(TL;DR at bottom)

I'd like to start off by saying I was a big fan of the original Payday, and preordered Payday 2. With that said, I simply cannot recommend this game.

It is a great concept, however Payday 2 was released with far too many bugs; many of the features and fixes of which were added in updates a year after release should've been there from the start. It was originally stated that Payday 2 would only have 3 DLC's; I believe Overkill and I have a two different opinions of the value and/or meaning of the number 3. I, sadly, was suckered into buying the many, many DLC packages available, of which contained items that are required for successfully doing a stealth approach. These DLC's should have either been free updates, or one or two large DLC packages for $10. DLC should not cost more than the game itself, much less nearly 7 times the price ($144.52 CAD counting the Completely Overkill pack), or nearly 6 times the price ($122.53 CAD without the CO pack) of the base game. (For those who don't know, the Completely Overkill pack was a time-limited DLC which cost $19.99 USD for the 4 default masks with special effects.)

When Overkill announced the in-game weapon skins, crates, and keys, all I could do was laugh. Never has it been so obvious that they want to fleece you dry of your cash for 10 minutes of easy *work*, as they call it. I am so glad I stopped giving these guys my money for nothing, other than frustration, anger, and regret. Overkill could have made the skins in-game drops like the masks and whatnot, but instead, they choose the shoddy way to do things and try to take all of your money. Think of the weapon crates for a moment; you (usually) pay for the key and crate, and whatever you get from it, Overkill does not lose any money. In fact, they make money. It's like a casino where the prizes from everything are Monopoly money.

I know all too well the feeling of regret, loss, and stupidity when I spent far too much money on CS:GO crates. I hope you do not fall victim to a similar tactic, especially for a game that is much worse than CS:GO. Personally, I would have rather used my money on something worth while, rather than buy this abomination and poor excuse of a game. Man, I'd even buy any Call of Duty game, drink 5 1L bottles of Mountain Dew, eat 5 bags of Doritos, hold my pee and be screamed at by 11 year olds for 24 hours rather than buy and play this game.

Electronic Arts (EA) is known for being very greedy, and love to nickel and dime customers for DLC. However, even EA is not nearly this bad. This is, literally, Overkill. There are more DLC's than bug fixes, and each DLC adds more bugs. I stopped falling for Overkill's money-grabbing schemes after the Butcher AK/CAR mod pack came out, and I have to say, I am very happy I stopped paying these guys' salary for the bare minimum in so-called work. I would rather pay $5 for someone to charlie horse me rather than buy one of Overkill's many idiotic DLC's. I honestly prefer EA over these guys, because they at least put some effort into making their games, and you get more from their DLC packs than Overkill's.

If you want to play solo, good luck because the AI is horrible. They do the opposite of what you want them to do, and are less than useless. Playing with others is also pretty bad. You will usually end up in a game hosted by some egotistical schmuck who takes every chance they get to kick someone from the room. I've seen a guy kick people for not having the sniper DLC as well as the other shameless cash-grabs, even though they weren't using it and didn't need it. I have also seen someone kick a player (who was the reason we even finished the mission because he had a functioning brain), just so their lazy friend could join and reap the rewards of someone else's toils. There were also many times I was kicked within 5 seconds of joining a game, usually for no reason, and I'm not exaggerating. The community is terrible for the most part, so you're best off playing with a group of good buddies who have a somewhat-functional brain, and know how to handle a mouse and keyboard with relative ease.

The enemy AI is also very poorly coded, like the teammate AI. On the higher difficulties, the AI doesn't get smarter; there are just more enemies with more health, damage output, and armour. There were and are so many glitches for the whole lifespan of this game, and some of them don't get fixed until 3 or more months after they're discovered. A restart option was added more than a year and a half after release, and even the community mod HoxHud had added it before Overkill did.

Only a select few of the missions are ever played, as these few missions (ie. Hoxton Breakout) give much greater rewards than the bulk of the other missions. As such, people will grind the crap out of a certain few heists to level up as fast as possible, as well as make as much money as possible in a short timespan, leading the low reward heists to be rarely played and very unpopular. With each update, less and less effort was put into the newer heists, making them boring and a waste of money; they also are very, very buggy upon release.

I find both the name of the game and developer to be very fitting, as the devs go Overkill on the DLC, and just want to get their Payday while doing as little work as possible.

This game had the potential to be great; sadly, it was ruined by greed and laziness. Overkill doesn't care about you, as long as you buy every single useless, crappy DLC they release. They are also in the process of developing a Walking Dead game, which I highly, highly suggest you do NOT buy, unless you like having lazy devs commit highway robbery on you, just so you can play the game without frustration or failure. If you want a good criminal-style shooter, pick up GTA V. It has a great single player, and the online is at least better than this horrible piece of garbage. What makes me laugh is that one of my friends whom I had met playing Payday 2 said in his review of it that this game beats GTA V by a long shot, yet he doesn't even own it. This is a little bit off-topic, but I absolutely loathed Xbox 360 and thought PS3 was better, but after I played one, I learned that they are both great and have their strong points and weak points. They also released Payday 2 on 7th gen consoles, but soon ditched it because they weren't getting enough money from their shameless DLC cash cows.

GTA V is half the price of Payday 2 plus all DLC's, so I suggest you drop $70 on that, instead of giving these lazy bums money for doing jack. Rockstar, the dev of GTA V, at least gives more of a crap about their customers than Overkill, so they deserve your money more. Rockstar staff have responded to every ticket I've sent in to them, and have never been pompous jerks. This is not butt-kissing on behalf of Rockstar, but actually respecting them because they give me the same courtesy.

If you've read this whole review, kudos to you. You may or may not share the same opinion as me, but I hope you take into consideration what I have stated in this review. Thanks for reading, and I hope this review has made you aware of how Overkill run their shoddy, lazy business practices.




TL;DR: DLC Simulator 2015, community is a bunch of toxic schmucks who spout verbal diarrhea, lazy devs, crappy game, very buggy, complete grindfest. Only the few high-reward heists are played. Better off buying GTA V. Do not buy this game, unless you enjoy the feeling of regret and the loss of $100.


P.S.
I feel I should make a point of saying that the devs were so focused on releasing paid DLC and not on fixing this issue-plagued game that there was a lack of a jumping animation until more than 2 years after release. This should give you a general idea of how much they care about the community.


P.P.S.
Review updated on 4/20 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)