Weekly Update #48 - Renegade X Open Beta, Dean Hall to Leave DayZ

Industry Talk - Is This The Last Console Generation?

This is Beta Weekly Update #47

Player Preview - Titanfall

Player Preview: Dogs of War

Weekly Update #46

Weekly Update #45

PayDay 2 focuses on Visualisation

 

To those of you that played the original you will recognize the skill tree, loadouts and some of the enemy forces. Although these will be recognizable, they have undergone some changes. The skill tree is now based on points and money, the higher up the skill tree the more points and money are required. Loadouts have become much more advanced with additional weapon modifications. The enemy police force still has the units from the original but have had visual upgrades as you would expect. Although it was a visual upgrade, the enemies aren't as distinguishable as The Heist. The Taser blends in with the other units and the Bulldozer, while keeping the aesthetic, isn't as daunting.

So that's all the similar mechanics from the first game, buts whats new?

When you enter the safe house you will realize how much the effort the OVERKILL team has put into turning the UI menu screens into the game. You can now physically walk into you vault and see the money you've earned sitting on the table, the guns and masks you've unlocked also appear on the walls in your armoury. This gives a great impression of actually owning the equipment you've bought with the money that's lying in the vault just next door. From inside the safe house you can access crime.net which show you all available heists, which brings me to my next point. The day system that has been added makes things very interesting. The smaller jobs only go for one day and you get payed on that day. There are missions that can take up to 7 days to complete (7 different missions to complete the main mission). This adds a lot more story into the game and makes it harder to fully complete certain missions.

The Heists in PayDay2 have evolved as well. Instead of just having the main objective there are lots of smaller objectives to attend to such as cash registrars,  ATMs and safe deposit boxes. PayDay 2 adds a new feature were instead of only getting one bag of loot, there will be multiple bags depending on the quantity of cash. You can only carry one at a time and they impede your movement and slant your camera, which really adds to the panic of the heist and makes a little bit more sense then when you steal a million dollars in 4 bags. After a successful heist another new element to the game shows up in the form of a random card chance. From this you can win masks, gun mods, money etc.

The gunplay also feels different. There seems to be more recoil on the guns then the original. Scope depth of field is a nice feature if our after a realistic approach but turning it off makes aiming a lot quicker and easier. The vast amount of weapon modifications range from silencers to barrel modifications to grips. Instead of unlocking guns through the skill tree, you now unlock them with money in the inventory screen or at the safe house. 

 

The HUD in-game has also been updated, although in my opinion it's not better than the original and looks as if they were trying to go minimalistic. The white circles aren't as easily readable as the old portrait style where if you were low health they would show up red. When you go to open a safe I also noticed the HUD spam that appeared on the safe itself showing different options to opening it. While I say spam as if it were a negative thing, it can actually really help when you're in a rush and can simply mouse over which method you want in a second.

PayDay 2 is a great successor to PayDay: The Heist. Overkills focus on visualisation makes the game a much more immersive experience and the customizable masks gives the player a uniqueness. More guns and more gun mods increases the longevity of the game as well as the new skill tree.