My initial instinct when playing Payday 2 was to be sneaky. If I could creep through banks, jewellery stores, and all the rest without being detected, surely that’d be awesome. Only, the pursuit of that was anything but awesome. It was a gruelling slog of planning and restarts with rarely a sliver of success. So, I chucked my silencer away and donned the biggest suit of armour I could find. Unsurprisingly, the biggest joy in Payday 2 is going loud, and it turns out I’m a big fan of playing stealth games that allow you to skip stealth entirely.
]]>Update: GamesIndustry.biz report that Ahlskog was acquited on appeal in June 2021.
Former Starbreeze Studios chief financial officer Sebastian Ahlskog was convicted of insider trading this Tuesday. This follows from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority raiding the company's headquarters and at least one private home in December 2018, under suspicion of using insider information to profit from Starbreeze's financial troubles.
]]>After a difficult financial year which saw them face a very real threat of shutting down, Starbreeze have survived a reconstruction process (roughly the Swedish equivalent of administration) and agreed a plan to pay off their debts. They're still not in great shape, what with those debts and all, but the court have approved their proposal to complete the reconstruction process so there is hope. For now, they're focusing on what they say is their "core business": the cooperative heisting Payday games, including the upcoming Payday 3.
]]>A couple of weeks ago we reported that Payday 2 was restarting development. The co-op heist simulator stopped development in 2018, but publisher Starbreeze’s financial issues have forced them to return to the game, which is still hugely popular, and start creating premium DLC. It's that or job losses. Here’s a first, very small look at what they’re betting the bank on, called Payday 2: Silk Road.
]]>Starbreeze’s financial woes have thrown up some interesting twists in recent times. The Swedish publisher and developer nearly collapsed this year following a financially difficult 2018. A company restructuring managed to keep things afloat and they are in the process of building their future around Payday 3, which is coming out in 2022 or 2023. That’s something of a gap, one that they're hoping to plug by restarting development of Payday 2 a year after the gang waved goodbye. They are asking players to pay for more DLC going forward.
That last line is quite a thing to write because Starbreeze are essentially breaking a promise made to the people who bought Payday 2: Ultimate Edition, a package that promised any future addition for free. They're owning up to that and asking for help.
]]>It's been a hard time for Starbreeze, with the gang behind Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons facing a very real possibility they wouldn't survive another year. As they continue to try to recover from serious financial problems, they now foresee a bright and lucrative future led by one game: Payday 3. We should expect the latest in the really-quite-good cooperative heist FPS in 2022 or 2023, they've said in a new financial filing. Which seemed forever away until I realised it's almost 2020? As in, 2020 starts within three months? And then it's basically 2525? And we'll be living on the Moon? Time, eh.
]]>Co-op heist ‘em up Payday 2 has escalated over its many years of swiping things, going from simple bank robbery to lifting your own presidential pardon out of the White House. Now, though, it’s ascended into its true form: a visual novel. Experience the thrill of theft as it was meant to be: in text, everything hinging on your mouse pointer hovering over two options, deciding which to explore.
]]>Starbreeze Studios don't have enough funds to keep going for the next 12 months and may run out of cold hard cash by mid-year, they warned shareholders this week. The company behind Payday and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons have been in financial trouble for a while, and took a big hit last year when zombie FPS Overkill's The Walking Dead flopped so hard that the series owners eventually cancelled Starbreeze's license and had it pulled from sale. They do think they'll be able to recover from this and plan to build their future upon Payday but oof, it's a grim situation.
]]>The Swedish Economic Crime Authority today raided the offices of Starbreeze Studios, the company behind games including Payday 2 and recent flop Overkill's The Walking Dead, over suspicions of insider trading. They arrested one person and seized a computer. Starbreeze are in big financial trouble at the moment, planning to cut costs and filing for administration following the harm done by The Walking Dead's launch - and that game's the issue. Reports say two Starbreeze fellas sold all of their company stock in November, shortly before the game's poor sales saw share drop as low as 10% of their prior value. Which could be iffy.
]]>Starbreeze Studios are in worse shape than thought following the poor launch of Overkill's The Walking Dead, today filing for reconstruction (roughly the Swedish equivalent of administration) so they can get the company back on track. The company, who are also behind behind games including Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, plan to keep paying salaries and continuing development as normal. But they're in a perilous state.
]]>Header image courtesy of "Sensei Tehminer".
I like a good ARG. Both as a noise to scream atop blustery hills, and as a chain of convoluted mysteries that take the collective brainpower of entire communities to solve. Payday 2 players have been uncovering more and more of "The Secret" for the past five years, which has now culminated in cracking open a big ol' hidden magic vault.
If you'd rather not spend a dozen hours jumping through hidden hoops to watch the live-action finale, just have a peek at it below.
]]>Cooperative heist FPS Payday 2 has reached new heists of National Treasure-ish nonsense with the addition of a heist sending us into the White House to steal presidential pardons for ourselves. Sure. I've enjoyed Payday's escalation over the years from robbing banks through conspiracies and Illuminati and strange artifacts, and of course it leads to the White House. What else could it do - steal the Declaration of Independence? Nicolas Cage already beat the gang to that. The free heist is live now and ends this chapter of the Payday story fairly conclusively.
]]>It feels like Overkill's anarchic cop-smashing shooter Payday 2 has gone off the rails in the best possible way. It used to be a game about robbing banks and jewellery stores. Now it's a crossover with a half dozen film universes with an overarching plot that's gone a little Da Vinci Code, now with nukes going off and mercenary armies to fight. Today's update (part of their annual Crimefest community event) brings back the No Mercy heist, a Payday 1 map set in the hospital from Left 4 Dead, upgraded, remastered and given fresh new context. Plus, the game is super cheap right now.
]]>Five years ago, co-op FPS crime 'em up Payday 2 was a scrawny little thing with only a few missions to its name. Now it's a massive, still expanding ball of hyper-criminality featuring permanent crossovers with five film universes, arguably putting Reservoir Dogs in John Wick canon. To celebrate its fifth anniversary today, developers Overkill are rolling out a week of free updates, starting with cyber-masked heister lady Joy, formerly exclusive to the Switch version. The Ultimate edition of the game (including almost all DLC) is also 80% off for the week.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Cooperative heist FPS Payday 2 has capped off a week of daily updates with a new heist, one busting into a heavily-defended research facility to swipe mysterious artefacts. They may or may not be magical or alien or... the story has grown a little more complicated than "steal money from a bank cos a boffin said so" over the past five years.
The week-long 'Spring Break' event also brought a new stealth heist, a new minigun, akimbo versions of another thirty guns, new masks, and more - all for free.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>It's been a rollercoaster year for co-op hypercrime FPS Payday 2. After a gutsy decision in summer to give away five million copies of the base game for free, a re-launch as the Ultimate Edition heralded the end to the piecemeal DLC model of the game in favour of a single purchase of the new Ultimate Edition getting you all but the most questionable cross-promotional content for the game.
There's been several free updates for the game since the re-launch, but the most exciting of the year has been saved for last. You might want to dust it off for another round, because the latest free update has brought a positively nostalgic heist to the game, in an official crossover with Reservoir Dogs.
]]>Last year's Enter The Gungeon [official site] was a rather pleasant surprise, offering a satisfying blend of bullet-dodging shmuppiness paired with a bit of Binding of Isaac-ish'roguelite' dungeon-crawling and looting. This week saw the release of a cross-promotion update between Gungeon and Payday 2 [official site], with both games gaining a generous handful of free extra gubbins. The funny thing: none of them are guns.
]]>Decent cooperative heist FPS Payday 2 [official site] yesterday launched its Ultimate Edition, the new version packing all the game's many DLC packs. Aside from one final character pack, that's all the DLC Payday 2 will ever have - and old DLC is no longer sold separately. I do enjoy Payday and recommend it, though I know its dozens of map, character, and weapon DLCs were confusing and off-putting to some. That is now solved, as £34 will get you the game and everything. Folks who already own Payday 2 get a discount on upgrading, if they want, with further discounts for DLCs owned.
]]>Hey, you. Do you own co-op heist FPS Payday 2 [official site]? If not, go to Steam, click 'Install Game', and it'll be yours for keepsies. It's a steal!
This comes as developers Overkill Software stop selling Payday 2's DLC, in preparation for the launch of an 'Ultimate Edition' including its 40-odd paid DLCs. Overkill haven't announce a release date for that yet. For now, do swipe a copy of the base game.
]]>Co-op heist shooter Payday 2 [official site] has brought back the first game's Heat Street mission (as in the movie Heat, not the website Heat Street). It's a long firefight moving through city streets in the aftermath of a double-cross, not a copy of the movie's famous scene but quite fun. The level has arrived as part of a new update, which is being dragged out across ten days and ten mini-updates in the usual Payday way. The week to come will bring another new heist and a new mode but, for now, all and sundry are invited to heist in a week-long free trial of the full game.
]]>"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in," Tony Dakota muttered in Scarface, his face dusted in icing sugar. And here he is, called out of retirement for two new bags of Payday 2 [official site] paid DLC. Ant has arrived in the co-op heist FPS himself as a playable character, armed with a chainsaw and His Little Friend, and a new heist busts into the film's fancy mansion to bop the boss. This may sound weird but Payday 2 has already crossed over with John Wick and the Point Break remake.
]]>What use are Saturday morning cartoons? Who's even around to see those? Mate, what I need is Monday morning cartoons. Some short fun cartoons around 10 on my first day back at work sounds just the ticket. So come on, let's enjoy the 2016 Saxxy Award finalists and winners. Valve unveiled this year's finest Source engine machinima on Friday night after I'd already flicked a match into the RPS treehouse and walked away growling "See you in hell!" as it exploded behind me (I didn't look, obvs - I felt the heat), which means they're handily here for me today as I sit on the floor amongst ashes.
]]>The Big Spooky isn't until Monday but plenty of games are already celebrating Halloween with special events for people with nerves of steel and eyes in the back of their head. If you're feeling extra brave, check out our collection of spookyspoos going on this weekend. This isn't a definitive list, mind, just a fair spread of things you might fancy trying. Do share your favourites too!
]]>Cooperative first-person heister Payday 2 [official site] has concluded ten days of content updates - a little shindig developers Overkill called Hoxton's Housewarming Party. They really make a big scene out of everything, that mob. Don't even get me started on their weddings... Anyway! Additions include a new safe house chill-out zone buttled by John Cleese, a new enemy, new weapons, new masks, new wacky mutators, and a new (old) heist to play. My question is: can I drink all Hoxton's fancy booze then fall asleep on his floor in a nest of half-unpacked boxes?
]]>As part of their recent promise to support Payday 2 [official site] for at least the next 18 months, Overkill Software have now revealed what its latest batch of DLC, due out on Thursday, is all about. It's two separate expansions - The Biker Heist and The Biker Character Pack - taking the total number of paid-for and free add-ons for the first-person robbery fest to an impressive 60. Between the two, expect new weapons, masks, a new character, and a new heist.
To mark the occasion, Overkill released a typically Payday live-action trailer alongside the reveal. It's got a shotgun-wielding Ron Perlman in it and it's all a bit Sons of Anarchy. See:
]]>Last year, Overkill Games upset a pretty vocal corner of their Payday 2 [official site] community by introducing microtransactions to the co-op heist 'em up - something they'd previously promised to avoid. In an announcement made yesterday, Starbreeze - Overkill's parent company - revealed they've now acquired full rights to the Payday franchise and as such will scrap paid-for in-game items via the next update. Oh, and Payday 3's been confirmed.
]]>Heck, tell me a new co-op FPS is coming from a collective whose logo is a ten-chamber revolver cylinder and I'll already be a touch excited. Surely no bad shootyshoots could come from anyone who understands the importance of ridiculous huge revolvers? Maybe that's a bit too over-keen. But 10 Chambers Collective was also founded by Ulf Andersson, co-founder of Payday developers Overkill and co-creator of the co-op heist FPS series. Ooh! Their game is still a bit of a mystery, but what they are saying has my attention. Also, that giant revolver.
]]>Starbreeze Studios, makers of the Riddick FPS and owners of Payday devs Overkill, have announced a new co-op FPS based on Smilegate's F2P mega-hit CrossFire (pictured above). How big a hit? Up to six million players online at once big. I'm familiar with South Korean developers making free-to-play versions of western FPS--and still fascinated by Counter-Strike Nexon Zombies--but can't think of many times it's gone the other way. Fingers crossed their CrossFire embraces the original's weirdness.
]]>Checks calendar. Okay, it's not April 1. Checks Steam. There's definitely a store page for it. I guess this is really happening.
The latest Payday 2 [official site] heist is themed around...Goat Simulator. And the latest Goat Simulator [official site] DLC is themed around... Payday 2.
]]>Since launch, Payday 2 [official site] has received a staggering 39 different bits of DLC that range, from festive soundtracks to cross-promotional movie-game tie ins. John Wick joined the co-op crime FPS last year, and now it's going a bit Point Break. Overkill have teamed up with Warner Bros. to add things loosely inspired by the upcoming remake (no, not the 1991 Patrick Swayze-starring original) to Payday 2, in both a free update and extra paid DLC.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>When Overkill Software first added TF2-like weapon crates to Payday 2 [official site], putting special gun skins with better stats in 'safes' unlocked by paying real money for 'drills', it went poorly. The vocal portion of the co-op heist FPS's playerbase were riled, to say the least. Overkill backpedalled a little, making it so folks might randomly earn free drills while playing, but it was still pretty crummy of them. Now they've returned with a new set of safes, containing guns with new unique bonuses. Oh dear.
]]>We can be fairly certain that affordable time travel won't exist within our lifetimes because Payday 2 [official site] developers Overkill Software evidently haven't travelled back to last week and erase their mistake of adding microtransactions to unlock more-powerful versions of guns. If they had, memories of CS:GO-style weapon crates and keys concealing a random selection of garish weapon skins with better stats would fade away. No, clearly we don't have time travel, because instead they're now fiddling with the heist FPS's safe system a bit, trying to placate riled-up players.
Heisters can now earn keys (or 'drills', in its terminology) to unlock crates ('safes') for free as they play, rather than having to buy or trade for them. It's a start.
]]>Payday 2 [official site] has kicked off its latest Crimefest event to celebrate the co-op heist FPS series's fourth birthday, and it has brought presents for everyone. You'll need to pay extra if you want to open your present, though.
Doubtless inspired by Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's weapon crate drops, Payday 2 will now randomly give players 'safes' containing unlockable colourful weapon skins with stat boosts - but which cost £2 to open. What's unpleasant is that these paid skins' stats can be straight-up better, and developers Overkill had previously said they'd never add microtransactions.
]]>You know you're doing well when your foes start breaking out custom equipment and specialists to stop you. For Big Boss, that may mean body armour and snipers. For the Payday 2 [official site] heisters, well, they're already going up against heavily-armed and armoured police forces, so what could ever hope to stop them? Enter Captain Winters, a new mini-boss sort of enemy added yesterday with the FPS's latest free update, The FBI Files.
]]>Crime doesn't pay, They say, so why should you pay for crime? This weekend, you can explore both sides of that as the full version of heisting FPS Payday 2 [official site] is once again free for everyone to try. Until 1pm PST (9pm UK time) on Sunday, y'all can join your pals to rob banks, malls, warehouses, night clubs, and other places money likes to hang out if you head on over to Steam.
The game's on sale all weekend too, with a hearty 75% discount.
]]>I swear, you can't take that naughty Payday 2 [official site] gang anywhere! Take them to Las Vegas and do they marvel at the Neon Museum, swing by the Erotic Heritage Museum, flip out at the Pinball Hall of Fame, and get drunk watching the skies outside Area 51? They do not, I tell you.
The latest Payday 2 DLC heist launched last night, sending the crew in to rob a casino. Ambitious, certainly. To help them out, you can also get a new easily-hideable rifle, new melee weapons, and masks including an impressive Elvis shades & quiff combo. A new member is joining the crew too.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 10 of the sale.
]]>I've grumbled enough about being overwhelmed by the torrent of Payday 2 [official site] DLC, and feeling overwhelmed by it, that I should point out a cool thing developers Overkill have done. Or another cool thing, I should say, given how many content updates they've released for free.
As so few games do, Payday 2 has permanently cut the price of its older DLC. Gosh, I wish this wasn't so rare. I would like to play those Mass Effect 3 DLCs, for example, but not for $10 a pop - and it seems EA will never bundle them up into one wallet-friendly lot. Oh, back on Payday 2, a new update brought another free heist.
]]>What if The Year of the Bow never ended? Maybe this is simply the modern state of video games: they have cool bows to pling arrows at faces. E3 2012 sparked YotB declarations between games like Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed III, and Crysis 3 but then the bows kept coming, through Shadow of Mordor, Eidolon, and more. Bows are a thing video games just do now.
Having now received the memo, Payday 2 [official site] has added a bow. Its latest DLC weapon pack included the ole arrow-plonger, along with other Wild West weapons and masks and gubbins.
]]>I don't know why you'd shoot men with an uncool gun. Why have a daggy lump of crud clogging up the corner of your screen when you're trying to do cool murders? I must confess my FPS preferences for huge revolvers, pump-action shotguns, and bolt-action rifles is partially down to them being super cool crimetools (also: their murderpower, tense pauses, and chunky sounds).
Payday 2 [official site] now has cooler guns. Coming up on two years after launch, Developers Overkill Software have gone back and reworked a load of the robbery FPS's first-person animations, from reloading guns to shouty gestures. They've also added proper transparent magazines to older guns which have 'em, showing the bullets deplete as you fire. Cool guns.
]]>Payday 2 [official site] studio, Overkill, have announced that they're going to be putting out updates and supporting the game for another two years thanks to a new deal with publisher 505.
The devs certainly seem excited about the news ("We love working on Payday 2 and look forward taking care of our game for two more years, making new free updates, paid DLCs and awesome campaigns together with the community") but I decided to ask Alice as she's someone here who actually plays it.
]]>Ooh, they do like a bit of spectacle, that Payday 2 [official site] lot! Developers Overkill Software split the latest update over nine days, which I must confess is long enough that I sorta lost interest and stopped paying attention. But! The Spring Break update wrapped up on Saturday, out and done and ready for us to play with new heists, masks, weapons, mods, a second female character, and more. Unlike the first ladyrobber, Scottish bruiser Bonnie is free for every player - huzzah!
]]>Imagine if all your favourite murderers in video games got together and did murders together, like a superhero team or a supergroup. The Avengers with no thought for collateral damage, or The Plastic Ono Band with hammers. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number [official site] is more a tribute act of murderers, with schlubs inspired by Jacket's cool murders in the first game. Hotline Miami's crossover with Payday 2 is coming closer to that supergroup dream, though, bringing Jacket to the heist FPS.
Oh, and did I mention that Hotline Miami 2 now has a release date? It does: March 10th.
]]>You'll remember (probably) I posted last week about the live action trailer for the new Payday 2 heist? Well, developers Overkill have finished drip-feeding details about the new DLCs and actually released them, so here's some more information for your eyes to absorb.
First up: yes – they've separated the heists and the new character into two distinct DLC purchases again.
]]>I'm watching The Bomb Heist trailer for Payday 2. Mostly it feels like a cross between a German car advert and an episode of The Killing – it has that same washed out colour palette and deliberate measured dialogue.
It's a live action thingummy starring Babylon 5's Mira Furlan which introduces the new DLC. There's a heist (The Bomb), a new crew member (Dragan) and you meet your new contact, The Butcher.
]]>I'm torn. On one hand, I would very much like to play as a lady in Payday 2. On the other, I don't want to support the foolishness that is selling the only female character for £4 as DLC. I still feel a bit of a wally for buying Killing Floor's lady zombie-shooter. But I do like how the Payday gang's female member, Clover, is a sweary, excitable Irish lady (hey, this link will make loud noises). Ah, I'll decide later. This week also brought a new DLC heist, but it doesn't sound like a great buy.
]]>There aren't nearly enough Christmas-themed videogames in the world. Where are the modern equivalents to Christmas Lemmings, or the videogame kin to seasonal movies like It's A Wonderful Life? I'm not satisfied by Christmas updates to non-Christmas games, though I suppose they're a start.
Payday 2 is doing its bit by running a series of jolly updates to the first-person, multiplayer heist-'em-up. There's a new mission to steal some snow-like white powder, and the first few days of updates have thus far also introduced Christmas-themed masks similar to but legally distinct from other beloved Christmas characters.
]]>Look, you can't name your company Overkill Software then do things meekly. Your games need to shoot thousands of men, steal millions of dollars, and roll out patches in big ostentatious displays. To celebrate co-op heist 'em up series Payday's third birthday, over twelve days Overkill have added to Payday 2 everything from new weapons and snazzy sunglasses to a grand new mission and a playable cheap Keanu Reeves lookalike, all for free. They called it Crimefest.
]]>This makes sense. Co-operative bank robbery manshoot Payday 2 is getting a new piece of DLC which is themed around the propulsive, topdown, ultra-violent manbeat Hotline Miami. It's called Payday 2: Hotline Miami, and there's a live-action trailer below which contains little detail, followed by some further sentences which contain similarly little detail.
]]>You can be stealthy in Payday 2, sure, but if your sneaky sneaking falls you can always fall back on the old pop-pop and blam-blam your way to riches. Not with the latest mission you can't, you Loud Larries, Noisy Nellies, and Clodhopping Charlies. No, shhh, you can't throw that grenade no matter how funny it'd be. No, save all your fighting for when we get to the park. If you don't stop screaming, we're turning this heist right around and going home. The new Shadow Raid heist, you see, will be Payday's first proper stealth mission when it arrives tomorrow in a free update.
]]>The term "DLC" is always most welcome when preceded by the word "free". It was always the point, really. Rewards for investing in the game in the first place. Remembering this is Overkill, with Payday 2, as it receives an appropriately gruesome Christmassy update today. Set in the bank from Counter-Strike: GO.
]]>David Goldfarb has a brilliant name. He's the game director of Payday 2, a very good game about being a horrible bank robber. It turns out everyone in the world enjoys being an awful person, because Payday 2 has remained near the very top of the Steam's sales charts since its release, while hovering in and around the top ten most played games list. I chatted to him about what it's like being a tiny studio with a huge hit.
]]>After a weekend on the beta, where the game crashed and lost my progress and the following missions were so tough that I couldn't claw it back, I'll admit I didn't like Payday 2. I quit, leaving my friend Owen to carry on with random players. But Owen has a way about him. A childish enthusiasm that he constantly fired at me on IM. He was having fun, and he wanted Bopo & Bucko* to team up again. He'd show me the way, he said. Then Jim said we should WiT it. So I threw the mask on, we formed a crime team with a pair of other friends, and hopped back online. Here's wot I think.
]]>Payday 2, Overkill's co-operative heist 'em up, eventually had to come out with its hands up, and they've decided today is that day. They've chosen to let us know with a launch trailer, and actually released it on launch day. That's a rarity for the games industry. It is one of those frozen moment type deals, where the action of a heist has been stopped in the most cinematically pleasing way and the camera zooms around to take it all in: bullets are caught in the air like bubbles in ice, blood spurts from wounds like the red branches from a meat tree, police dropping like Del Boy* at a bar when someone has paused a DVD of "TV's 100 Greatest Del Boys Falling Through The Bar". It is embedded below.
]]>What promise of gaming's future has failed to materialise for you? What was the most exciting feature that's only been half thought out, or tried once and then abandoned? For me, it's multiplayer shooters levels with dynamic elements. Left 4 Dead 2 was supposed to feel like you were crawling over different routes depending on the difficulty selection, but what it amounted to was the player being squeezed a few steps in one direction or another. Will Payday 2 be the first game to successfully pull it off? I have the beta, but I've not had enough time with it to find out. However, the new trailer claims your decisions will affect one playthrough to the next, perhaps even selecting a different map for to play on. If that happens, I'll be one fun lovin' criminal.
]]>You’d think robbing an art gallery would be fairly straightforward, especially if there are four robbers working together to pull off the job. But when one of those robbers sets off a noisy hand dryer in the bathroom, and another one falls through the skylight, knocking himself out on the hardwood floor beneath, you should probably take some time to reflect. Just not now. Because right now there is a helicopter shooting at you.
Yes, I played Payday 2. Here are some thoughts.
]]>VG247, the getaway driver in the daily news job, have grabbed 20 minutes of Payday 2's PC version in action, complete with a chap from Overkill talking through the onscreen happenings. I've been instructed by an elite panel of my peers that I missed out on not playing the original Payday, and that Payday 2 is looking rather good, too.
So this might be worth watching...
]]>Nature seeks balance. That is the way of things. So it was that following news of a police procedural game (coming soon), I was also told of more footage of Payday 2, which is Overkill's heist 'em up. Below there are 24 minutes of developer narrated action of the co-op shooter as they take part in an art heist. Then follows the inevitable betrayal. They steal things, then they are shot at. Balance was sought, and balance was got.
]]>Is the question rhetorical? It's the sequel to that heist game, Payday, isn't it? The real question everyone should be asking is why "heist" isn't in spellcheckers. Nor "spellcheckers". And the answer to that initial question... Payday 2 is a bit more of an RPG.
]]>And you didn't even notice. That's how cold, calculating, and quiet it is. It rushed your home and left no witnesses. Your coat rack? Lying in a pool of its own fabrics. Your pet goldfish? Sleeping with the fishes. Other fishes. Dead ones. And you? Next. Hah, just kidding. I have no idea why someone's stalking through your home, but it's not Payday 2's fault. The heist-'em-up's new trailer is disarmingly quiet, though. Admittedly, it's all pre-scripted, but the big takeaway seems to be that this one's going for methodical stealth over the first's Left 4 Dead with cops approach. Also, clown masks. They're reeeeeally unsettling, pretty much no matter what. It's all after the break.
]]>I haven't played the original Payday, so I asked the current guests at RPS manor to provide an opinion for me. "It was good, but cruelly tough," claimed Craig Pearson, Scottishly. "It really is Left 4 Dead," he added, Welshly.
Said Adam: "" Said John: "" Said Cara: ""
Therefore my opinion of Payday is that it was good, but cruelly tough. It really was Left 4 Dead. And there's to be a sequel later this year, with the now Starbreeze-owned Overkill once again on dev duties.
]]>
