Recent reviews by Artemis0.5

TL;DR: Don't buy this game, it's still an overdesigned mess that requires a lot more than a few patches & DLCs to fix.


2023 never became the "Year of PAYDAY". Why, exactly? Probably because of the publishers, maybe because of the rushed development cycle. Maybe, a combination of both. The trailers showed promise, and despite the rocky server uptime during the open beta, players held hope. During the Silver & Gold Edition pre-launch period, people liked the game, but even during the 3-day period some cracks started to show. Obviously, the game would never have the same amount of content as the prequel, and since it was a live service game more content was sure to come. But people were noticing the controversial game design choices more and more with each passing day. Then the launch day came, and servers went down for 2 days. This caused a massive media ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and it contributed to this game's colossal failure.


Despite all the issues, and despite my pessimism throughout the whole marketing & launch cycle, I played the game through gamepass. It didn't really click with me, but I kept playing because the gunplay felt addictive, and I wanted to experiment with the builds. But then I realised that all builds led down the same roads unless you gimped yourself. So in the end I only stayed in it for the gunplay. I was there when the progression was tied to challenges, I was there before adaptive armor, I was there when Techies were added. And I really wanted to love PAYDAY 3 as much as I loved PAYDAY 2, but it just never truly clicked.


It's fun in VERY SHORT BURSTS, after that it becomes incredibly boring.
Have the updates helped make the game more fun? Eh, depends on who you ask. In my opinion they have made the game more of a power fantasy which is fun for people who like power fantasies, but this also goes directly against the "war of attrition" design that the game used to have.


After a full year of updates (that were gimped by the publisher from what it seems), none of them have addressed the actual issue of the game (in fact, a certain update made it severely worse): It's an overdesigned mess.
The skill system? An overdesigned mess that has very little truly fun synergies inbetween eachother. The 3 buff system does nothing but add an incredibly annoying level of micromanagement to the game.
The armor system? Used to be something with a cohesive design. Not a design that I liked (Death by a thousand cuts that basically made armor bags the best deployable for a lack of a better alternative), but a cohesive one nonetheless. Now with armor 2.0 it's a reinvention of the wheel, which has become more square-like. It's more fun, sure, but it feels like it was rather unnecessary.
The enemies? Their AI was claimed to be an "upgrade" over payday 2's, and while that's true, it's not really an upgrade to old PAYDAY 2's AI, or even PAYDAY The Heist's AI, as weird as it could be at times.
The arsenal? This game has surprisingly decent gunplay, however all other aspects suck. Weapon modding in particular. PAYDAY 3 has 2 truly important weapon mods to pick: a sight to help your ADS targetting and a silencer to enable healing and/or easy rush buff acquisition, the rest of the weapon mods do little to nothing. And of course, all of this is topped up with Weapon Levels with those impactful mods (silencers in particular) being locked to absurdly high levels.
The UI? While not overdesigned, it looks like a generic Unreal Engine asset. The most egregious example is the loss of the Assault Banner. PAYDAY The Heist has a basic assault triangle. While not as fancy as the PAYDAY 2 counterpart it conveys the game state perfectly while keeping to the game's UI design and overall aesthetic. PAYDAY 2 had a whole assault banner that conveyed your difficulty and, of course, the game state. While it was still not too much information, it was something truly unique, and it obviously became very iconic. Now what does PAYDAY 3 have? A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ text block. Obviously, it conveys the information, but it isn't stylish, it doesn't fit the aesthetic, and it feels like a rushed job.


Unlike the rest of the game, where everything seems overdesigned, heists themselves feel underdesigned. A key selling feature of both of the prequels was heist randomization. The said randomization is what made the game feel fresh on each run, and it is the reason why people have so much horus on the prequels. So what does PAYDAY 3 do with heist randomization? Nukes it. Almost completely. There are a few cases where there is some randomization. A big example of this would be the returning First World Bank, where the escape can be very different. But on most of the other heists the randomization is limited to a few different keycard locations, maybe a different junction box location and a random keypad code. Randomized room layouts aren't present, most likely due to how Unreal Engine works with prebaked lighting. Outside of the randomization some heists have certain gimmicks that make them a bit more fun to play (i.e. Dye packs on No Rest For The Wicked).


Yes, surprisingly. If you loved PAYDAY 2 stealth, then you will most likely love this game's stealth, as it remains one of the more cohesively designed things in the game. Some resource management is kept (Pagers), while other pieces of resource management from payday 2's stealth (body bags) are gone completely. The game also offers an expanded casing mode, which actually lets you do a lot more compared to the prequel. You can loot bags, pick locks on doors, open safes and do some objectives. Of course, you still can't jump (you can crouch though) unless you mask up.
Another thing that doesn't completely suck is the gunplay. As I've mentioned - it's decent. It's nice to turn up the music, turn your brain off, and shoot with some nice tunes.
Of course, a PAYDAY review can't be truly complete without mentioning the music. While Simon Viklund is working on his own heisting game with 10Chambers, and while Carl Norén has left Starbreeze a while back, Gustavo Coutinho has taken up the role of the soundtrack person. And he delivers. Of course, music is a very subjective thing, but in my opinion Gustavo has more than delivered. Some tracks sound as if they were taken straight from Cyberpunk 2077, some sound like they're a callback to the past games. And all of the music sounds like it does truly belong in a PAYDAY game.


Is the game worth it now, even on sale? Despite what some people may tell you - no. Even if you are a stealth player, this game has simply not enough content compared to the prequel. While Starbreeze has sped up on the content release front - it's simply not enough. This game's flaws run deep, and it's not something that can be solved with a few updates. I truly do wish the game becomes better overtime, I still think there's potential. But it's hard to truly believe in PAYDAY 3 after how a majority of its Year 2 went down, and how mishandled it was during Year 1.
If you want something similar to Payday then your best bet would be Raid: World War 2, as it was recently picked up by a team of modders officially endorsed by the original developers. If you need a heisting game and you need it now, you could always go for Crime Boss: Rockay City, since it's a fun time for a few evenings, and it has a surprisingly intricate rougelike mode. If you just need a coop game to play with your friends: games like Helldivers 2, Mycopunk, Deep Rock Galactic, and many-many others still exist, and they all arguably realize their potential way better than this game.

The gameplay is fun and varied, you get a lot of stuff to tinker with, but every newcomer has to suffer this game's insufferable progression. Over the existence of this game Arrowhead added several "Premium" warbonds. These warbonds contain the game's bulk of your equipment. You start with one free warbond - "Helldivers Mobilize" - which contains A LOT of gear (which is a good thing) and enough super credits to buy an extra warbond. It's a good thing, BUT this game has 14 premium warbonds that all cost 1k super credits each. The best way to progress through warbonds is by either doing mindnumbing grinding on difficulty 1 or paying for super credits.
The worst thing about warbonds is the fact that some of the game's best stratagems are locked behind the said warbonds. Before "Chemical Agents" stratagems were usually unlocked through level progression & community effort. After that warbond came out, every single warbond (other than "Truth Enforcers") included a stratagem in it, and we haven't gotten much FREE stratagems since (the last one we've gotten was the Grenadier Emplacement).
This game is the only game to have bluescreened me after I tried to quit the game by pressing "quit game" in the menu. The game's preformance has also gotten significantly worse with each update. I used to get a stable 80+ FPS when I first got the game back before the PSN debacle. Since the Omens of Tyrany update I fluctuate between 40 FPS on missions and 20-25 when a few enemy units dare to render within my FOV. The best part about this? A friend of mine, who has an exact same setup as me, had a stable 60fps no matter what they did. However, since Control Group, their framerate has gotten worse.
This is ontop of all the other bugs & glitches that range from hilarious to downright gamebreaking and annoying.
I can't blame this all on Autodesk Stingray like many people do, though. An engine is a toolset, and moving to unreal would not result in any benefit, as the toolset is only as good as its user.
Helldivers 2 is the only coop game that has made me audibly laugh due to how fun it is. There are so many things you get to experiment with. So many stratagems and weapons to mix & match. Want to attempt stealth? You can try running smokes (even though they're currently broken LMAO). Want to burn everything to the ground? You get plenty of napalm-centric options like an orbital napalm bombardment. All of this is backed up by this game's masterful (albeit broken as ♥♥♥♥) audio design.
This game's cooperative elements shine in 2 ways - actual on-mission teamwork (i.e team reloads with something like the Recoilless Rifle) and complimenting eachother's loadouts. This is probably best shown on the illuminate. Despite their unfinished state the illuminate have both tanky & horde-type enemies. To counteract that you can have a teammate who specializes in big game hunting and someone who specializes in destroying hordes of enemies. Then you can also have teammates who try to support those 2 with ammo & shields.
If you're willing to overlook this game's shoddy technical state, awful publisher & awful placebo rootkit anticheat - this is a very worthy purchase. Helldivers 2 is insanely fun both with a group of friends or with randoms you find out there in the galaxy.
But if you do care about the technical debt of this game, please check back in a year, By that time, the illuminate may finally have their final units, and the game will have proper performance.

A good co-op experience, which works surprisingly well in solo aswell. Deep Rock Galactic is also supported by a loving group of developers who produce outstanding updates. All of the DLC's are also purely cosmetic and you don't need to pay for them to enjoy the game as most of the good cosmetics are free. All in all, Deep Rock Galactic is a solid game.

Edit: As of 2022, this game is still a whole load of fun to play, and the developers still pour a lot of support into the game. A worthy nominee for Labor of Love, Rock and Stone!
2023 Edit: Season 4 was rough, but this game is still a passion project of great developers. Stone and Rock!

After a day of release and finding a way to avoid the constant crashes this heist has, I can finally review it.

The Black Cat heist has 3 ways to do it: 1. Stealth way (not covered in this review)
2.Loud entry
3.Second stealth entry (allows to do loud a bit differently)

Probably the most disappointing way to do this heist. The objectives are like in panic room but backwards, first c4 then saw the vault. While it may be fun for some it's definetly not fun for the majority. You are also pretty much locked down to 2 places: The vault room and the central room. But this isn't it: after you blow up the c4 the spawns are tripled (not sure if that's intentional or not).

The second stealth entry (and apparently the first one) allow you to access the other way to do loud, which, in my opinion, is the best way to do this entire heist. The objectives are unique, fresh, and somewhat resemble the stealth objectives. Unlike the loud entry you have to explore the map to finish the objectives.

Yes, but probably at a sale. In the CIS the dlc is currently worth 5/7th of the base game price, so I'd wait for a sale before buying this dlc.

As of the time of writing this review a lot of people are currently crashing on preplan/after restarts/finishing the heist. The current fix to the crash is to set the effect quality value to something higher than 0 (i.e 0.1).

I have been a player ever since the 5mil copy giveaway happened, I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and throughout all the updates I didn't give up. McShay Weapon Pack 3 was the closest I ever came to giving up on this game. But now that update 237 is out - I give up, just like OVERKILL (or, rather, Starbreeze, since OVK hasn't been a thing ever since the game's release) gave up on this game.

The recent update has broken a lot of things, and while modding has been completely broken by SuperBLT breaking, a thing like this can easily be fixed.

However there is a thing that can't be easily fixed by modding and is fully up to the developers (at least I assume it is), and that is the matchmaking. The game is peer 2 peer, but it still needs to use some networking service to find people and play with them. Ever since the game got released it used Steam's networking service. But the recent update has changed it to Epic's Online Services. As much as I dislike Epic, their launcher and their online services, most of the problems come from Starbreeze half baking the update. The said update completely removed Steam's networking. So if you want to play with a friend on steam you still HAVE to connect to Epic's Online Services. The cross-play IS NOT opt-in, nor is it opt-out. This kind of switch to Epic's Online Services doesn't make sense, since it breaks everything that has worked perfectly (steam invites, the ease of joining games through the friends list), and half-breaks everything else (distance filter is gone, Crime.NET shows full lobbies). The switch to Epic's Online Services also doesn't make sense from a time point, since the game has 3 MONTHS if the leaks are correct. And I don't have much hope for PAYDAY 3 either, but that's outside the scope of this review (still, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ payday credits, really?).

Will I still play the game? Probably, or probably not, depends on if I want to finish grinding and going through EOS. Would I recommend it for anyone to pick the game up, even on a sale? No, not anymore. And I don't want people to boycott this game, I just want for this review to be seen by people who somehow managed to not buy the game on a sale yet, so that they can decide for themselves if they want to deal with Starbreeze's last updates and go through EOS. Thank you for the game, Starbreeze, I wish you actually cared to not completely ruin it before leaving it to die.

EDIT: They released a hotfix. Did it fix anything? No, it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ didn't. I guess people at starbreeze thought that if they need to go out, they will go out in style.