Payday: The Heist

I recently gifted a friend a copy of Worms: Ultimate Mayhem on Steam, and was kindly gifted a copy of Payday: The Heist in return.

Payday: The Heist is about just that, pulling off heists and raking in the cash. From stealing valuable diamonds to robbing banks, Payday has a few missions to get you off to a great start in your life of crime. I say a few missions because Payday only has six missions, until they add in the obligatory DLC missions of course.

Payday's first mission is a bank robbery. The mission starts out with you walking calmly into the bank and finding the bank manager. Then you put on your mask, tell him what you think of his ugly suit and take his key so you can get into the server room. In the server room an "insider" has left you a cache, including two containers of thermite, to be used to melt a hole in the roof of the bank vault, and a drill to drill out the lock and make your way into the inner workings of the bank to the room above the vault. You must then use the drill to actually drill out the lock, periodically restarting it as it tends to jam rather often, and you do all this while shooting out cameras along the way and putting many hard working innocent civilians, bank guards, and police officers into body bags.

The police show up about a minute after you arrive, followed by a S.W.A.T. assault team a minute or so after that. When I say police, I don't mean like four squad cars pull up and start talking you down. I mean literally the entire police force of whatever major city you're robbing the bank in shows up to turn you into something resembling Swiss cheese. They constantly press inwards into the bank, looking for civilians to save, in addition to looking to put a bullet in your ass that is.

Every once in a while, an "Assault" will start, and pretty much every police officer that has spawned drops what they're doing, clearing rooms, looking for civvies to save, etc. and they all head to essentially anywhere you were most recently seen en-masse in an attempt to get vengeance for their other fallen police brethren, and your job is to literally gun down enough of them that they back off and give you room to work on whatever your objective is.

This all sounds like some kind of horrible tragedy waiting to happen. Next thing you know somebody will try to rob a bank, and the media and the poor mother of whatever stupid SOB tried to rob said bank, will be publicly outing video games again, Payday the center of attention because "he figured all he had to do was get a mask and a gun like in the game," and blah blah blah. I'd just like to preemptively go ahead and tell said mother and the media that they're stupid and full of crap. First of all, robbing banks and killing cops isn't something that gaming is doing as a first. Your kids have been doing it since you bought them a toy gun (or didn't, and they resorted to the classic finger gun,) and they started playing cops and robbers as children. It's also been the main point in countless films. I'd just like to say this before it happens: gaming is not at fault. Media as a whole and bad parenting are. Moving right along though...

In Payday, you play as one of four characters, and complete missions for money. The game is pretty much the bank robbing version of Left 4 Dead.

First of all, it's much more fun playing with other people, as you might expect given that it's a co-op based game.

Second of all, it's got the same "downed, bleeding out" system that we've all entered a love/hate relationship with in co-op FPS games lately, that mode where you lie on the floor and shoot everything in sight with the last of your pistol ammo hoping someone helps you to your feet, which somehow makes you all better again.

Third, there are "special" police officers. There's a guy with a riot shield that makes him invlunerable to frontal assault, there's a "Bulldozer" a guy in super-heavy armor that can only be killed via multiple headshots, and there's a guy with heavy armor and a tazer who must have been what the smoker evolved from. He pretty much shoots you once with the tazer and you're stuck getting tazed until you either pass out or someone shoots him.

Fourth it's got that end game "safe room" kind of deal going on. You know, that room one guy stands in while the other two go back for the derpy friend of yours who always gets killed on the way in, and shuts the door and literally leaves the others for dead? Yeah that room! Only there's no door on it for you to close to keep the tank from making you his bitch.

Fifth, the game seems to have a "director" similar to Left 4 Dead, in that when you're doing really well it spices up the amount of enemies it throws at you, or it really seems to anyways.

Finally, the game has that same rage inducing AI from Left 4 Dead. That AI that refuses to pick you up, or go a certain path because it just doesn't know how, and sits around being useless half the time, and the other half of the time is busy cheating and reviving you through walls, or halfway across the level, or while defending itself.


In Payday as you hit milestones you'll gain level ups. At any time before you level up you can press the Tab key to view what reward you'll receive in one of three classes, Assault, Sharpshooter, and Support, then you can choose which class you'd like to level up by pressing the corresponding labeled number key (1,2,3 respectively.) For example, if you and your team find that you're dying far too often and can't complete the mission, you can level your characters up in the support class and gain access to a "Medic Bag" which you can drop whenever you want and let your team heal up.

The unfortunate downside to Payday's leveling system is that you only get money (experience) for completing objectives, or if you do get money from killing, it's rather negligible. This encourages you to play it safe and complete the easy missions, or pretty much never play with other people who you think might slow you down. That and the fact that you only start with a pistol and the basic assault rifle, neither of which are exactly the most exciting weapons in the game, really makes leveling up feel like a chore. It's not like "Yes! I got a new gun!" either, it's like, great, now I got  a new gun that unlocked on the way to getting the weapons I actually wanted...

Overall, the game is still rather fun, as you get to experience the thrill of the heist first hand, and the missions have a fair amount of replayability, thanks to the Left 4 Dead style director. One thing that would be especially nice for them to add in would be what Left 4 Dead has that unfortunately Payday doesn't, which is Vs. mode, where people get to play on the cops' side and try to stop you. Some serious balance adjustments would be required, but it would be a nice touch to take this game from fun to an instant classic.

One good thing that can't be disputed about Payday is it's price. The game costs $19.99 ($15.00 on consoles so I hear.) Not a bad price to pay for six missions. Left 4 Dead had what, four missions with four levels in each as a full priced game? Payday has 6 compared to 16 at a third of the cost. Sounds like smart buying to me, assuming you can get into the whole bank robbery thing.