Payday 2: Crimewave Edition I Review

Payday 2 – Crimewave Edition

Payday 2 has reached the next gen consoles shortly after their launch back in 2013, it has been solely a PC game for a few years now but has been very successful since being released back then.

You control one of Eight characters all with a short back story, each character sounds and looks different however all characters are the same in terms of skills. The skills are something you the player control, there are five skill trees to climb this time around, the original release back on the 360 only had Mastermind, Enforcer, Ghost & Technician. Overkill have now added Fugitive to the skill tree for your career criminals to learn about, these skill points are awarded when you level up and also cost you in game money they can also be aced which costs more and you guessed it the higher you climb the said tree the more they cost, you can mix it up to get the perks that suit your style of play however, below are the skill trees and what they do in a nutshell.

• Mastermind is all about healing your crew and crowd control
• Enforcer is all about supplying your crew with ammo and also becoming an unstoppable force
• Ghost is all about stealth and electronic hacking
• Technician is defence and infiltration supplying the user with sentry guns and C4 explosives
• Fugitive is a new class and has helps you blend in with the crowd and also spot enemies from a distance.

They have also added a new feature called a perk deck which upgrades things for your whole crew once it is mastered, these are set across nine different styles and all have their own unique methods, style has some of the same skills added to round them off like being able to gain more experience from jobs.

The gameplay is totally the same from the previously released game on the Xbox 360 with the controls having a very easy approach to play especially when shooting, there is a snap and shoot method used which for me was amazing, i’m not the best when it comes to 1st person shooters so this really helped me out.

The Crimewave edition has an added bonus of all DLC released on PC which unlocks loads more missions to play than before. The missions work from a network called Crimewave.net there are two methods here, offline where three computer controlled players join you or online where if you have four people that can join you and trust me this really helps, you have four difficulties on top of the normal setting, (Hard, Very Hard, Overkill & Deathwish unlocked at level 80 yes I played it that much!) each difficulty brings more experience and money but also brings more guards or cops. It is an amazing experience when doing a bank heist and casing the joint, watching the guards movement and spotting the cameras and their focus points and making sure to abuse the blind spots if any. As said if you play on your own or with a couple of mates the computer will control the remaining characters this is where the game has its biggest flaw, the AI is appalling the only thing they help you with and you will call me a nutter but all they do is kill cops/gang members and help you up if you are in bleedout mode, now i know they’re huge things that help but good god! They can’t help you carry things i.e. loot bags, if you’re controlling a crowd in a stealth mission they will literally stand outside smoking a cigarette imitating the fonz and leave it to you to deal with. If there was a small portion of help in the little things then it would excel.

The sound is accurate to how guns and explosions would sound I think? If you have a silenced gun the sound will be like a paintball gun peppering at some poor buggers back in the heat of battle, your characters can even intimidate civilians and even some low level cops and security guards but that is a later upgrade in a certain skill tree this is used to take hostages and control the crowd.

The characters all have their own unique voices, from Hoxton having a british accent to Dallas with his american one, they do repeat phrases quite often though.

The controls are quite simple to pick up after a mission or two, but they can be really testing on the fingers, the RB button is used a lot especially if you’re cracking the safety deposit boxes in a bank, its a very tedious task to complete but can reward you greatly, you with have a circle dial pop up when interacting with certain objects. As mentioned before the aim and shot method is a snap interaction which is really good….well for me, for Call of Duty fans I doubt they will like it but you can adapt your own methods it just takes a little getting used to.

They have added a few new features or just took them from the PC version, you now have Grenades and the ability to turn you automatic weapons to single shot or burst these are just done with the d-pad which helps so much especially the grenades when you’re in a sticky situation.

The controls are quite simple to pick up after a mission or two, but they can be really testing on the fingers, the RB button is used a lot especially if you’re cracking the safety deposit boxes in a bank, its a very tedious task to complete but can reward you greatly, you with have a circle dial pop up when interacting with certain objects. As mentioned before the aim and shot method is a snap interaction which is really good….well for me, for Call of Duty fans I doubt they will like it but you can adapt your own methods it just takes a little getting used to.

“If you have a silenced gun the sound will be like a

paintball gun peppering at some poor buggers back

in the heat of battle”

The major improvement they have added is the Pre-Planning tool which was always on the PC games but not the past console outing, it gives all members of the crew the option to place certain materials for the heist at certains areas of the map, want a vault key BANG you have one, want a decent vantage point…DONE however they do cost the person that selects them and they also cost favors the whole crew has a certain amount per job, the average bank job has eight favours and the bigger jobs have ten. This is a welcomed feature that had me ecstatic once I found out.

They’ve finally given you the ability to spend your offshore money, let me explain, you complete any job and the money is split 70/30 70% is taken to your offshore account which before just sat in a vault in your safe house and the 30% went to your pocket to spend on skills and weapons. Now they’ve given you the option to buy contracts, this is similar to GTA V when the heist leader pays for the heist, you can also bet with your offshore account and unlock certain items like weapons mods to masks, the higher value you want the more it costs, it was a case for me that I spent $20mil in 4mins but the next day I got it all back again by playing loads of high paying missions.

As mentioned before the games runs across two methods for jobs, the offline map and the online map, now i’m not sure if it was because we had the game VERY early that it needed an update but the online mapping tool was so laggy it caused such a delay to set up a new room, it was a proper pain in the arse.

Don’t get me wrong this game isn’t the greatest in graphics, you’re not getting GTA V crisp visuals or sound but for it says on the case PAYDAY that is what you’re doing getting paid and breaking the law doing it, never has it been so fun to rob banks and take hostages.