Pay Day 2, where to begin..
I played Pay Day once or twice, I can't quite remember why I didn't play it more often after buying it - Maybe something else came out at the time that sucked my attention away and I just never went back. Needless to say I really didn't remember much of anything coming into Pay Day 2.
My friend was visiting for the weekend and after seeing some of the E3 footage, he mentioned he had it, and it was great fun! So I loaded up my laptop, he logged in to his Steam and started to download it, I bought it from one of those cdkeys web stores and started to install on my PC via Steam.
I started and he went for a ciggie, I'm in my Safehouse, looking around after a while I hit Crime.net (The game finder) and clicked on the first one I saw - Paying no attention at all to what it was called, how hard it was going to be and waited for him to join me in the lobby, with his mate, and they're both talking about stealthing it up and telling me to stay outside and watch for security guards.
So there I am wandering around the outside of a Jewelry store, telling my friend where the security are, what the store manager is doing and 10 minute later, we've killed 2 guards, shouted at everyone to stay on the floor and made off with $120k! Straight to level 4, a new gun and a scope!
Less then an hour since buying it and I've already made my first major heist and I was smiling, it was FUN! and that was one of the best bits, even though I was blatantly carried for most of it - I felt useful, I got the guard my friends missed before he could set of the alarm and I got the pager before it went off, I helped. The fact I was a complete novice made no difference here.
That was about 30 hours and 40 levels ago now. I think I might have a minor addiction, I'm looking at the skill trees, planning my future heists. My friends are stealthy and know the maps inside and out, me, I'm still witnessing new maps (less frequently now) but coming from an FPS/RPG background my shooting ability is top notch, normally pulling in 50-70% accuracy, most specials and normals when the s*** hits the fan.
For now I've just unlocked Shaped Charges, and recently bought the Sniper DLC and got myself a Rattlesnake. For the last few days of gameplay I have been unlocking vantage points and sitting on overwatch just incase a job goes south and when it does, giving the guys inside as much extra time as I can manage before I run out of ammo and have to rejoin the group.
This game is hugely fun, massively replayable and looking at the past releases and future planned DLC always growing and this leaves me to my only gripe with the game, the DLC. Half of what I seem to unlock or want to use needs me to go buy DLC which could be quite costly in the long run (£5 here, £4 there) and even buying it doesn't guarantee you get access to it, you still have to HOPE it unlocks in game...
Thankfully due to me shopping around I got the game for £7 and I've spent an extra £4 so far. If I hit the 50hours mark I'll invest in the rest of the DLC but for now with levelling and perk costing far more then I'm earning I can't even think to begin unlocking all of the guns and mods anyway, I just hope that I get some mods for the items I want to use.
And maybe a new mask, I got the monkey mask on Day 1, nothing new since then. Sad face.
8/10
Good game, great fun, DLC (but not as bad as the sims!)