Payday 3 Review

Write a Payday 3 review they said. Okay I replied. So here it is.

Payday’s back baby.

Now, I am unlikely to receive much thanks for a three word review so I guess you’ll be wanting a little more detail, so we will deal with that in due course. However, did you know it has been a decade since Payday 2 first arrived. Yep, 2013. That is a whole lot of FIFAs and Maddens between then and now.

Payday has of course been pretty much ever-present in the co-op shooter scene since then, perpetually appearing in Steam sales, and having a huge player base built over that period of time makes it a much loved favorite on Valve’s platform - despite having some hardcore controversy about certain aspects being pay-to-win in a particularly egregious looking cash grab back in the day.

That was then though and the Payday IP has been in the hands of Starbreeze Studios since 2016, and it is they who finally bring us this latest singing and dancing version of the heist ’em-up in 2023.

So what has changed in the last ten years besides the entire planet we live on? Well, it is fair to say that the wheel has not been reinvented in Payday 3. There is you, your partners in crime, and a whole host of banks and other locations leaving their cash carelessly lying around for you to shove into duffle bags and relocate to an offshore account of your choosing.

Let’s start with the heists themselves before we get into storylines and weapon loadouts. We get eight different heist locations, all of which are playable from the get-go.

Where things get slightly more interesting is that if you play them in order, and indeed, complete them in order, you get a series of cut-scene videos that, in effect, progress the backstory of Payday 3. For example, starting a game for the first time will only have one video unlocked which introduces where we are up to in the world storyline from Payday 2. Completing the first heist will then unlock two more, a kind of conclusion to the first heist story and then an introduction to the next.

It’s nice enough, they are all short with a lot of swearing in the dialogue, but whether they actually add much I am unsure, It’s certainly unlikely you would watch them more than once. There’s even a toggle to make the videos disappear from the Heist selection screen entirely, which maybe points to the fact that the devs don’t see them as anywhere close to essential. With that in mind, I am not sure most players will either, with many choosing to just jump straight into the robbery of their choice immediately.

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(1 of 6) Casing the venue can help provide important insights about what can go wrong.

We played during the game’s Play Early phase and did encounter our squad being filled up by bots more often than not. This will likely change as more players, especially those on Game Pass, arrive in the lobbies, but by having all eight Heists open from the off will definitely have diluted the number of players you could be matched with as they are all spread across the different maps on offer.

So then, if you follow the plan - and what good heist doesn’t have a good plan - you will start with the first bank on the list - a small building that has had an issue with cash collection, meaning there could be up to 300k in there ripe for the picking. Readying-up in the lobby for the first time in your noob’s gear you feel exposed alongside your fellow criminals who have been playing, looking at their levels compared to that conspicuous number 1 over your head, for quite a bit longer. This actually turns out to be a boon however, because much like Payday 2, the first time you try a heist yourself, you literally won’t have a clue what you are doing, and these experienced thieves will, in theory, be able to smooth the operation somewhat as they will have been here before.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed the first time you try a map. It loads and your crew go charging off in different directions to achieve objectives that are given to you on screen, but you don’t actually know where they are. An example would be when you are trying to burn through the roof of a vault with thermite and the police hit the fire alarm and turn the sprinklers on. It’s at this point one of you needs to race to a fire panel to deactivate it. It’s only after a game or two you work out the location of the panel. Payday 3 is not generally a game that gives you time to explore at your leisure.

There are two ways to go about each heist - either by going quiet or going loud. Going quiet involves you bumbling around as pretend civilians trying to find the sneaky way to the vault. Going loud? Well that’s just charging in and shooting a guard in the face and effectively then trying to hold off several waves of law enforcement as they storm the building with increasing amounts of firepower.

We need to talk about AI

Everybody is talking about AI, be it ChatGPT or Midjourney but certain AIs, like this one, do seem to be left in days of yore. Police appear out of nowhere and walk mindlessly into the withering fire of your semi-automatics to their deaths, and, at Normal difficulty at least, will only occasionally cause you major headaches.

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Cops just line up to die like good boys.

Somehow, and this is the charm of Payday 3, it doesn’t really matter. The dead cops are there as props to massage the mayhem exploding all around you. It works best when you have desperately attempted a stealthy approach only for some idiot in your crew to accidentally throw a grenade inside the bank while trying to take his mask off. Yes, that idiot was me and I can only guess at the frustration and expletives uttering forth from my teammates as all hell broke loose when things had seemingly been going so smoothly up to that point.

The game goes from nervous sneaking, to the sky falling in on you at breakneck speed. It was great in Payday 2 and it remains great here. Starbreeze has tried to counter this to a degree with the ability to de-escalate the situation if you are unmasked, as we will discover in a minute, but the reality is you need a fully compliant squad to keep this up throughout.

When inside a heist location you have, in effect, two modes. Unmasked and Masked. While unmasked you just look like any normal customer and can commit no acts of violence. You can’t even jump, which is a bit weird. Mask up however and the guns come out. If a guard or member of the public sees you in fancy dress alarms will be raised and any hope of a stealthy result go out of the bullet-riddled window.

Unmasked however you can get away with most things. Sneaked into a staff-only area of the bank and get caught by a guard? Then it will be a stern telling off and an order to follow them out to an acceptable location. This is done by having to stay within an area of effect of the guard until they are satisfied. While the guard is distracted with you, it may also enable a team-mate to carry out a more nefarious task such as picking a lock to gain entry to where you should not be. You can also use the opportunity to swipe a keycard off his belt in certain circumstances.

Stealth robberies include some quite tricky puzzle elements. You might have to find keycards, hack cameras and the like, all while in areas you are not supposed to be in. It’s not Hitman 3 levels of stealth but it does require potentially four complete strangers to work together in harmony.

As mentioned, at any point there are multiple ways for it to hit the fan and you are in the same situation as if you had masked up and run through the front door guns blazing. It’s less likely to do this if you are playing online with your friends and speaking to each other constantly, or even if your team is made up mainly of bots, who generally remain passive until the guns come out.

Some later heists need to be done entirely in stealth mode. Set off an alarm and the game is up. You are also set tasks sometimes to make sure all the civilians are tied up and can’t escape to raise an alarm - just missing one results in an instant failure.

Location, Location, Location

The settings for your heists are varied, ranging from small banks to art galleries. There is also a high-end jeweler and an armored delivery van to hit for good measure. The jobs themselves are varied and the elements wide-ranging, but all ultimately require you to bag up the goods and eventually get them to your getaway vehicle, which can range from a battered van to a helicopter.

The same gameplay loop from Payday 2 is ever present here - locate the loot, get it out of the initial locations, carry the bags to a point further towards the extraction point and dump them there and then systematically move them forward as the level gradually releases its timed set-pieces, such as the getaway vehicle arriving. This is where teams of players, unknown to each other generally, works the best as the objective is the same for all. After a playthrough or two of a map and watching what the more experienced players do and where they head next to dump loot, you will soon be doing the same, like it is second nature.

There is no doubt Payday 3 works best when you are mic’d up with friends and can orchestrate your dastardly plans. This removes some of the chaos from a map, but that is not to say this chaos is not fun too.

Know Your Enemies

The law enforcement in Payday 3 might certainly soak up a lot of bullets, but as a mission progresses they at least start to throw some special units at you alongside the regular cannon fodder.

Cops with ballistic riot shields will engage you and will avoid any damage unless you manage to flank them. You can shoot out the small window in the shield to shock them temporarily, but it’s best to distract them while a teammate gets around behind them. We also have grenadiers (go on, guess) and shockers who fire tasers as well as a huge padded tanky cop who takes a huge amount of damage to finish off, and causes a fair bit too while you are trying to kill him.

It’s mayhem and a lot of fun, but if I was to criticize, it would be more genre specific in that this type of game hasn’t really moved on since Left 4 Dead - which I still play. Payday 2 was not broken so therefore did not need fixing, and that certainly seems to be what the devs have done here. Have they played it too safe?

Looking Fine?

A switch to Unity from Payday’s old engine has benefited the look and feel of number 3. NPC character models are completely generic, but the modeling on your crew, and their trademark masks, is very nice indeed. Locations are varied, if a little obvious, and you never feel as though you are running through a low-budget affair.

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That tray of jewels is going to bring some good money on the black market.

I’ve already mentioned the cut-scenes telling the story and while these are voiced, they are stills, rather like comic book panels with a camera moving over them.

Which brings me to the UI which I rather like for its overall cleanliness, even though it has a couple of quirks I would change instantly.

The loadout screens are as you would expect - not a world away from where Call of Duty is these days. Vendor screens are rather uninspired with a grid of items for sale - guns, masks and outfits, more of which unlock as you progress through the levels. These all cost cash, so you can spend your takings from your heists here.

From your loadout screen you can customize your weapon or gear in a couple of ways. With weapons you can add any mods such as suppressors or new stocks and so on that you unlock as you go, but you can also change its base color - hot pink AK anybody? You can also purchase weapon patterns which allow you to add a little more flavor. These basically will allow you to change the paint color on specific areas such as the magazine - and then you can buy the spray can to color it as you please. It just seems to have an extra couple of steps than I really need.

It’s the same with masks - one of the big things about Payday. You can fork out for a blank mask, change its base color, add a pattern, color that differently for your own look, but you are still ultimately locked into the same mask patterns and combos as everybody else.

Lobbying For Change

When it comes time to get playing your options are Heist or Tutorial. Once you enter the Heist menu you can choose from any of the eight available at launch. Season Pass holders are promised four new heists a year, or two in the first six months, depending on what version of the game you bought.

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(1 of 3) The rather uninspired cut-scene videos lie in between the Heists on the mission select screen.

Here you can choose to watch the vids you have unlocked to set the scene or head straight to the lobby. These are chosen via a horizontally scrolling menu. It’s extremely annoying that if you choose a later Heist and you have unlocked its videos and decide to watch one, on completion the menu will auto scroll its way back to the left and Heist number 1. It’s such a small thing but it was driving me crazy as you then have to scroll back to the mission you want to run. There are enough playtesters around the world in the credits that surely one of them at least added it as a bullet point on a list of things to sort out?

Anyway, once you are in the lobby you are matched with three more gang members and a five minute countdown timer begins to allow you time to change your loadout or whatever. If all players ready up, that drops to a few seconds and you are in. There were a couple of occasions where one player just didn’t hit the Ready button and we all sat there for three or four minutes before backing out of the lobby and re-entering. Who knows the reason for this but it was irritating, but in the main, the system works well.

Skill Tree

Where Payday 3 does differ from the previous game is a more novel take on assigning skills to your character. Over the course of a game a maximum of 21 skill points can be assigned across the new Skill Line system.

There are over 100 skills available at launch - 120 if you count the aced versions of the Lines, so there is massive scope for zoning in on your own builds.

To start a Skill Line you need to open it by allocating a Skill Point to the base skill - then as you play, more upgraded skills will become unlocked on that line - as you garner more skill points you can unlock the upgrades in any order, meaning you can create pretty bespoke builds that suit your playstyle. It works and is clever.

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The new Skill Lines system in Payday 3 will let you create some unique builds.

Another nice touch is that a lot of these skills can be buffed by three factors, Edge, Grit and Rush. Some skills provide one of these three attributes after certain points - for example, one skill will grant you Edge every 35 bullets you fire. This Edge is then applied to the Skills that can use it as a buff.

These buffs are broken down as follows:

• Edge - Increase Damage
• Buff - Decreases Damage Taken
• Rush - Increases Movement Speed

So for example you might have a base skill that provides you with Edge and then an upgrade that is more effective when you have said Edge.

What this all means is you can, with a bit of thought, tailor your build so that it channels extra powers into your upgrades to give a hugely powerful character as you climb through the levels.

Speaking of levels, the soft level cap is 100 with an overall cap of 150. By 100 you will have unlocked everything (or at least you should have) the game has at launch, but there are extra cosmetic rewards between 100-150.

Cash Money

In a game about robberies it seems obvious that cash is king, but this is 2023 so Crypto is also in the mix. You can exchange your cash for Payday 3’s secondary in-game currency C-Stacks. Certain cosmetics and weapon presets can only be bought with C-Stacks so you will need to make use of them if you want to play with all the toys.

In a nice nod to the weird world of crypto the exchange rate of C Stacks also goes down the more you buy and it will soon get to a point where it is not worth getting any more until the weekly C Stacks time resets itself. This should prevent players from hoovering up absolutely everything the game has to offer within a few days and encourage them to go out and get some sunlight.

And that in a nutshell is Payday 3. We ended up with a 3,000 word review rather than the initial 3 word version but, despite turning out to be hugely familiar to Payday 2 there are still lots of things to talk about ten years on.

The last iteration of the game was a phenomenon. It remains to be seen whether now, in 2023, a new version will hold the attention quite so much. There is no doubt Payday 3 has a huge potential audience and at $35 for the base game it is well priced. These games live or die on the playerbase now. I had a fun couple of weeks with Darktide last year before everybody moved on due to lack of content.

Payday 3 should not suffer the same fate as there is plenty to do. I just hope it doesn’t suffer from a lack of ambition to bring something new to the field instead.