Payday 3 is the third entry within the at all times on-line, one-to-four-player, cooperative heist FPS collection from Starbreeze Studios. Getting back from retirement, the Payday crew haven’t solely moved to terrorise a brand new metropolis, from Washington DC to New York, but additionally moved recreation engine from Payday 2’s Diesel into the extra strong Unreal Engine 4.
From the get-go, it’s clear the sport hasn’t been designed with consoles in thoughts, as on load up you’re confronted with creating an account for Nebula Starbreeze by way of the PS5’s built-in browser. It’s not excellent however obligatory, and generally is a prolonged and cumbersome course of once you simply need to get right into a heist.
Payday 3 performs nearly the identical means as its predecessors; you’ll be briefed in your mission, tasked with scouting out your environment as an not easily seen member of the general public earlier than masking up and raiding your goal constructing, stealing its precious contents. The massive distinction right here is the improved concentrate on stealth earlier than having to masks up.
This time round, you have to sneak by way of numerous more and more restricted areas, public, non-public, and safe, pickpocketing and lock-picking as you go. If detected in a non-public space, you will be escorted out by a guard. Fail to comply with their directions and also you’ll be put into custody, and compelled to spectate the remainder of your workforce. Get detected in safe areas, nevertheless, and you will be shot on sight, initiating a police raid. You may delay this raid by buying and selling in hostages to the police for somewhat further time. It’s nothing revolutionary, and stunning it’s taken till the third entry within the collection for an entry degree system to be applied.
The heists themselves are comparatively fascinating and pleasant, if somewhat outdated and on the brief aspect, lasting roughly 15 to half-hour every. With a complete of eight on supply spanning numerous places — a financial institution, a jeweller, an artwork gallery — you’re taking a look at not more than 4 hours of content material earlier than you are repeating missions on more durable difficulties. There is a comparatively good choice of difficulties, with Regular, Arduous, Very Arduous, and Overkill. Nonetheless, aside from the 2 additions in Overkill — making safety cameras indestructible and guards radio alerting extra usually — the one variations are extra enemies with bigger well being swimming pools. Contemplating the larger concentrate on stealth with this sequel, we anticipated extra problem when it got here to deactivating safety methods and cracking go codes. As a substitute you are simply confronted with targets the place you stand in circles for a minute, or sort in a code you present in massive numbers on a desk, making replays relatively linear and repetitive.
Though Payday 3 is playable solo, you’ll be joined by three incompetent bots to assist you by standing in your means, capturing partitions, and never stealing any loot. The bullet sponge cops aren’t significantly better as they have an inclination to face out within the open, capturing no matter whether or not you are of their sights. There appears to be a superb vary of enemy police models; grenadiers throw smokes that disable your dash; riot defend wielders block incoming hearth and require grenades to take down; taser models stun you for prolonged intervals; and snipers choose you off from vary. It’s a disgrace the AI isn’t as much as scratch since there are plenty of good enemy concepts right here, simply not executed to this era’s requirements.
Exterior of missions you’ll be navigating the cluttered consumer interface to customize your weapons, tools, and cosmetics which can be all locked behind levelling up and in-game currencies. All the cash you steal on a heist is break up between the gang and made out there within the store to buy weapons, devices, and garments. Nonetheless, some gadgets are locked behind one other in recreation foreign money, C-stacks. These purchasable tokens are an extortionate value, that means you’ll be able to solely declare a handful for the thousands and thousands of {dollars} traded in earlier than utilizing them to buy a particular weapon or outfit. The levelling can also be an absolute chore, with over a thousand grindy challenges offering nothing however lacklustre XP rewards. There’s actually no incentive to finish every raid 15 occasions simply to get a digital checkmark. We accomplished the marketing campaign amassing many of the loot alongside the best way and nonetheless solely reached a measly degree 10 (unlocks go up till degree 150) which meant we solely had three totally different weapons unlocked.
The UI isn’t the one noticeable challenge with its extreme variety of tabs and scroll bars. The precision required to work together with objects is infuriating, as you’ll be fumbling round making an attempt to purpose your reticule to choose up small objects, like rings. Additionally, in-between every mission are brief, unpolished cutscenes made up of what can solely be described as idea artwork slideshows accompanied by subtitle textual content used to progress the story. It wouldn’t be so unhealthy if these have been animated and applied into the precise missions, however they really feel very misplaced and unfinished being standalone movies on the primary menu. Lastly, the sport suffers from frequent body fee drops when gunfights escape, and there is additionally the occasional visible glitch.
Conclusion
Payday 3 has its pleasant moments, bringing its well-known cooperative heists into a brand new recreation engine. Nonetheless its lack of content material, outdated gunplay, underwhelming AI, and unfinished cutscenes depart quite a bit to be desired. In case you’re a collection fan in search of a considerable step-up on this sequel then this isn’t it. Nonetheless, in case you’re after a multiplayer title to clown round in for a couple of hours, it will suffice.