Games worth discovering

I love robbing banks, but Payday 3’s launch is rough

2K View2023-09-26

PAYDAY 3

8.1

TacticalActionOnline Co-OpMultiplayerShooter

Get

SHOULD I PLAY PAYDAY 3?

Play it if you really like the Payday franchise, but be aware that it’s far from the best the series has been so far. Payday 3 has ironed out a few creases in its design since its rough technical beta test, but it still suffers from frustrating issues like slow matchmaking and lack of content. All those problems aside though, the game still provides some decent shooting and some good old-fashioned bank robbing.

TIME PLAYED

I played Payday 3 for three and a half hours. I’ve completed six of the eight currently available missions, with each one taking between fifteen and thirty minutes. They haven’t all been straight shots, though; the hardest mission I’ve done so far, “Under the Surphaze,” took me five tries to get through.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT PAYDAY 3?

• Heisting banks. Shooting cops, infiltrating banks, and stealing all the money inside felt as thrilling as it should. Sometimes missions required me to be stealthy so I could secure the asset or find a secret hard drive, and other times I could go inside a bank or jewelry store guns blazing and light up the place. It’s a satisfyingly exhilarating and fun experience, whatever Payday 3’s other flaws.

• Smooth combat experience. Payday 3’s controls and movement have been polished to near-perfection. Whether I was jumping over a window ledge or dashing around tight corners, I felt like I had the level of control and precision necessary to pull off incredibly cool action.

• Customization. Unlocking new weapons and tools over time gave grinding a lot more purpose. I was able to freshen up gameplay using different loadouts and deck out my favorite guns with scopes and muzzles.

• Styling the perfect robber. After reaching a certain level requirement, I was able to purchase new clothes and style my robber with whatever gloves, cloak, or mask I wanted. Even at launch, the game has a decent range of clothing to choose from, and I enjoyed messing around with different looks.

• Tutorial. Payday 3 features an in-depth tutorial to guide newcomers along. The beta test didn’t have any guidance, so I’m glad the developers added something to help out new players—even if I didn’t personally need it after spending time in the beta.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT PAYDAY 3?

• Matchmaking. Probably around a third of my time in Payday 3 was spent waiting for matches or people to join lobbies. Early missions sometimes took five or more minutes to complete matchmaking, but things got really rough with some of the later, more difficult missions. “Rock the Cradle” and “Under the Surphaze” both had me sitting in a matchmaking lobby for ten to twenty minutes.

• Server connection issues. Because Payday 3’s matches are online-only, this meant that I had to connect to a server even if I was playing solo. Sometimes I’d encounter connection issues while matchmaking or even loading into the game. This led to me being unable to queue up or find matches for around five minutes which felt extremely frustrating after happening multiple times. Other players have reported the same issue and urged people to be aware of when playing the game or planning to download it.

• Limited content. I was really hoping that the launch version of Payday 3 would be more generous. The game currently only features eight missions, and I completed six of them in just three hours. While the four difficulty modes provide some level of replayability and Payday missions generally feature some random elements to switch things, I was still extremely disappointed in how little content there is right now. At least developer Starbreeze Studios is promising four DLC additions within the game’s first year, which will presumably have at least one map each, but that also requires paying extra money for a season pass or to purchase the DLC packs individually.

• You can’t unready after readying up. I still can’t unready after readying up and it’s the most frustrating thing in Payday 3. Sometimes I accidentally clicked the ready button without thinking or changed my mind and wanted to switch out the assault rifle for a shotgun, but I was already locked in. I talked about this in my beta impressions, and I was really hoping that the unready option would be implemented in the full version. Sadly, that is not the case.

💬 Are you going to play Payday 3 or will you probably skip it? Tell me down in the comments!