Payday 3

Payday 3 for PC is a first-person shooter heist game, the sequel to 2013’s Payday 2 (which itself was a sequel to the first game, Payday: The Heist, released in 2011. Action picks up some time after the events of the last game, following which the characters went about their lives as relatively honest citizens – until now, when something has spurred their return to a life of crime.

About the Game

This time, the action is set mainly in New York, and the game is updated to the 2020s, with modern surveillance methods and cryptocurrency featuring to offer an authentic experience. Players must work together to complete several objectives, such as stealing bags of money or obtaining valuable materials, all the while trying to survive and escape from endless waves of law enforcement intent on stopping them.
You must use various weapons, tools, and strategies to avoid the law and get away with your ill-gotten, but hard-earned gains. The game – aware that it is the follow up to one of the most popular heist experiences on the market – offers you more in terms of interactions with other characters, weapons and equipment customisation, and not one or two but eight new missions to play through.

Fans of the game will be delighted to see some familiar faces: Hoxton the mastermind returns, along with Chains, the military man, while Dallas and Wolf also pop up from the first game, joined by Joy from the second and Pearl, who is all new to this game. Also new is the improved movement and gunplay which has benefited from the new advances in gameplay technology, as has the inclusion of plenty of mishaps to befall the felonious crew.
Choose your criminal path in life and follow it as far as you can, becoming an expert hacker or persuasive manipulator who can make people do things they don’t especially want to… Mix and match four of the seventeen available skills, to create your perfect heist guise, and then upgrade it to the max.

The soundtrack of the game is excellent, keeping your mood positive, even after being spotted by law enforcement and you start fighting for your freedom.

The Nitty Gritty

With cutting edge graphics and a killer soundtrack, the devs have definitely updated the right bits of the game, hanging onto the best bits: especially the familiarly thrilling gameplay. But before you even get to the game, you will enjoy customising your character and exploring the skill trees, which are nicely flexible to allow your unique preferences to shape your character.

Up to four players (cross-play is allowed) can team up to pull off the heists – they can be your friends or random strangers, depending on your set-up – and you will all have to pull your own weight to succeed. Unlike the strictly linear progress of the first game, you can explore your options before committing to one path of action or another, which is nicely freeing.

Not only can you take hostages, but you can trade them to get more time or resurrect a comrade. You might need to resort to these measures as the games get more complex the longer you play, despite the vast improvements to movements and manoeuvrability which make entirely stealth games possible.

Weapons are satisfyingly punchy to use, and you can use hostages as a shield which forces your enemies to try and get close to you to rescue them before tackling you – a good way to survive while you cross in front of the entire police force! You have thirty weapons to choose from, with plenty of choice to kit your character out to your satisfaction.