Payday: The Heist going down Oct. 4

The arrival of Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition on the PlayStation Network next week marks the start of Sony's four-game stretch collectively known as PSN Play. The payoff for picking up all four PSN Play titles is a free copy of Payday: The Heist, and today Sony Online Entertainment dated the release of that title along with a handful of other games coming to the online storefront.

Overkill Software's Payday: The Heist is now slated to arrive on the PSN and PC on October 4. A squad-based first-person shooter, Payday: The Heist lets gamers don their patriotic insane clown masks and engage in bank robberies, jail breaks, and carjackings.

The game is priced at $20 for those who don't pick it up as part of the PSN Play promotion, with preorders commencing September 20. SOE expects to launch downloadable content for the game later this year.

Recoil Games' Rochard will hit PSN a week before Payday: The Heist on September 27. Priced at $10, the game falls in the side-scrolling action platformer genre and sees the titular astro-mining hero using the tools of his trade to fend off space pirates. Gravity manipulation is a primary gameplay mechanic, as players alter the pull of matter to solve environmental puzzles.

Lastly, SOE will publish Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment's Sideway: New York for the PSN on October 11. The perspective-bending platformer sees gamers navigating a 3D world as the 2D graffiti artist Nox. The dual-dimension hero navigates the world by slipping along New York City's flat surfaces as part of his quest to get the upper hand on his archnemesis and rescue his friends. The game will cost $10.

SOE also touted its track record on PSN. According to the Sony label, SOE-published titles have been downloaded 9.7 million times to date.