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Payday 2

Payday 2

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There aren't any games better suited to making you feel like a character in the film Heat than the original Payday. Overkill Software obviously felt the same way, and that's why during my hands-on time with that game's sequel, I'm playing as a character named after the notorious Waingro. It's not just the film's characters that provided inspiration, there's several moments in Payday 2 which pull on the same strings as Michael Mann's classic heist movie, but I'll get to that later.

Payday 2 is hybrid of so many different things. First and foremost it's a heist game. It's also an FPS. There's strategy elements in there too, and now there's a hefty dollop of RPG. In whisking together all of these different ingredients, Overkill are hoping to create a game that stands alone in the modern marketplace. Payday 2 is (hopefully going to be) that heist game you've always wanted to play, but has never been available to you.

It's worth noting that the first game had all of these elements in some form or another, but despite their inclusion, ultimately the heists just descended into wave-based killfests. It had more in common with Valve's Left 4 Dead than Heat; objectives, skills and tactics were all there, but there often wasn't a lot of choice presented to the player.

Payday 2
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The sequel looks to be a considerable refinement of the ideas put forward in the original. The razor sharp difficulty is still there, the team-focussed shooting is there, the waves of assaulting law enforcement officers are still there, but there's a few inclusions that change things up, and should give fans of the original reason to be optimistic.

They are not even new inclusions, rather they're refocussed ideas. Role-playing elements and customisation options were there, tucked away in the first game, but here they take centre stage. There's four different classses, each one supporting a different play style. There's a huge selection of weapons to tinker with and modify. And the masks, they warrant a paragraph all of their own.

In Payday 2 the player will be given a lot more choice in how they shape and mould their character. If they want to be stealthy, there's now a skill tree for that (called Ghost), and it's brimming with perks and buffs that'll allow players to focus the way that they're playing down a particular path. Stealth options are the new addition, but there's three other classes for players to specialise in; Technician (gadgets and tech), Mastermind (charisma and crowd control), and Enforcer (big guns) are all available straight out the box.

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Another key element of Payday 2 comes in the form of the randomly generated content. There's 30 different levels in the game, and they'll be revisited by players. When they do return to familiar haunts things will be swapped around to ensure that every experience is unique. How different repeated levels will feel when a bank vault and security cameras have only been moved around remains to be seen, but at the very least it'll keep players alert when casing out their next heist.

If a score goes ugly, and there's plenty of bloodshed, you may well be thrown into an Escape Mission. There's six in all, and they're dynamic. A clean getaway will likely have little comeback, but should it all go horribly wrong you may get an additional level where you have to find an alternative mode of transport. I was part of a messy art heist, and although we managed to escape, enough police were involved that an Escape Mission was initiated. We were chased down and the mission started with us leaving our van in order to get to the roof of a nearby building for a helicopter extraction.

We got hands on with four very different missions (and there were a couple of restarts thrown in for good measure). The robbery on the art dealer presented plenty of opportunity for stealth and careful planning, whereas the jewelry heist we tried was much more of the smash and grab variety. We scraped through a bank job, repelling waves of police as we waited for the vault to crack open, and there was the Escape Mission mentioned above. Different jobs can be found on CrimeNet, which is an easy to use city-wide map peppered with different challenges.

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Preparing for the score is now more important. Once the masks are on it's game time, but before then the team can really plan their next moves. As mentioned, we only had time to sample a handful of missions, and when we get the final build we'll get a better idea of just how much planning will ease the overall experience, but there looks to be a considerable improvement from this perspective. Once the planning stage is done, and the masks are on, like before you can tie-up hostages to trade with the law when one of the team gets captured, take out guards, and put your plan into practice. Teamwork is going to be more important than ever, and those not singing from the same sheet will find the experience quickly descends into chaos. Cohesive teams will be rewarded, and there's nothing more satisfying than executing a solid plan to perfection.

Even for well-oiled crews, victory is not assured. The difficulty level that defined Payday: The Heist is still present. We played a mixture of different difficulty settings and some of the harder levels are rock solid. Teams will need to be clearly defined, with either a subtle blend of different skills and everybody fulfilling their role, or teams directed towards a specific play style (for example four players all playing as Enforcers and going in hard and fast). There's also a Safe House where dedicated players will be able to practice their moves in preparation, allowing skills to be honed before taking down the score.

Building up expertise will take time. XP/money will be spent on upgrading skills (there's an impressive 144 to choose from), such as improved use of weapons, handling of gadgetry, and more adept crowd control. We were playing with characters with skills that would take around 100 hours to accumulate, so we could tweak as we wished, but earning your skills from scratch will take time and effort. There's a welcome amount of scope when it comes to customisation and specialisation.

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At the end of each successful mission players will receive loot drops, and that could mean anything from weapon attachments, to new masks. The masks could well be one of the most enjoyable elements of the game. There's thousands of potential combinations, and players will be able to make their own unique headgear and stamp some personality on it. I expect a lot of people will spend a lot of time crafting and tweaking as they come up with their perfect look.

When it works, and four masked robbers emerge from a smashed up store or bank, it looks and feels great. Like the first game (in particular the level Heat Street), there's a lot of love pointed towards Heat. Spinning round as you make an escape to take out some pursuing police officers with your assault rifle provides a nostalgic moment or two in amongst the madness.

Brute force will only get you so far, and perhaps the most enticing element of Payday 2, from my perspective at least, is the introduction of stealth. I talked with the game's director, David Goldfarb, after my hands-on time with the game, and asked him about it: "[Stealth] is something you should aspire to. So when you actually achieve it, when you're able to stealth a bank after 100 hours or whatever, you feel like "I'm a pro now, I know how to do this". And that was something that took me, coming from Battlefield, it was something I struggled with, because I was like: "We're locking people out of this aspect of our game, are we ok with that?" But we're not, we're giving them the idea that it exists, but we're saying it's fucking difficult."

Payday 2

It's definitely not easy, and our attempts at stealth often lasted only a minute or so. Even when cover is blown and it comes down to combat, it's still no walk in the park. "It has a very high skill-cap, so really, really good people are playing on a whole other plain than people who have just started, but that's cool, that's how we want it to be," Goldfarb explained.

"Compared to the first game - which was a very good game, but was sort of one-dimensional when compared to [Payday 2] - it has all these different axis of interesting stuff, so I think we're offering immense replayability, in a way I can't think of in any other games like it. I'm struggling. There are none. For people who want to get the robbery fantasy, who want to be able to really build out their guy, their persona, I just think it's a terrific opportunity for people who want to be criminals, as it were."

Payday 2 is coming out on PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on August 16. We grabbed interview with David Goldfarb at E3, and you can see why he describes it as the Dark Souls of heist games right here.

Payday 2

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