Recent reviews by Sigmar Male

I punched someone so hard that that his head came off. And my Arm. And the game crashed.

10/10

Endless Fun thanks to the steam workshop. 5/7

Update June 2016

In light of update 100 Overkill have announced that they have aquired all of the rights to the Payday franchise. They have also announced that, going forward, any and all safe's added to the game will be free to open. The Black Market from here on out will be free to all players, and Overkill intend to continue supporting the game for a further 18 months.

The addition of microtransactions was something I felt I could not support, and now that Overkill have done away with them, I'm changing my review to reflect this. Thats not to say that all of the negative points in the original review are null and void, but there have been changes to the game in all aspects including but not limited to gameplay overhauls, and completely new skill system and graphical enhancements. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is this one of the best games to play with friends.

Original Review:

I've always supported Overkill, loved the Payday series and couldn't help but bite at each chunk of DLC that was released. Overkill have done a great job drip feeding content which was often free to players. When Overkill announced they were going to support Payday 2 for a number of years with fresh content earlier this year, I was really excited.

Instead, what was once an intense, engaging and fun game has been stripped down and peppered with standard money grabbing antics which has spoilt the essence of what the game was. (I'm looking at you, Alesso Heist).

The gunplay used to be fantastic, the weapons sounded great, felt great to use and plinking helmets was a joy. Your loadout could speak volumes about how you run a heist. Now it feels watered down, as of writing there are 20 assault rifles which are all much of a muchness. It doesn't matter if you're using an AK or an AMCAR rifle, it's got a suppressor so who gives a crap. Whereas in something like the Counter-Strike series, the guns all look, sound and feel different.

Skills used to work in a very similar fasion, too. You had broad extremes demonstrated by players, some opting to armour-up with these huge armour plated suits and even bigger guns and others sneaking around in a two piece suit and a suppressed pistol. With the additions of more skills, a new skill tree and a frankly stupid amount of "Perk Decks" which give further passive boosts which honestly just feel unneccesary with the wealth of options already presented in terms of character building, the whole process of fine tuning your own personal badass feels bogged down and insignificant.

Overkill have crafted some cracking heists over the years, and I can appreciate the time it takes to build these levels to explore, along with all the content specific voice-overs by Bane (Voiced by Simon Viklund, the games composer who has since left Overkill and is now working freelance). Instead of the excellent quality of content Overkill players have been used to, we have heists which are either 1 day versions of existing 3-day heists, and a character which is pure advertising for something completely unrelated. (Sorry Mr. Wick)

And yeah, still no 7-day heists.

I think the problem here is greed. As a consumer I'm always wanting more. More content, more everything, and Overkill have tried to accomodate that. Unfortunately this has backfired in a way that I cannot recommend this game anymore, due to the over saturation of content mentioned above and the recent news that the game will now feature micro-transactions which will alter stats in-game. It seems like greed may also be taking over at Overkill. I don't agree with this, and it'll take alot to bring me back to what has been one of my all-time favourite game series.

But you know what they say, cash is king.