Jason Quintal

The gunplay is as fun if not better than payday 2, though some guns like the zip commando and compact 7 feel like underpowered pea shooters. The heists are elaborate and objective driven and the more you understand the maps, the quicker they go. Overall, nice variety and strategies involved for each and a fair amount to keep busy until new content arrives. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, text chat is the only available way to communicate with teammates and for a co-op game, this seems like a huge oversight for Starbreeze. Yes, we have discord servers and steam chat, but when playing in a lobby fulll of strangers from different platforms (Xbox, PS5 and PC), voice chat is essential for communication. Voice chat will come over time, so this can be fixed. Lastly, the progression system for leveling up is currently a toss up. In one way it does promote trying new weapons and exploring different heists, but on the other hand it feels anti-coop when each player is focusing on challenges they need and not adhering to the heist objectives. Leveling in the game can be done by simply starting a heist, camping for as long as you can stay alive and just … dying instead of completing the heist. As a good percentage of the challenges you gain experience from are “kill X number of enemies with Y”, the game can feel more like a shooting gallery than a heist game. I believe over time, much like payday 2, this game will offer what payday fans have enjoyed from the series. Changes, new heists, skills, weapons and characters will really round out this game. It’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint. At the ground floor though, it’s a work in progress that is fun to unwrap at times, but can be a grind to make progress.