Payday 3 has just celebrated its first year anniversary to the surprise of many fans that believed the game would crash and burn post launch. Over the last year, Overkill have brought in plenty of new features and cleaned up most of the bugs that plagued the first few months of the game, though many key features from the first two games remain absent, is the game worth buying yet?
Within the first years content cycle the game received four major DLC’s and plenty of cosmetics and bug fixes that steadily brought players back. The biggest change recently was the updated UI and server finder ripped straight out of Payday 2.
Though the excitement was high for both of these additions, just like every other update, both “fixes” brought with them a host of new bugs that have made finding joinable games almost impossible.
Bring in the clowns
Image credit: Starbreeze Studios
At launch Payday 3 was borderline unplayable, bugs made finding a match unlikely and constant frame drops and a general glitchy presentation made buying the game a hard sell for many fans.
The community around Payday are as rabid as they are committed. Payday 2 was released in 2013 and still pulls in almost 30,000 players each day on Steam, this is mostly due to mod support and Overkill’s almost decade long commitment to the game, transforming it into the perfect wave-based heist game.
Obviously the hype around Payday 3 prior to release was huge. The game was supposedly in development for eight years and cost around £50 million to make, all that dev time made it seem like Payday 3 was going to be great from the get-go, but as everyone knows, that was far from the reality.
Most of the high budget was likely spent on upgrading the game engine to Unreal Engine 4(UE4), though UE5 has become industry standard, the change to UE4 is a big deal for Payday since all prior games were developed using the Diesel Engine, an old engine that was used to make racing game.
A lot of the stiffness of the older games is gone in Payday 3, this is both a good thing and a bad thing. The best part about it is that it makes playing the game easy and very fun, the combat especially is given a major upgrade. A downside to the engine shift is part of Payday’s identity is absent, the stiff and odd systems provided a lot of freedom when players got used to it.
Bane of the cops
Image credit: Starbreeze Studios
Moving away from Payday 2, Payday 3 is a fun experience, if you can look past all the issues and accept that it isn’t Payday 2. Payday 3’s player numbers on steam have remained far lower than Payday 2, only pulling in an average of 2,000 players per day. This number has gone up over the past few months and is likely to continue to increase, if Overkill adds some more content to the game before the end of the year.
The best part of Payday 3 remains the gun-play. Every gun feels tight and responsive, each packing their own bit of oomph that makes them incredibly satisfying to use. The most underwhelming part of Payday 3 has to be the heists themselves, what should be the bread and butter of the game is somehow weak and boring. Many of the heists blend in to each other and feature very repetitive objectives that get mind numbingy boring on repeat play throughs.
Some of the DLC heists have been pretty great compared to the base game lot, Houston Breakout specifically stands out as it offers a lot of freedom and has randomized elements that makes playing the heist over and over again actually fun.
Payday 3 lacks in the areas where it should excel, moving into year 2, Overkill have promised to bring back old heists, characters and sweeping new fixes that should bring the game up to par.
If you’re looking to play a highly entertaining, replayable and well supported co-op shooter, play Payday 2. Most of the extra content for the game is sold through deals on Steam and the base game itself have enough content that you could play it for hours without getting bored. At the moment, Payday 3 is not worth your time, or your money.
Featured image credit: Starbreeze Studios
Fourth year Film and Journalism student
Deputy editor
Contact - deputyeditor@brignews.com
