First Impressions: Payday: The Heist

Think of the GTA V heists without the preparation and you get Payday: The Heist. Add in co-op play and hostages as well for good measure. And money. Lots of money. This game is great to play with up to four friends (you can play with the AI as well) and puts a fast-paced spin on the heist genre. You begin with scouting out the area and finding your target, security camera's etc. When you are positioned, press F (or whatever key you have binded) to begin. 

Straight away the guards know that you and your buddies are no good (if you go near them for too long, they will see your gun and start shooting as well) and they will start to shoot and so your first job is to kill the guards around you and secure the objective, as well as destroying any security camera's as that gives you more time before the police bringing an assault.

Another way to slow the police down is via hostages. There will be civilians in the area and if you shout at them to get on the ground they will (you might have to shout a few times) and then it is a simple task of tying them up with the cable wires you have (if you have any left). One thing I wish you could do is move the hostages, so that when you move on to the next area, the cops don't just release them and begin an assault.

One more reason for getting hostages, is you can use them as bartering tools for when your teammates 'die' and get captured. If you can't help them up in time, they get captured by the police and if you release a hostage they come back and can rejoin the fight.

During the heist, you can level up (xp is represented as money), refilling your hit points and unlocking new stuff including weapons, ammo bags and med kits, which can be equipped the next time you try the heist. In the opening screen you can choose who you want to be out of the four main characters and what masks they want to wear (they seem to be only aesthetic changes), what weapons and equipment they use and the difficulty level, number of players, AI etc.

At the end of the heist you are presented with your score which goes up and down depending on what you do (money taken, civilians killed etc.) Sadly, the money taken seems to only influence your score and doesn't seem to allow you to buy any new weapons etc.

The graphics and voice acting are good but not outstanding, and it would be nice if you could prepare for your heist a bit more - hacking into the security network, setting traps etc. but this game is still a lot of fun. Definitely easier and more fun with more players, be it real people or AI because they can cover more ground.

Overall, this game seems to be great fun (even if I have only played the first heist so far) and I've already brought the DLC (it was on sale) to unlock the Technician tech tree and more heists!

Thanks for reading, Satamer.