PAYDAY 2

Payday 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter stealth game and the sequel to Payday: The Heist from 2011. Payday 2 was developed by Overkill Software and published by 505 Games.

The game was first released for Microsoft Windows PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2013. A later remastered version called the Crimewave Edition was released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2015, Linux in 2016, and the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

Plot and location

Payday 2 takes place two years after the events of Payday: The Heist and set in the general location of Washington, D.C. The story follows the Payday gang: Dallas, Chains, Wolf, and Hoxton, with their operator Bain, continue their jobs on performing heists.

Interestingly, Payday 2 has an alternate ending (or 2, to be exact) revealed after completing The White House heist. In the alternate ending, which unlocks by completing the heist missions, the Payday gang arrives at the White House to find the hidden vault and obtain the Ark of the Watcher.

Gameplay

In Payday 2, the player controls one of the 22 gang members to perform heists as either solo, team up with three members, or play with other friends for the 4-player co-op. Similar to the first game, it focuses on the stealthy gameplay to accomplish various heists without getting caught.

The player has access to the Crime.net, a fictional local website that provides access to contracts that are provided by criminal contractors (though mostly by Bain), for the Payday gang. These contracts are located at the map, contain jobs for performing heists including bank robberies, stealing objects, running drugs, rigging elections, and more.

Some contracts can be completed by the Payday Gang across multiple days, with different levels and objectives per day. The game can be played under one of seven difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Overkill, Mayhem, Death Wish, and Death Sentence as the hardest. Playing missions at harder than Normal difficulties will reward bonus money and experience points.

There are jobs that can be done in stealth by avoiding detection from cameras, evading the notice of police officers, or silently completing heists through different angles. The fewer detection instances, the more they can earn bonus experience points. There is also the loud mission where players can freely shoot guns against enemies and escape after, although it does not offer reward bonuses.

Most of the enemies are similar from the ones in the first game such as police officers, SWAT units, and security guards. Plus, there are special enemy units included such as the Bulldozer, Cloaker, Shield, Sniper, Taser, SWAT Van Turret, Medic, and Captain Winters.

During encounters against enemies, if the player gets KOed too many many times without using a Doctor Bag to recover, they will be taken into custody. If the player is at the lower difficulty level in custody will be able to get out of custody or their gang members must use a hostage to trade them.

After completing each heist, the player can choose one of the three bonus cards from the screen, which contains bonus money and experience points, as well as weapon mods, new masks, weapon skins, and customizations for masks. Money in Payday 2 can be used in different ways: for purchasing weapons and masks, for storing stuff into the offshore account as the Payday Gang's retirement fund, for purchasing heists from a broker, or for purchasing bonus cards.

Players can level up by earning experience points from heists and earn skill points by increasing their levels. Skill points can be used to purchase new abilities from various skill trees, which consists of five classes that the player can mix and match skills: Mastermind, Enforcer, Ghost, Technician, and Fugitive.

Each skill tree represents one of the player heisters. The Mastermind skill refers to Dallas, which contains healing, controlling enemies, and sharpshooting. The Enforcer skill refers to Chains, which covers shotguns, tanks, and ammo skills. The Ghost skill refers to Houston, which is divided into stealth, ECM jammer, dodges, and silent killing. The Technician skill refers to Wolf, which include sentry turrets, trip mines, and drills. Finally, the Fugitive skill refers to Hoxton, which involves gun slinging, brawling, and legacy skills.

The player can raise their Infamy level when they reach at level 100. The maximum Infamy level is 500. Infamy level allows the player to reset their character to level 1 and will start from the beginning while gaining new levels and receive rewards such as Infamy level card, a special pose in the lobby, class skill point and XP and permanent bonuses. But when they reach to Infamy level 5, the $200,000,000 from their offshore account will be subtracted and all their spending money will completely lost. Thus, there is a price for being too infamous.

Visuals and other features

The game mode called Crime Spree was featured in Payday 2 and was released on the 4th day of The Search For Kento event. It allows players to complete each heist to gain ranks and earn bigger rewards.

When players increase their ranks, they will choose one of the three modifiers: Loud, Stealth, and Forced Loud. Players can either end their crime spree and receive rewards or play the crime spree again by spending continental coins. Gage Perks provides players with stat bonuses and can be purchased with continental coins. Perk Decks require players' experience points to convert them into Perk Points, which unlocks bonus decks. There are 22 Perk Decks with each having four mutual perks and five unique perks.

Payday 2 also features over 30 DLCs released in later patches, which makes new weapons, heists, weapons mods, masks, bundles, and more additional features available. The Gage Weapon Pack was the first DLC pack to be released, named after the veteran of Afghanistan War and the character (arms dealer Gage) and it contains four new weapons: the frag grenade, Eagle heavy rifle, Signature .40 pistol and Spec Ops submachine gun. Other weapon packs such as BBQ, Fugitive, and Gunslinger weapon packs were also made available. There are also new heist packs introduced, such as Hotline Miami, Goat Simulator Heist, and Hardcore Henry.

The later Crimewave Edition is a remastered version which enhanced graphics and framerate, texture quality, and the 1080P resolution for a more modern gameplay experience. This edition includes the additional DLCs with the first female heist member, Clover and the pre-order bonus of Hard Time Loot Bag which contains several digital items such as the red dot weapon sight modification, an exclusive skull mask, a format exclusive mask, a unique mask pattern titled "I LOVE OVERKILL", a unique color pattern, and a bundle of in-game money.