Payday 3 needs more time to escape the shadow of its predecessor

polygon.com:

Payday 3 is bare-bones at launch, but I still can’t stop playing it. As I perfect my heisting strategies and flesh out my character build, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m playing a promising early-access build of a game that will be excellent in a few years’ time.

The good news is that it certainly looks better than its predecessor. What’s more, the tension-and-release pacing of its heists creates a powerful atmosphere, pumping me full of adrenaline and emotion on a regular basis. Running into the open in the middle of a police assault to lower the bollards for a getaway vehicle is nail-biting stuff, as is weaving through sniper lasers to stash vault-stolen money bags on a hovering helicopter. Across the board, there’s a thrilling aura to Payday 3’s heists that only grows as you get deeper into the difficulty levels and brush up against the inherent chaos of the AI. Things can go wrong in an instant, and they often do — but the focus here is on adapting to the mayhem rather than being resigned to it.

Payday 3’s biggest change to the cooperative heisting formula is in how it prods you to break away from your muscle memory and indulge in everything it has to offer. While I was teaching a co-op partner how to stealth their way through the game’s opening bank heist, they mistakenly threw a grenade, scuppering our endeavors. In Payday 2, this would summon an instant restart, but in Payday 3, you can still have fun making it out alive, no matter how much you may begrudge the guns-blazing pivot. This is the new platonic ideal of a Payday heist experience: Start in stealth, but eventually go loud. The best of both worlds? It’s complicated.

Along with the disappointing always-online stipulation that ensures players live in