Even with voice comms, the missions are damn hard to do quietly most of the time. Not only because of the changing layouts and different guards/patrol patterns, which are very random even within each mission. There's just so much that could go wrong. Someone hear a shot? Detected. Someone see a body? Detected. Someone get seen in an the alleyway wearing their mask? Detected. Someone across the street happen to look in the windows? Detected. Accidentally bump into a guard whilst wearing your shotgun, assault body armor and SMG? Detected. Standing in a hallway in Casing Mode and get caught between two guards' pathing? Detected.
I mean, it's doable. But it often feels like a craps shoot. I wish there was anything period you could do with your Mask on. Perfect runs would be much, much simpler if I didn't have to mask up to, say, smash a glass window. Or place my ECR Jammer. Or melee a guard in the back of the head. Or move a body. Even when the scene is perfectly contained, there is always, ALWAYS someone you don't see that will raise an alert. Might be a guy in a back room, a guard no one saw, or someone outside the building just close enough to hear a gun shot or see another civilian panicking. It leaves you feeling like, regardless of how well you plan and execute, there's just a certain amount of time that goes by before someone knows what's going on. I mean, because you have to put the mask on to do ANYTHING, once the action starts you're running through the objective area alerting everyone around you, desperately trying to contain the scene even though you're likely making it worse in some way. The Nightclub feels almost impossible (even on lower difficulties) to pull off quietly. We managed to get three minutes into drilling with zero alerts before, I guess, someone stood up in the office wearing their mask and someone saw them and freaked out. It's a great design in that it makes you believe what went wrong was your fault (making you want to try again and do better.) But after dozens and dozens of hours with the game, I'm starting to question if that's entirely true. Maybe it's possible. But only through sheer randomness and retries. There are some setups on very hard that would require near mythic levels of coordination and timing to work right. Especially because guards seem to react with lightning speed, and if they pull the trigger, the whole jig is up.
After 20 hours of the Beta, I don't think there's one mission we did without the cops showing up. That said, the difference in difficulty between alerting the cops before starting the drill.....and alerting the cops at pretty much any point after, is huge. Three minutes makes a world of difference on Hard/Very Hard/Overkill (the only kinds of games that were challenging anymore.) Exiting a building after 12 minutes on very hard is like walking into the firing range of an Execution Yard.
Favorite mission is probably Watch Dogs, because the 2nd part of it is just awesome. Not a ton of running around, swarms upon swarms upon swarms of guys trying to get you, low ammo, no backup health and probably 2 minutes away from total collapse. I love it. Too bad the escape driver on Hard+ usually has about 5 seconds at the objective before the cops blow his brains out, and you end up waiting for the chopper. We eventually just stopped considering him an option, conserved our ammo, and fought off the cops for the last 3 or 4 minutes of the level until the chopper showed up.
I also love how greed really adds a shit ton to difficulty. Even on Very Hard, you can get the base objective pretty easily. But it's those other 4 to 5 bags of loot/drugs that truly ratchets up the intensity. I don't see myself playing this solo much if at all. The AI is useless in transporting loot and that's generally the most important part of beating a level in good order. Any advantage you get from having three AI bullet sponges guarding you is pretty much offset by how much longer it takes to do everything.
Favorite moment of the beta was probably the Jewelry Store Heist, Very Hard, with 3 other friends. We immediately moved the loot to the adjoining alleyway, defending the door, the back alley, and the entrance to the managers office while we drilled the safe. Then we started pitching bags into the middle of the street from the doorway (the van was across the street), while cops are trying to run in to pick them up and we blast them. Meanwhile, me playing Ghost/Mastermind with all the extra movement/bag pickup speed/extra stamina and passive dodges, sprinting out into the street under a hail of gunfire, grabbing bags almost on the run and pitching them into the van, then sprinting back to the alleyway to throw myself into cover before I get taken down.
Love that shooting a civilian instantly penalizes THAT player's bank account, rather than the mission payday for everyone. It really, really encourages you to aim carefully. Civvies have a point. Unfortunately, the AI runs them around like chickens with their heads cut off, and there's little you can do to avoid them when they're dead center in the middle of a wad of cops at 50 meters. Chance are you won't even see them. So that can be a little frustrating. Even though the twinge of guilt you feel is misplaced (you're mourning your money), it's a nice touch, compared to Payday 1 where I guess they simply didn't matter. Going Waingro on a whole level of civilians in Payday 2 will easily cost you your entire payday, assuming you actually beat it. If you don't? Grats, you're now completely broke.
Serious honorable mention for the sound design. It's all blatantly taken from HEAT, but that's ok because I love that movie. The sheer din of battle around you in missions is impressive. The way gunshots sound different inside than outside. The satisfying scream of the guy you just gunned down. I enjoy the music although to most I guess it just sounds like cheap, trashy techno.
They lose a couple points for having next to zero terrain penetration. This is a game that begs to let you shoot guys through the corners of walls, office desks, sofas and the like. Sadly, no. I suppose it would cut both ways in that cops could shoot you through that stuff too, and half the cover in game would be worthless. But I'd take that over wasting very valuable ammunition on the top of a guy's head, because he's crouched behind a white picket fence.
The Nightclub also gets honorable mentions for having so much stuff going on inside of it. It's fun to deconstruct the level with your friends during the planning phase, and that's probably one of the most demanding in the beta in terms of coordination. We weren't just roleplaying when we assigned one guy to watch the entrance of the Night Club; his job was to point his guns at civilians and scream at them if they tried to flee into the street.
The Meth Cooking mission seems redonkulously hard at first, but once you grok how the cook works it's not bad. We have a sinking suspicision that, despite all the indications than you CAN save them, it's completely impossible to keep the cooks alive. Even with silenced weapons and no alerts, the closest I could get was walking up the stairs as the cook's body crumpled from a gun shot. There's always the body of a cook on the ground floor, every time. I mean, maybe some mook sees you from a top floor window, and we're going too fast instead of being stealthy. But with the cops on their way, you don't exactly have the luxury of skulking around.
I can't wait until release and the maps I haven't played yet, I was starting to get burnt out on the 4 or 5 available in the Beta. Too bad I'll be out of town for a couple of days at release.
I didn't play Payday 1, but I can say Payday 2 captures those organic, epic moments incredibly well, just like L4D does. There is quite literally no experience like being back-to-back, doing a fighting retreat toward the escape point down a city street, while a literally army of cops in full body armor and riot shields are bearing down on you. E.P.I.C.
In case you can't tell, I'm a fan. There is so much delicious randomness and consequence in Payday 2 that, even though the handful of maps got really repetitious, when you're doing the mission and you're trying to play it cool.....you're totally immersed. You have to be, because once someone masks up and does something, you get very, very little time to react intelligently before the cops are called and you're in for a fire fight.
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Topic: Payday 2 plan your heist well (Read 58768 times)