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Payday 3 review: this co-op crime ‘em up has lovely levels, but it won’t steal your heartNo honour amongst thieves with this matchmaking
No honour amongst thieves with this matchmaking
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Deep Silver
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Deep Silver
It’s been a clear decade since the last entry in thisco-opcrimeathonFPSseries, so I was interested to playPayday 3. Payday is exactly the sort of online multiplayer I can get behind: PvE with clear but theoretically malleable goals (theft!). But althoughcompared to Crime Boss: Rockay Cityit’s a crushing 60st monster truck tyre, Payday 3 isn’t really reinventing thePayday 2wheel. In some respects you might think it’s rolling backwards, and while dedicated Payday 2 players may well switch over to the current gen iteration, you get the sense they’ll be complaining about things the whole time.
If you, as could be the case, were a literal child when the last Payday released, here is a primer. You play as a gang of top crims stealing stuff from banks, jewellery stores, armoured cars, etc., with the aim being to make off with a bare minimum of loot to clear the level, all while shooting waves of angry cops as much as possible. In a typical Payday 3 level some bonus optional objectives might pop up (find a specific safety deposit box for extra cash), as well as recurring annoyances that slow down your heist progress (turn off the road bollards so your getaway car can drive up). You start every level wandering about in civilian mode so you can case the area, or even dust off a heist stealthily. Generally the quicker, dirtier approach people use is to mask up - in your Nolan-approved clown faces - and go loud, i.e. shoot guards and take civilians hostage.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Deep Silver
It doesn’t help that stealth is much harder to pull off before you have the ability to, for example, trick cameras into not seeing you. The more heists you complete, the more you can upgrade and customise your loadout, and better your character with skills to take into heists with you. These may be passive boosts that improve your stealth or shooting or what have you, or gadgety things like the aformentioned camera-spoofing. In general, it’s good to achieve as much as you can in a level before going loud, because Payday 3’s cops increase in number and strength the longer you hang around a job, until you end up firing fruitlessly at a bellowing Sontaran bullet sponge. As with, I imagine, crime in real life, it’s best to all get on the same page before you start.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Deep Silver
I actually like these bespoke levels. As part of the ten-year difference in technology, Payday 3 looks nice - Hitmanesque in some stages, even - and the multi-stage nature of them is great. It feels genuinely gangstery to scan a QR code of an unattended phone and use it to get through a locked door. There’s also an increased emphasis on taking and using hostages, which you can trade for time before the police start their assault, or extra resources. It doesn’t fundamentally change the game, but it is very funny when you press x to trade hostage and a cowering middle-aged woman gets up and appears to poo a medkit where she stands.
Payday 3 isn’t not fun. The shooting is fine, the mastery of a crime feels good, the knowing where to go when and escaping with bags of ill-gotten gains! But Payday 3’s level complexity requires a bit more active co-operating than your average ‘go here, shoot thing’ sort of co-op. The current skill gating also makes it harder to succeed unless you’ve already played quite a lot, which works against welcoming new players. As such, it makes it harder to have fun with strangers, which is arguably death for an online co-op game. It’s not a massive plus, anyway.
