Payday 3 Review in Progress

thesixthaxis.com:

Prepare yourself to fend of waves of ludicrously overzealous cops, swear at a barely functioning drill, and barely make a getaway, because Payday 3 is here. The long-awaited co-op heist shooter is coming out of retirement, but it’s definitely not just for one last job. There’s a whole host of heisting to be done in New York!

One thing that I absolutely appreciate about Payday 3 is the no-nonsense approach it takes picking your mission. There is a story arc within the game, charting how and why the gang has been dragged down to New York and a renewed life of crime, but you can totally ignore it. All eight of the heists are playable right from the get-go, without any of that randomly generated masquerade of Crime.Net in Payday 2, and the only thing that’s locked away are the story cutscenes, which unlock if you play the heists in order. Just play the game, in other words.

There’s an air of familiarity to all of the scenarios that Payday 3 throws at you. Even if you ignore that the series draws heavily on heist films and crime fiction in the first place, there’s plenty of well-worn scenarios from the first two games that have been recreated for the third. There’s the obligatory bank branch heist, the jewellers, the armoured truck on a bridge, the night club, and on and on. And yet, while they’re such well-known and understood concepts, just the fact that they’re new maps (and admittedly that it’s been half a decade since I last played Payday 2) helps them feel refreshed and reinvigorating.

The fundamental core of the gameplay also remains very familiar, and it’s very easy for a lapsed player to slip right back into the groove, from the opening stealth and exploration, to when all hell is let loose and you’re fighting off waves