Aaron's Payday: Part 1

The weekend is a time for barbecues, road trips and relaxing. My weekends consist of cooking meth, robbing banks and killing off cartels. I'm not living in an episode of Breaking Bad, I am just playing Payday 2.

I gotta pay for this bitchin' get-up somehow

Now that I am probably on most government watch lists and this blog and my home is probably under surveillance, let me explain Payday 2. Payday 2 is a 4 player cooperative first person shooter. The player controls one of the four men as they perform crimes all over Washington DC. Players are able to choose from several different jobs including uncovering a corrupt senator, killing off high members of a cartel, robbing a bank and stealing experimental technology. The number of jobs and heists grows with each update that is released.

Payday 2 can be played both as a single player game and an online multiplayer game. While there is no centralized plot to the game other than you are a career criminal, there is a story to each heist you partake in. Each heist wraps up it's story by the end. As I mentioned before there is a job where the person hiring you wishes to uncover a corrupt senator. The job of the player is to then break into an art museum and steal several paintings. The paintings then have cameras installed into them and are sold to the senator's people. Once the paintings are hung in the senator's condo, the player uses the cameras to sneak in, steal personal electronics that have proof and details of illegal arms trading, plant cocaine in the senator's personal vault and steal the senator's illicit gold fund.

Each successful, and sometimes unsuccessful, mission yields money and experience for the player. Experience is used to level up which gives skill points to be used in certain class skills as well as unlocks other weapons and body armor. The money is then used by the player to purchase the new weapons and modifications for them. The money seems to have little use other than allowing the player to respec their skills, purchase items to make jobs easier and purchasing certain jobs to make more money. That's right, the player has to purchase a job from the contractor if they wish to perform a certain heist at a certain difficulty. Otherwise the player sits at the mission screen until they see a job they want to do.

The exciting world of organized crime!

The game does try it's best to disapprove of needless violence. If a player is to injure any civilians they are penalized with a large monetary fine and the game raises the difficulty level. The game does emphasize that no civilians should be harmed which is a feature that most first person shooters either touch lightly on or ignore completely.

Payday 2 is available now on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Be sure to watch for part two of my look at Payday 2 where we look at my experiences behind the mask.