Payday 2 Review: Law Enforcement Genocide with Friends

The four of us slipped on our clown masks like we were reenacting the opening scene of The Dark Knight, and climbed the stairs to the bank's roof. A small door stood open. Being a novice bank robber, I hastened towards the door—right under the watchful lens of a security camera. The alarm buzzed and police would arrive soon. We went in to take the bank by force. 

A few gunned down security personnel later, I set the thermal drill up to the bank vault while my companions took hostages. What followed was a flurry of police assaults with smoke grenades and hostage extractions galore. By the time the bank vault cracked open and we nabbed the money, we had gunned down dozens of police officers—enough to populate an entire police force.

This was my first game in Payday 2, a team-based first person shooter and sequel to 2011's Payday: The Heist.  You can probably tell realism isn't something developer Overkill Software based all their game mechanics off of. Sneaking into banks, jewelry stores, and night clubs may give the illusion of a realistic robbery, but once the cops show up and guns start blazing, the sheer amount of police killed by four masked robbers turns the game from heist simulator into a pure cooperative shooter, something akin to Killing Floor and Left 4 Dead. Sans zombies, of course. 

 If you're new to the Payday franchise, you might be surprised to find no single player to speak of. The loose narrative surrounding the game serves as an excuse for you and your friends to stage heists, but the lack of a tale isn't missed with such a heavy focus on multiplayer. And when I say multiplayer, I do mean you'll need some friends to get the most out of the game. Payday 2 doesn't scale difficulty for those of us with only one or two friends, so four players is a must for most robberies. 

 Because the AI companions serve as nothing more than bullet sponges, it becomes necessary to have a few friends or to brave the game's online matchmaking service, Crime.net. Crime.net links you to dozens of heists of various difficulties. Some of these heists function as rooms to set up on your own parameters, and others have people waiting for players to join. Payday 2 doesn't appear to factor in player level, skill, or reputation into matchmaking, and this can cause some issues when you hop into a game with hardcore series fans twenty levels higher than you, or novices who don't understand Payday 2 requires cooperation for success. 

Payday 2 features a handful of different levels, difficulties, and scenarios for robberies, most interesting in their own right. I enjoyed the standard bank heist and cocaine smuggling missions more than robbing a night club or a jewelry store, for example. It would have been nice for Overkill to include more levels, but the developer makes up for it through randomization. Not only is each level randomized, with guards, cameras, and doors placed in different locations, but each level also reacts to how well you play. It will be a while before fans figure out how each event is triggered by what action, but from what I could tell the better you play the more likely something will go wrong. In most cases, this means drilling through another layer of security or waiting longer for your getaway vehicle as dozens of police try to take you into custody. 

 In fact, it seems the core gameplay in Payday 2 revolves around waiting and shooting wave after wave of police. Often shootouts feel bland because the police will overwhelm you with sheer numbers rather than intuitive AI. Fortunately, each mission ends with a cash reward to spend on new skills and weapons, so there's a lot of equipment and abilities to unlock which make committing crime and law enforcement genocide more enjoyable. With four classes to spend skill points in, finding the right build for you and testing it out on waves of coppers will draw you back for just one more heist.

 When I played with one or more people, the planning and dialogue needed to pull of a successful heist made Payday 2 shine. The depth that comes from teamwork overrode my grievances with the game's AI, difficulty level, and matchmaking system. With so few friends to play with during the pre-release days, I couldn't see myself bothering with unlocking all the masks, guns, and skills; however, I'd get far more into it if I had a consistent friend group to play with. So, if you've got a group of friends and you're all looking for a cooperative game to play, Payday 2 is right up your alley.

Final Verdict

7 out of 10

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.