Game Review: Payday The Heist

Hello there my dear thieves!
Today I'll be talking about one very unique shooter game called Payday The Heist. I will NOT talk about Wolf Pack DLC since i do not have it.

A bit about the game and developers.
We all like to daydream about how awesome would it be to rob a bank every now and then. Easy money and not much work to do. Well, Payday The Heist lets you do exactly that.
Payday The Heist is a game published by  Sony Online Entertainment but it was developed by OVERKILL software.

About Gameplay. 
Payday is a game that will look alike Left 4 Dead 2 to every gamer who has ever played it. In Payday you work in a team of 4 people to do your mission. In stead of zombies, your enemies are policemen and swats. There are currently seven different heist, each making you use a different strategy. Sometimes even weapons. In Payday The Heist you level up by completing heists and obtaining money which are actually experience. Leveling up will give you new weapons and modifications. There are three skill trees in Payday, Assault, Support and Sharpshooter. As you gain level, you lever up one of those skills. You may chose which one by pressing tab and then clicking buttons 1, 2 or 3. Assault gives you more ammo, bigger damage and so on and on, while Support gives you shotguns, more crew bonuses and other stuff. I have played 30+ hours of Payday and yet I've never leveled up my sharpshooter skill since i think its kind of pointless to have a sniper in this game. But yea, Sharpshooter skill gives you sniper.

In Payday your main enemies are SWATs. They start attacking you when you get spotted, and they always come in waves. Some waves are long, and others are short. On normal difficulty you usually have about 30 seconds between each wave, while on Overkill difficulty wave's are every 5 or more seconds. So yea, law doesn't allow you to breath in peace... There are several types of swats, from normal swat to a "bulldozer" which is a heavy-armored and heavy-armed swat. They usually come 1-2 in a pack. On Overkill there can even be up to five of them at the same moment. Three special swats are Buldozer, Taser and a Cloaker. Taser uses electricity  to make you unable to move nor aim. After few seconds you fall on the floor, helpless. Cloaker comes to you quietly and then hits you with an electrified stick. You instantly fall on the floor without being able to shoot. FBI agents aren't much of a threat, they just jump in between waves to save hostages.

In case that you get downed in Payday, your team-mates have about 30 seconds to rise you back up. While you are downed you can't move but usually can shoot, so make sure to help your friends by shooting enemy, so they could help you! Though, if you are still being shot at when you are downed, after few bullets you won't even be able to shoot. In case that your friends don't "revive" you in those 30 seconds, you are taken into custody. I am not sure how long are you forced to stay there, but I think its about 2 minutes. After 2 minutes you instantly respawn close to your friends. In case that you shoot civilians, you get a penalty which makes your custody last longer. Of course, after a while an NPC named Bain (who is actually a guy who makes a whole heist plan) is able to make a deal with the law forces. So after few seconds (usually about 30 seconds to a minute) you are able to trade a civilian so your friend could instantly respawn back.

Each Heist is different. In one heist you need to rob world's biggest bank, while on the other mission you need to take a blood example of an infected person. But I'll talk about that in the Story section bellow.

Graphic and Audio
Payday has wonderful graphic, and yet It isn't a heavy game to run. In the option menu i get up to 150 FPS, while in the game itself it's always around 60-70 FPS in the biggest combat. There are great details on pictures, guns, SWATs, your team-mates and anything else. Graphic is really great!  Songs are so freakin addicting that I love to beat heists just to listen to them! As soon as i get few extra € I'm gonna buy the soundtrack DLC hehe.

Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
As I've said earlier, each Heist in Payday requires its own tactic. Each heist also has its own story. In First World Bank you walk into a bank quietly and then take it over. On Heat Street you have been back stabbed by your own friend, so you have to chase him down, set his van on fire and then take him and the money that he stole from you.

Panic Room is a map where you walk into a drug dealer house and try to make a nice deal. While they are trying to make a deal with you, you start to shoot at them and kill them one by one. Your plan was, from the very beginning, to rob their vault. Large, large vault.

On Green Bridge you have to find a guy by searching swat transport cars. Once you do that you need to take him up to the roof and wait for an airplane (yea, AIRPLANE. Not a helicopter!) to pick him up. In my opinion, that is one of funniest things to see in Payday.

Diamond Heist, on the other hand, can be done in hard or easy way. So far I've only managed to do it once in easy way. If you chose hard way, it means that you sneak all over the building to search for alarm boxes. Once you turn three of them down, all you have to do is steal the diamonds. Easy way makes you start the heist and just fight your way to alarm boxes, wait about two to three minutes for them to finish and then take the money.

Slaughter House is a heist on which you make an ambush for SWATs who are driving a money transport with them. You literally push the transportation vehicle into the building, then wait to open the vehicle's doors and then you carry the gold out of the building. This is one hard, yet easy heist.

And last but not least, No Mercy hospital heist. On this heist you go into the No Mercy hospital from Left 4 Dead. Your objective is to get a positive blood sample from an infected victim. As in Diamond Heist you have easy and hard way to do this. Hard way means that you trigger the heist on beginning, grab a teddy bear, set him on sealed doors and then just wait and kill swats. Once the Teddybear has done his work, you need to decide between three other sealed doors. You need to keep unsealing all three until you find the infected guy.
Easy way, though, is easier but requires more skill. Easy way is the Safe approach in which you make sure that all civilians are tied so they can't trigger the alarm, then you get into doctor's clothing and go to the currently unsealed room. There you will be nicely greeted with a sweet Blondie npc who will tell you everything she knows about three unsealed victims. Once you decide which one is the infected, you cut the security line of it so the doors don't get sealed and then you just get the blood and do your best to find the positive samples as fast as you can. During that, there are countless waves of Swat attacks so you better be prepared! Also, this is my favorite heist since L4D is one of my favorite games, hehe.

Do note that there are a lot of secret levels as well! Though, I have never done any of them so I can't tell you anything about them.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Wonderful graphic, yet the game runs incredibly smooth.
- Great audio tracks.
- Various heists that do have random encounters each time you play them.
- Random chance of meeting Bill from L4D in No Mercy hospital.
- Various guns.
- Easy to use skill tree.
- Five different difficulties which make this game even better!
- Fun that keeps on going and going.

Cons:
- I did say that it's very fun, but after a decent amount of runs through the heists, It kind of gets boring.
- Some head shots do not count so you need to make two or three of them.

Final Grade: 9/10

Extra info: Payday is a great game and I recommend it to everyone! I was thinking of making a gameplay of it done by Syphio, Merkava and me, but I didn't know if you guys might like it or not, so I'm gonna let you decide if you want to see it or not.


Thank you, all of you for reading!
Wolfie