
While you can play it by yourself, the game is clearly designed to be played with a coordinated group of other players. Unfortunately, the biggest issue in Payday 2 is more a fault of the system than the game itself. When things do go wrong and the cops are called in, the gunplay is solid, albeit a little on the loose side as some guns don’t feel quite as accurate as they should without investing heavily in particular perks or gun upgrades. The difference between opening a safe with C4 or a drill is where on the safe you are aiming when you press that button, and seeing how either action has radically different consequences, and this can sometimes to lead to annoying mistakes. From a gameplay perspective, however, the only real issue is that many of these actions are performed by the same button which can sometimes be frustrating. Your particular load-out might limit your options as certain actions require specific skills or equipment, but these factors are all worth considering as they might impact how you choose to approach the objective. There are civilians that can be taken hostage, computer systems to hack, locks to pick, safes to drill, cameras to disable, bags of stolen goods to carry, and much, much more. Once you actually boot up a heist, the core mechanics will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played a console FPS in the last 20 years beyond the usual running and gunning, however, there are plenty of unique gameplay ideas. What’s especially nice is how the game allows for 15 preset load-outs, meaning that if you are prepping for a new mission and you want to change from your heavily armored, machine-gun toting juggernaut to a business suit with small, easily concealed weapons you don’t need to do a bunch of annoying menu diving.
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While higher end skills in each tree require significant skill point investments, you are free to spread them around as you see fit, thus giving you the option to specialize in a few key areas or create a character who can do a little bit of everything. Skills are divided into a wide variety of trees that reinforce certain gameplay styles one set of skills might help improve accuracy with certain weapons while another grants abilities like lock-picking.

Money lets you purchase new guns, armor, gadgets, and other equipment while experience goes into leveling up, which expands your shopping choices and grants skill points. What allows for this diverse approach to gameplay is Payday 2’s surprisingly diverse progression system.Īs was mentioned earlier, successful heists reward money and experience that you funnel into your character for customization. Going in guns blazing and engaging in a protracted gun fight as you slowly load up bags of gold is as fun as it is intense, but there is also a certain satisfaction you get when you sneak into the back of a jewelry store, steal a priceless tiara, and then escape without raising an alarm. While some levels demand stealth or calculated precision at the risk of failure, most are very flexible as they adapt to how well you execute your preferred strategy. Much of the game’s diversity comes in how it allows you to approach most missions in a number of ways. The variety is further enhanced thanks to a large selection of difficulty levels that introduce more and tougher varieties of enemies in addition to even more challenging obstacles like tougher safes or more surveillance cameras. Also, while there are literally dozens of missions, the game further helps alleviate repetition in many missions by changing up the locations of key items or the types of obstacles you might encounter. Naturally, the more complex the job, the bigger the reward but they also require much larger time commitments. These missions present a variety of different types of heists ranging from simple hold-ups to complex, multiple level affairs spread out over numerous days.
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Rather than presenting a linear story to experience or an open-world to explore, Payday 2 presents an ever-changing selection of heists to partake in as you earn the money and experience needed to upgrade your skills and outfit your character with better weapons and gear. The game itself is pretty much a proven quantity at this point, having earned millions of fans across numerous platforms, so the only question is how well the action translates to Switch.

For anyone who idolizes the crooks in movies like Heat or Reservoir Dogs, Payday 2 presents an interesting opportunity to delve into their own criminal nature without risking flying bullets and years of incarceration.

Hollywood has always romanticized the idea of the heist: a group of expert criminals coming together to pull off complex, daring robberies worth millions of dollars.
