Payday 2: Crimewave Edition Review

Heist movies, at least for me personally, fall into one of the most enjoyable genre of movies. While mostly unrealistic in their execution, I still can't help but feel the rush and intensity of watching characters pull off insane jobs and get away with them mostly unscathed. Payday 2 is sort of like that, except everything that could possibly go wrong, goes wrong, and there is no such thing as a low body count.

Payday 2: Crimewave Edition is the current-gen console port of the original game that now sports every single piece of DLC that has released thus far, making it not only the definitive edition for a reasonable price, but also a really content-rich experience.

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Your job is to team up with three other members and take on various jobs that range from a simple robbery of four shops down a street or a jewelry store, to more extensive heists like stealing art from a museum, and busting through a safe on a train. But regardless of the size and scope of each heist, they're all equally nail-biting.

A big part of this is casing out your job. For a majority of jobs, you start out with your masks off, allowing you to walk around the area, scoping out guard placement and patrol routes, cameras, and potentially where the big score is located. You're certainly not immune to getting spotted from being suspicious though, so needlessly running around the area and right in front of the guards will attract unnecessary attention. Once you get a feel of the area, it's time to put on your mask and execute your plan.

What's great about each heist is that every player is equally important. No job is ever as simple as walking in and grabbing your score, as there are a lot of moving parts to a successful heist. One player might be managing the drill to a safe which can, and most certainly will, break down multiple times, while another could be completing a secondary objective like finding a stash of heroin that they can pick up and carry for a nice chunk of bonus cash. Another player could be rounding up hostages to distract police officers while the last one would be on crowd control duty, ensuring that the waves of police officers keep their distance.

There's a certain amount of team synergy necessary to pull these jobs off, and that synergy further stems from the game's classes and perks. The Ghost, for example, has skills suited to keep him out of line of sight, granting him further bonuses when using mods like silencers and is able to deploy an electronics jammer. The Enforcer on the other hand is the opposite, becoming the armored tank of the group with a higher ammo count.

Even with the best synergy and extensive planning though, more often than not, a carefully placed domino piece will fall over, starting a chain reaction of pure and utter chaos. And while this would bother me in games that are purely focused on stealth, I found myself not caring in Payday 2. That chaos fuels the experience, and fending off waves of increasingly difficult law enforcement while scrounging to collect your mission objective while also dealing with faulty equipment is a hectic good time.

Players have great incentive to go back and repeat heists multiple times as random variables get changed around, making the experience slightly different each time. Guards, cameras and even mission objects can be switched around, meaning you can't simply "learn" a heist. You always have to adjust, and that's fantastic.

However, there is one major issue with Payday 2: Crimewave Edition, and by that extension, Payday 2; It's only fun if you have three other friends to play with, and for a few reasons. One of the most obvious reasons is communication. Some people aren't comfortable with talking online with strangers, which I can relate to actually. However, for Payday 2, that makes it a very flawed experience, since communication is extremely important. Sure, the game supports solo play but the AI can't compare to real players. While they will revive you if you're downed, they won't pick up key objectives, leaving all the hard work to you. Most of all though, Payday 2 is simply great fun when you're playing with friends. While I know this is a relatively obvious statement, I can't remember the last time me and my buddies were laughing so much while playing an online game. Payday 2 certainly isn't some satirical or parody game like GTA, and yet it manages to craft an experience that's both intensely chaotic, and hilarious.

Payday 2 isn't without issues. If you're looking for a tight FPS experience like most modern shooters, you won't exactly find that here. The gun handling isn't as smooth and for some reason has some weird aiming slowdown when you try to move your crosshair diagonally. I've experienced one strange bug where the mission objective that was necessary to activate was completely invisible, and I managed to find it purely on accident. It's also painfully obvious that Overkill designed this game for longevity, making guns, mods and upgrades overly expensive, which means you'll have to dump in a whole lot of hours if you want to experience a large chunk of the game. This might be a positive to some, but a negative for players like me who don't necessarily have a lot of time to spend playing just one single game.

Payday 2: Crimewave Edition is deserving of two separate scores; One based off playing the game solo or with strangers, and the other playing with friends. It's truly a completely different experience. The former had me irritated and frustrated, usually resulting in a failure of the job, while the latter had me laughing, on the edge of my seat, and itching for "just one more" mission. Sadly, that's not how we do things around here, so I'll just have to settle on one.