Pros:
+ A full-fledged roguelite story mode revolving around taking over the Miami-inspired city, offering turf war elimination matches, heists to finance our criminal empire, and some occasional scripted story missions. The available opportunities (and muscles to hire) slightly differ with each playthrough, offering a slightly different experience for each run, even though the roguelite gameplay basics remain the same. During each run, our protagonist gains XP, unlocking new skills with each level up, making subsequent runs slightly easier to progress through by buffing our protagonist, our gang’s cash flow and general strength, or the quality of equipment and muscle we can buy.
+ The two co-op modes are also serviceable, with Quick Play being similar to the Crime.NET screen of PAYDAY2 (offering the same heists we encounter in Story Mode in a standalone fashion), while Urban Legends being more akin to the multi-day heists of PAYDAY2 and the grand heists of GTA Online, each spanning three levels.
+ Some minor gameplay enhancements compared to PAYDAY2. For example, we can temporarily speed up the speed of our drills, or can unlock doors via dedicated minigames. We can also carry up to two loot bags at the same time, although in that case, we are restricted to our sidearm.
+ The visuals are okay, the city really conveys that 90s Florida setting pretty well.
+ All-around performance is also acceptable. I’m running the game on a rig with a i7-4790 CPU, a GTX 1070 VGA and 32 gigs of RAM, on a 2560×1080 ultrawide resolution, with the High detail preset. With this setting, I only experience some occasional hiccups during larger battles.
+ AI companions are serviceable, being able to loot the goodies independently, pick up dropped loot bags, or deliver them to the escape van on their own. We can also order them to follow us or stay put, and can seamlessly switch into them whenever needed. Granted, if we want to stealth, they may not be reliable, but they serve the single player campaign well enough.
+ All-around stealth is easier than it is in PAYDAY2. We have an unlimited amount of zipties and bodybags available, while guards don’t wear pagers, so as long we can divert/separate them from other NPCs, it’s easy to dominate and tie them up without trouble. We can also move tied NPCs around.
Cons:
– Writing and voice acting is horrendous. Chuck Norris’ performance is probably the worst VA I’ve ever heard in a video game. Michael Madsen at least tries putting in a performance, but in his case, it’s really off-putting to hear a 35-40 years old protagonist talking with the voice of a 65 years old guy. The game also doesn’t have separate stealth and loud voice lines, meaning that you dominate guards by shouting at them (undetected) even when in stealth.
– Gunplay is serviceable, but could be a lot better. You can’t really “feel” any of the guns, and most of them feature really annoying bloom – it’s hard to land shots even with semi-automatic pistols and rifles.
– Lone wolfs might be bothered by the fact that even though you can play the Quick Play and Urban Legends heists solo with bots, you cannot create private lobbies. As such, if you don’t fill the slots with bots, others can easily join in. Also, as I understand, the co-op game modes don’t have any special rewards, you can only unlock the higher-level characters in them for story play.
– Customization is only rudimentary, with each character being able to wield a two-handed weapon, a sidearm, and a special gadget (e.g. a number of throwable rocks or bricks).
– Map variety is also not the game’s forte, as all three game modes seemingly sharing the same combat map pool of roughly ~two dozen levels, with some minor randomization during each run (affecting guard patrols and camera placement). This, however, could change in the future.
Summary:
TL;DR, I like the game, and I think it worth the discounted AA price it cost during the preorder campaign, but it can certainly use some additional polish, a redesign of the rudimentary customization features, and extra robbery/heist maps. Still, if you are looking for a primarily single-player PAYDAY experience set in an over-the-top 1990s setting, you can definitely take a look at the game. 🙂
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