• PS3

by Arcee on 10.23.11

Stop me if you heard this one; four bank robbers walk into the bank and all hell breaks loose… What’s that? You have heard this one? Oh, it reminds you of the bank heist scene from the movie Heat? Well, yeah, I think that is the point. At least that is what it seems like as you play Payday: The Heist from Overkill Software and Sony Online Entertainment. I could almost hear Al Pacino and Val Kilmer barking out orders as I played through most of the game. Someone over at Overkill must have seen Heat one too many times to think up this game. Then again, I have said for years that the bank heist scene from that film would make one hell of an incredible game. Guess I wasn’t the only one, huh?

Forget where the inspiration for the concept came from, I don’t think Payday would have been possible had Valve not developed Left 4 Dead and the gameplay for that game a couple of years ago. The similarities in mechanics and strategy are way too much alike to ignore. Basically, cooperation is the key. Whether you are playing online, as this game is meant to be played, or by yourself in the single player version of Payday, you must work with your fellow robbers to accomplish your mission. Should you try to play lone gunman in this game, trust me, you will fail. The amount of enemies that rush you, and the various types that are there to stop you, are too much for any one player to handle alone. 

Having said that, trying to find competent players online who are capable of following orders or cooperating with a team is a fucking nightmare. On more than one occasion, I happened to be put on teams who couldn’t follow a hold command for their lives. Time after time, I got stuck with teammates who would constantly go out there on their own and get themselves shot down or arrested, putting the whole mission in danger. This is not Overkill’s fault - I am just warning you of what you will find out there. Left 4 Dead veterans are certainly familiar with this problem. 

Now, there are problems that a player could squarely lay on Overkill’s shoulders. The main one killing me is one that many of you who know me are keenly aware I put above all other points - story. While I get that you are a team of robbers looking for the next big score, my question is why. What motivates these guys? As it is, you are just put into the role of one of four of these guys and go and follow orders to accomplish the mission. This is all well and good, but I think we need more than just this as a story. Some kind of cohesive storyline or content would have been welcome and would have included a more personal dynamic to the game. I mean, come on, even fighting games have storylines. Most of them suck, but at least you get a story. Not adding a story to Payday just seems lazy to me. I mean, what brought Wolf, Hoxton, Chains and Dallas together? Answer me that one question and I would have been happy. Instead, you are just told to go and do like some mindless soldier. 

Speaking of characters - I really don’t think you could consider the four robbers characters as they are more like four different accented avatars. There is nothing that really separates each one from another. You can ultimately change small facets of how each robber plays when you customize their weapons and secondary items - but if you are looking for something deeper in each one - sorry, not in this game. 

Another issue I have with Payday is the excitement level of the game. Once the mission starts, that’s it, you are in a constant fight to complete the heist by accomplishing all the little details required to move on and there is no sense of pacing once the gunshots start. For the first couple of missions, it is pretty fun. However, after you get the hang of the game, the excitement wears off and it simply becomes more of the same. Mission start, fight, complete objective, fight, objective, fight, objective, fight, escape. Personally, this all sounds too formulaic and simple. It wouldn’t be so bad if different missions offered varying degrees of the formula but sadly they don’t. They all follow the same patern and this ultimately hurts the game. 

Still, for the marks that it does miss, it manages to hit the bullseye in others. The main one being that if you manage to fall in with a good team, Payday is one hell of a fun game. Negative points aside, I had a lot of fun shooting it out with wave after wave of cops. Trying to come up with a good stragedy with the others is what makes this game shine. Reliving the best part of Heat and using the Clown mask motif from The Dark Knight is something that a lot of people have always wanted to do - hopefully not in real life - and Payday gives some of us a chance to experience that scenario from the safety of our couches. I just wish that maybe a little more polish would have been added to the game. It is always the small things that developers miss that cheapens the feeling of a game, and Payday: The Heist suffers from this. A little story here, some variation there and this game should have been a gamer’s dream come true. I mean, just based on the concept of the game alone, Payday: The Heist should be on everyone’s top games list. Itstead, it falls just short of being memorable and simply becomes an average but fun shooter for at least of couple of hours.

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