Reviews

Payday 2 Crimewave Edition - Xbox One Review

Posted on: 2015-06-21

...when I could get into a game it was tense and fantastic with desperate escapes as we had shootouts with the Police, but in its current state I can?t recommend it.

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Payday 2 fulfills the fantasy of you playing the criminal of being in a heist with various themes, however this game is unpolished with glitches and abysmal network issues where you can’t even get into a game, but let’s get the good out of the way first shall we.

So what type of game is this? Well it’s a 4-player first person shooter, but not your standard co-op shooter with this game you carry out many audacious heists through many varied and unique scenarios where you could be robbing gold from a high security bank to smuggling cocaine for the drug Cartel. The key in this game is the element of surprise where stealth will help you to beginning by taking down CCTV, guards and if people spot you keeping them under control. The main advice for this game is hold your fire and only use your weapon when the police or FBI show up because it deducts money from you if you get too trigger happy with civilians.

Gameplay is your standard fair when it comes to FPS’s where you look at a thing and click on the thing and it disappears, but the recoil is really high on the weapons adding an element of realism as your ammo is scarce and your weapon is your last resort as you can finish a heist without firing a bullet. You can choose from a vast array of weapons, body armour and if you are ostentatious you can decide what type of mask to wear and customise it with what colours and patterns you want, although pointless it helps distinguish yourself online.

You’ll be able to invest skill points into a skill tree, but this a double edge sword because you have to spend money from your heists to unlock skills as well as a skill point, so you have to decide do you by that new and shiny shotgun or do you buy the skill that can make you persuade Police to fight on your side.

Graphics and sound design wise the visuals have been given a slight bump in quality but it’s not dramatic, the one thing that they did get rid of which annoyed me on the Xbox 360 version was the horrendous screen tearing every time you moved. Overall everything looks slightly crisper but don’t go into it expecting a dramatic change. The sound design is amazing with the sound of the weapons they sound meaty as if they would tear pieces of flesh off you and they react to where you are so you get the distant crackles when you’re outside to the more abrupt thuds when you’re indoors. The music changes even when you play the same map it keeps it fresh and it kicks up the pace when they send in SWAT teams to clear you out it gets you pumped.

Now let’s get to the negatives of the game and this pains me to say because this game is great when it wants to work. So when I first started playing this on the Thursday before release when the servers were up the game worked fine, however over the weekend the game started to give me an error message “Failed to join” every time I tried to join a game and it took me 45 minutes to find a game. I know what you’re going to say is “Maybe it’s your internet connection” no it was not because I was happily playing The Elder Scrolls Online the same weekend with no issues. Due to these abysmal network issues it is borderline unplayable.

Payday 2 Crimewave Edition was not the all one bundle that it intended to be with its horrific network issues the 360 version works better than this one, but when I could get into a game it was tense and fantastic with desperate escapes as we had shootouts with the Police, but in its current state I can’t recommend it.

2.5/5

Reviewed by The Bristolian Gamer for 365Bristol

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