick out the only real complaint I had with the game that annoys me, it's honestly all the waiting for stuff to get done as it does drag on for a long while. I can understand it is to be as real as it can and to not make matches really short, but it can be really overdone at some points especially when your equipment breaks down so many times. However again, I can understand why they would do that. Other than that, I really enjoyed this game for what it was and it was better than I expected to be since I first heard about it.
Now I love cooperative shooters, I love Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, but for some reason I sort of prefer the Payday games more than the Left 4 Dead games, but I do love both series. Now I just want to mention, this is just going to be all about the first Payday, I want to save time for another one of these just for Payday 2 since Payday 2 is much larger than The Heist. Now I remember back before The Heist was released, I was excited for it because I always wanted a game where your goal was just to rob places and Payday: The Heist was one of those games that excelled my expectations, but it wasn't without it's few bumps and flaws.
My first issue isn't really with the game, but back when I first played this game on PSN, the download for this game was one of the worst experiences I had with downloading. I had the game fail on me twice while downloading, one of times it was near done and failed while I was sleeping and in total I took me about a day of downloading just to play it.
Going back to this game, I remember how weird this game was. It was weird back then and it is weird now. I don't mean weird in the sense like crazy stuff happens, more like weird in that game didn't make a whole lot of sense with its mechanics. The skill trees is one of the most blatant examples of the game being weird. It has 3 skill trees, but if it was your first time playing the game, you would not know how to even switch which skill trees you wanted to level up because you are not told how to unless you see a prompt on screen that says something like "Press Tab To Switch Skill Trees" and I think it was "Select" on the PS3 and this could only be done in game and switching skills trees really didn't do anything since all you were doing is choosing what unlocks you get, not how you want to play. Then there was the concept of stealth in the game which you do get silenced pistols, however, pretty much every heist with the exception of one, maybe two, none of the heists can not be completed by using stealth. The skill trees also are okay, you do feel like you are progressing and getting better as most of the unlocks are buffs to something like increased accuracy to one weapon and stuff like that, and the only unlocks that weren't those were weapons and gadgets like ammo bags and doctor bags as well as stuff to add on your guns, but each gun didn't have many different stuff to unlock, like the default assault rifle has only one unlockable scope and the same goes for the only marksman rifle in the game. Another weird thing were the cameras as they did nothing, they do serve a gameplay purpose, but if you were thinking that stepping in the line of sight of one of them was going to get you caught then you are sadly mistaking.
That's not to say that the game is terrible, this game is really good. For one, I do like the mission varieties as it is not just robbing banks. There's only 6 missions in the game, 2 DLC ones, and one PC exclusive mission, if you were to have all of them, you would have 9 missions in total. First World Bank is your standard bank heist level where you go in a bank and steal the cash that is in the vault and then you escape by blowing up a wall and going through another building and into a parking garage. Heat Street has you chasing after a guy who has double-crossed your team by stealing some plates so you must gun your way through the streets to him, capture him, and extract him out of the streets. Panic Room has you go to a drug deal at a run down apartment complex and steal a panic room. Green Bridge has your team intercepting a prisoner convoy by blowing up part of a bridge, finding a certain prisoner and having him extracted. Diamond Heist has you infiltrating a privately owned skyscraper and stealing numerous jewels from the vault and outside the vault in the main areas. The last heist being Slaughter House where you have to intercept a convoy and steal the gold that they were carrying.
Should you happen to also buy the Wolfpack DLC, you will get access to two more heists those being Counterfeit and Undercover. Counterfeit has you going to a suburban housing area and impersonating as a pool repair crew and you have to steal some money plates that have been used to make counterfeit money. Undercover has you abducting an IRS agent and having him having him hack and transfer $25 mil to your team and you have to use violence to keep him hacking, or at least that is what I heard. I do not have the Wolfpack DLC and I'm just going by the Payday wiki description. Should you also get the PC version, you'll get the No Mercy heist. If No Mercy sounds familiar to you, it should as it is a heist based off the first Left 4 Dead campaign, aka No Mercy. In the No Mercy heist, your crew needs to find, who I can only assume is Patient Zero of the Left 4 Dead series and extract his blood samples which has the Green Flu in them. I have not played this heist yet so I can't say much on it even though I now do own the PC version, I just never got around to it because I've been playing other games I got during the sale, namely Payday 2, but apparently the cameras do act differently in this level as they will raise the alarm if you do not shoot them out in time.
As for the rather you should get the Wolfpack DLC, if you can play Payday 2 on your rig and you only want to play the heists, then I say skip it since the heists are available on Payday 2 in its very own Wolfpack DLC, it's also cheaper on Payday 2. If you would rather play them with the original Payday mechanics and stuff or if you can't run Payday 2 then yeah you could go for it. If it's for the weapons, maybe, but I would personally still say no.
Now the one thing I'm thankful about is that there is enemy variety in this game so you're not just going to be having just regular police enemies. You'll have regular guards, SWATS, Snipers, Shields, and Tasers who you can all guess what they do. There's the FBI who will run into areas and try to sneak out hostages, Cloakers who are fast and can instantly put you in DBNO, and Bulldozers who wear heavy arm and carry LMGs. Personally the only one I disliked are the Taser enemies, they're sneaky and if they get you, you're just going to be left standing and you'll start shooting wildly and you'll need to wait for someone to kill the taser and if they take too long then you're instantly going to be put down.
As for civilians and hostages, all I'm going to say is that I hate them. They can easily be taken away from you, but the most aggravating part is their AI. I can not say how many of them I accidentally killed. I'll be across the street on Heat Street, shooting at enemies on the other side, and a civilian will just run straight into them. I even had times where they would be in front of me and duck down, and then for no reason they'll start darting right towards my gun and die. It's not like the enemy or team mate AI are even better as well. Enemies will stand right in the open sometimes, charge right towards you, or just even derp around. Team mate AI on the other hand, that's a different story, I mean they are useful for killing enemies and soaking up damage like it is no one's business, but that's it, they can't do anything else except for getting right in front of my gunfire causing me to shoot them by accident.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the waiting. You'll be waiting for many things to get done in the game. Thankfully for a lot of it, you'll know how long you'll need to wait, but it will take a long while for stuff to get finished and you'll need to restart items if they break down. The only difference is something like fire, where you don't know how long it will take.
As for the cameras mentioned before, well they only appear in a select few levels and their only purpose is that if you destroy them you make it hard for the police AI to know what to do, or at least that is what the game tells you. They still act very aggressive and according to the Payday wiki again, destroying cameras causes something to happen in the level and it depends on what level it is, what they are I don't know. As for the Stealth, it's only really possible to do stealth in one mission, Diamond Heist, and from what I heard it is possible to do stealth on Counterfeit and No Mercy.
Now it sounds like I have nothing, but negative stuff to say about this game, but I do have some positives. The core game itself is fun, especially on coop. The guns sound are good enough to make me feel like I am really firing a gun. Pretty much all the heists are really fun, my personal favorite being the Diamond Heist level. The game does have a solid amount of enemy variety so it doesn't feel like I'm just fighting against just one or two types of enemies each time. It definitely does have some challenge to it as you do need to maintain hostages should you or a team mate go into custody, and it definitely does have some intense fire fights in it.
Honestly, I can look past its many flaws that it has. If I had to pick out the only real complaint I had with the game that annoys me, it's honestly all the waiting for stuff to get done as it does drag on for a long while. I can understand it is to be as real as it can and to not make matches really short, but it can be really overdone at some points especially when your equipment breaks down so many times. However again, I can understand why they would do that. Other than that, I really enjoyed this game for what it was and it was better than I expected to be since I first heard about it.