Review: PAYDAY 2 | Boss Dungeon

Boss Dungeon's Michael Carey reviews OVERKILL Software's PAYDAY 2, remarking that while the game can be fun, its release seems premature.

[WeAreLegion]

Sadly, I have to agree that the frame rate drops (especially on the console version), the friendly AI is a joke, and the bugs are big problems. Some more testing would have been much better. Still, the game is insanely fun...just like the first one. :) The PC version is more polished, as usual.

I wish we could choose which heists to do and difficulty to play them on in offline mode. :/ I don't always want to be online.

And split-screen would have been cool, too.

The thing is, I can understand why they released it before everything was fixed. Timing has to be perfect. Release it any later and you have GTA V, Arkham Origins, and all the massive next-gen games to worry about. Next year may be too late. Ya know?

[akiraburn]

I'm with you here. While I don't think I can agree with the final score they give here, I feel pretty conflicted about the game, which is something I really did not expect to be saying. I've got a decent amount of time invested in the PC version, and given the rather soured experience I had on PS3 with the original Payday (lots of connection issues preventing my friends from being able to play at all, disappointing framerate issues, and little support for that community compared to what they did for PC players) I haven't even considered touching it on console this time around, so I can't really comment there. But on PC, while Payday 2 is a lot of fun, there are a number of things that should be addressed.

I was a huge fan of the original Payday, and there are some really good improvements here, but also some drawbacks, or things that seemingly haven't been touched, as well as some rather annoying problems they need to sort. For me, I think the biggest concerns are:
- Fix civilian AI (no more running around like chicken with it's head cut off, usually into gunfire
- Getting the original Hoxton back (both Pete Gold for voice actor and character model/description. The new "not-Hoxton" is just bad all around.)
- Implementing cloakers and any other enemies that needed to be held back
- Getting more heists overall (where are the 7 day heists? Or even most of the 4+ day ones?) with more variety (how about night and day variants on some of the existing missions?)
- Smoothing the gameplay while fixing the existing glitches
- Fixing the amount of screen tearing (it is pretty atrocious on PC, even with triple buffering and/or v-sync enabled)

Following those fixes, I think there are still a ton of areas they could be working more on. Improving enemy AI should be a focus, where they help each other up, provide cover fire for heavy units to get in, or just in general don't act quite as predictable. Single-player should be looked at and worked on too. While most people understand that this is primarily a multiplayer focused game, I have a few friends that want to enjoy this playing some single-player (bad/no net connection), but the game hasn't improved at all from the original in this respect. And they need to get more original audio work done. There is still quite a lot of reused dialogue and audio from the first game.

Now, on Thanatos's mention of Patch 2, sadly, this alone has caused me a lot of frustration, as things seem to be generally worse off for my friends and I then when they were pre-patch. Ever since this second attempt at releasing patch 2, I've noticed some of the following problems:
- Many more audio glitches, especially concerning use of the saw (most persist until you completely close the game and restart it)
- During some missions, your escape van doors will now not open, making it possible that the game could not recognize your acquired loot (although as long as it's in the extract zone it seems that it counts in the post-mission review screen)
- Hit or interaction boxes are completely messed up now. They had some problems before, but now they seem to be far worse. This includes everything from marking special enemies (very important since I went Mastermind and have the bonus damage perk), through reviving people, and general attacks of any sort.
- Many connection issues with other players, leading to frequent player disconnects

[akiraburn]

...sorry, the comment limit cut me off.

Anyway, despite these issues, the game is a ton of fun with friends. I've been anxiously awaiting this release and even through the problems we're all still having a lot of fun with it. And Patch 2 did address a big concern for me and other players concerning the previous inability to see or respond to text chat if using a controller. Prior to the patch, keyboards were completely disabled if you were using a controller and the text boxes were absent until getting into a heist. So this is mostly fixed, which helps a lot.

Overall, I just think they should have delayed the game, however, just as you mentioned there is a reason they didn't. I would wager that they probably felt that with two new consoles on the horizon and many blockbuster game releases coming in the fall months, they were concerned that Payday 2 would have been overlooked and underperformed sales-wise, which is why they pushed it out. But sadly, this puts their hardcore fans in a frustrating position. I feel more like I'm still a beta tester right now for what will eventually be a really great game. And for a game that we payed for, which many helped beta test as well, that's not how you want to treat your fans.

Anyway, sorry for the huge two-part reply, but this is my mostly complete thoughts on the current state of the game. You brought up some very fair points and they mirror much of my own. I'll probably end up posting something about this on the Payday forums on Steam in hopes that it helps the developers in some way, since it seems Overkill doesn't have their own forum.

[ThanatosDMC]

PC version is 9/10. Damn good. Damn fun. Patch 2 is just horrible though even though they reverted it back. The second attempt at Patch 2 still hasnt fix the many problems it introduce.

Damn fun game though.

[Fasttrack76]

Don't get on ps3, broken game and a waste of my weekend

[Holeran]

Don't know what you had a problem with i've been playing on PS3 and love it.

[Fasttrack76]

Well you must be the only one who can get in a game because there's loads not happy with it and overkill have come out and said there working on a fix ASAP on there twitter page

[Holeran]

I did keep having to request in a game but it only took me 5 minutes each time to find a group of three and played for hours each time I got into a group.

[RedSoakedSponge]

5 minutes?! ouch!

it takes like 10 seconds on pc lol.

[Holeran]

I have as of last writing not been able to get in a game at all. When the game first hit on ps3 I didn't have a problem getting a game and now I can't get 1 to save my life. My apologies. Hope they fix it soon because it's a blast to play (when you can play it).