Payday has been a huge success story for the team at Overkill Software and 505 Games, with the series selling over 9 million copies. With Payday 2: Crimewave Edition set for release next month, they’re doubtless hoping to sell a few copies more, as they bring the game to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
There’s a huge appeal to the game’s four player gameplay, as you take on all manner of armed robberies, which range from the humdrum to the timeless classics and the more outlandishly inventive. You’ll be holding up a jewellery store one moment, breaking into a bank vault the next or get to cooking up a batch of crystal meth, all the while trying to hold off the waves of police that come after you.
The game’s real strength is the depth that each mission holds. It’s possible to do some missions without raising the alarm, you might find it quicker and more effective to take a circular saw to cut your way into safety deposit boxes, and there’s generally more than one way of going about things, that mean you’re not simply resorting to running and gunning.
Of course, sitting down with a group of strangers to play on PS4, it was very much the run and gun option that we took. Having played on PC at the original launch, I was roughly familiar with the first mission we picked – the art gallery heist – but it must be said that we didn’t work particularly well as a team. That was key, and something we had to work to improve upon as we tried and twice failed to take on one of the newer missions.
The Forest map saw us trying to break into a sealed train car, which had derailed and rolled down the hill – the train car placement has a certain degree of randomisation, even. A particularly open map, with cops coming from every direction, sticking together and communicating was vital, especially with the weapons that I’d picked from the vast selection of fully customisable guns not being particularly good at range and featuring a lot of recoil. In the end we failed, partly through teamwork, but also through unfamiliarity with the level, but again, while this level was focussed on assault and speed, it can still be tackled in a handful of different ways.
There’s already a sense of apathy towards HD re-releases of games, which have become increasingly prevalent during this latest console generation’s first few years, and on the graphics side of things, this doesn’t do anything too special. It’s up to 1080p and at 30fps, so what makes Payday 2: Crimewave Edition special? Once you’ve stifled the fake yawn and mocking roll of the eyes, why should you pay attention this time around?
Simply put, it’s the enthusiastic attitude of the developer and the extensive support they have had from their publisher. Overkill Software have been more than eager to support their game since launch, with a lot of DLC – both free and paid – and in the form of new missions, characters, classes, guns, masks and more. They’ve paid homage to the likes of Hotline Miami and Battlefield: Hardline in some of their DLC packs, as well as quirky fan service in the form of the Wild West pack, and they’ve been able to team up with renowned actors such as Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) and Mira Furlan (Babylon 5, Lost) to appear as new contractors within the game.
Considering that the game originally came out in the summer of 2013, it’s perhaps surprising that Overkill announced alongside the Crimewave Edition that they would continue to support Payday 2 with more DLC for another two years, well into 2017 – a four year tail of DLC is practically unheard of. And just last week, the price of the game and DLC has been dropped significantly on PC, in addition to the already generous practice of allowing anyone to play the paid DLC, so long as the host owns it.
But that’s something that hasn’t been possible to translate to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. While the PC version of the game has seen this seemingly endless litany of patches and content updates, the last generation of consoles have largely been left out. Though I’m sure you can find examples elsewhere that contradict and there could have been some workarounds, the scale and frequency of these content updates proved to be too much for the frankly ancient console hardware. Overkill are offering a decent discount for digital pre-orders to encourage upgrades, but ageing hardware is naturally not an issue with the current generation, and the Crimewave Edition already includes all of the additional DLC up to this point.
Though it goes beyond the scope of many an HD re-release, Payday 2 is still so intrinsically connected to who you’re playing with and how well you work together as a team, so unless you know others who are planning to do a few jobs, it could be a tough sell. There’s also the fact that without the ability to transfer save files, you’ll be starting from scratch, having to grind through heists you might have already played multiple times in order to earn enough cash to buy the necessary upgrades and earn XP to progress through the revamped skill trees.
It all adds up to a release which appears to be more than a quick cash grab. Overkill have built a large and dedicated fanbase for their game on PC in particular, and they’re trying to bring that to the new consoles, in a way, while continuing to serve them long into the future.
