• Payday: The Heist Gets a Sequel, Payday 2 Out This Summer

    Payday: The Heist is one of the most enjoyable co-op shooters we've played in the past couple years so we were thrilled to learn this morning that the game is getting a sequel and it should be out this summer!

    Currently in development at Overkill Software, Payday 2 takes everything that made The Heist so enjoyable and expands upon it. From what we've seen so far, Payday 2 seems like a much broader offering. While the first game had a series of heists that players could team up to carry out, the gameplay had a tendency to get stale after a while as there were only a finite amount of missions you could play through.

    With Payday 2, that all changes with the CRIMENET system of contracts. Players can take jobs from this 'contract database' of literally dozens of potential missions. Not only are there more missions, but they are also getting a dynamic element to them. For example, some missions will have random or rare events that can occur in the middle of them, causing you to switch up your gameplan on the fly. These events don't happen everytime, though, so you can't exactly strategize for them from the outset.

    Players can also now choose from a set of professions, which are basically Payday 2's version of player classes. Each profession (Mastermind, Enforcer, Ghost or Technician) has different weapons and skills available to it.

    Payday 2 will be arriving this summer on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and PC as a digital title. No word yet on pricing or specific launch date, but stick with us as we'll be following Payday 2 closely all year!

  • 1 Year Later, Is Payday: The Heist Still Worth Playing?

    When I first purchased PAYDAY: The Heist back in October of 2011, I spent my first hour of gameplay cursing at my monitor as the game would barely run on my old laptop. If someone had told me that I was going to be avidly playing it in 2013, I would have laughed in their face. But here we are more than a full year after the release of what many critics wrote off as an “almost great” game. And while those critics are entitled to their opinion...they are wrong.

    PAYDAY accomplished exactly what it set out to do. It provided a re-playable cooperative experience with some light but in depth RPG elements like weapon upgrades and unlocks. What's more, it did so without resorting to making a modern military shooter. Granted, it wasn't perfect but the flaws were only skin deep, such as the voice acting which is lovingly teased by pretty much anyone who has played the game.

    Maybe I’m just a sucker for objective-based co-ops, but doesn't anyone else get burnt out after hours of League of Legends or Black Ops 2? Granted competitive games seem to be “the haps” right now, but I think there is a serious demand for some relaxed co-op action. I would even argue that the inclusion of co-op allows players to overcome some of the flaws of the game.

    Resident Evil 5 for instance was generally ill-received, but my experience with that game was nothing short of a total blast...simply because a friend was involved. I couldn't summarize the plot of Resident Evil 5 to save my life but what I can say is that when the credits rolled the only thoughts in my mind were, "Man, I really wish there was more of this game.”

    I think the reason I feel so strongly about PAYDAY is because of how sure I was that I hated it when I first bought it. But my opinion couldn't have changed more drastically over the course of my sixty-plus hours logged in that game. Free DLC helped, of course, and the unlocks definitely held my interest to a point but what really keeps me going are the people I play it with, my friends. Providing a casual cooperative platform for friends to create their own hijinks in my opinion, is one of the smarts investments a developer can make right now.

    Long story short, if you haven't taken the time to check out PAYDAY: The Heist, you can do it on Steam for just $19.99 and it's more than worth your money.

  • Check Out Payday: The Heist, Win a Copy of the Game

    Payday: The Heist is a great cooperative first-person shooter that might have slipped under your radar. The game was released back in October of 2011 with little fanfare, which is a shame as the game has a lot to offer.

    In Payday, players can join up with three friends to form a group of four criminals who carry out some pretty intense robberies and heists. Payday includes a number of classic first-person shooter staples, but also has some pretty neat original mechanics. Each heist has multiple stages of objectives, meaning that you need to complete more than one simple objective to finish the heist. Working together will be familiar for people who have played other four-player cooperative shooters like Treyarch's popular Zombies mode in Call of Duty or Valve Software's Left 4 Dead franchise.

    If you haven't checked out Payday: The Heist, we're giving away a copy of the game over at YouTube. Check out our channel for more information on how to win!