It had a lot of potential that it chose neither to meet nor exceed. Just press "f" to read on...
You are allowed to play with up to three additional people online. There are four characters to choose from and one of them is obviously suppose to be a Brit because of his accent (and reminds me of Tom Hiddleston). The other three I guess you can assume are suppose to be American. But along with the recurring heist planner and a anonymous helper, they have subtle accents at times. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's because Overkill Software; the developer of Payday, is a Swedish company. None of the characters have any back story and a story between them never develops. They each have a unique appearance and style, including the themed masks that they wear. The most memorable ones are probably the clown masks because of The Dark Knight.
You have the option to either play single player offline which means you'll be playing with three NPCs or, as mentioned previously, online. When you start Payday and try to connect to a server with other players, the server list does not automatically update so you will find yourself constantly pressing the "g" key to refresh. And even when you refresh the list there's the likelihood the server you click will either be full or no longer exists, resulting in a failed connection message. Pings are not shown either. The only latency choices you get to filter through are "Close", "Far", and "Worldwide" servers. So you better hope the host of the server you joined is "close" enough to you to prevent lag. Other things to worry about are that if the host of the server leaves, the game ends, and when someone joins a game in progress, it stops the entire game and everyone has to wait for over a minute for that person to join. There are times when this can happen one after the other. This is in stark contrast to a cooperative game like Left 4 Dead that allows you to join a game in progress without halting the game.
Once you actually get into a server you are brought to a screen where you wait for the host to start (if he/she isn't AFK) and you get directed to yet another screen where you choose what equipment you want to bring with you on the heist. During this second screen, for some reason, you have to wait for each player to load onto it. Each player has a loading percentage that starts a 0% and ends a 100% (many times it is slow). And even if you're connected and have your equipment picked out, you'll still have to wait until you reach 100% to check off that you are "ready". There's no majority vote to start the game, you're force to wait for everyone, even if they are ready too but their percentages aren't. The equipment you bring with you is unlocked by playing the game via "upgrades" that I'll mention later. There are nine heist, including DLC. I would say the most popular heist is "First World Bank" because it is the classic heist in a big city bank. The rest of them like rescuing an anonymous prisoner (for some reason) or something as cool as fighting down city streets were forgettable. The heist "No Mercy" was enjoyable but I think that can only be said for those who are fans of Left 4 Dead. All the heists consist of using a portable drill or something with a timer that always breaks down and forces you to restart it by pressing and holding the almighty "f" key, which is used for almost everything in this game. And if that doesn't break down, the cops will be doing something that impedes your progress (besides endlessly shooting you), forcing you to turn something on again and again to get something else working. This can get frustrating, fast, especially amongst an endless horde.
The start of each heist begins with a black screen that mentions the time and place with the voice-over of your omniscient heist planner who gives you the details and objectives of each mission. The planner will talk the group through each heist via radio; assisting you with objectives, tells you what to do, and when hordes of cops are imminent. Apparently he knows people in high places where they can let you out in a week for killing over 100 law enforcement officers...as long as you don't kill "unarmed civilians". You also first get introduced to the godly "f" key here. Once a game begins, you can only take out weapons and start the heist when you press the "f" key. And this will be continuously displayed across your screen until you or your teammate presses it. Just be hopeful someone doesn't press it right away if you're not ready yet or want to scope the place out first. So there is no real possibility of clandestine strategies or alternate strategies that don't require force or killing people. The second you press "f" your gun comes out (and can't be reholstered) and everyone with a weapon is hostile to you. The only efficient way to deal with law enforcement is to kill them. And so begins the endless cannon fodder.
It starts out in stages where regular officers in uniform show up first, blasting you with dead-on accuracy. Once you kill enough of them SWAT starts showing up in its various outfitted forms, blasting you with dead-on accuracy. Then there are special units. The FBI is one of them. They wear much less armor and are equipped with nothing more than a suppressed Beretta. Yet after requiring all these cops to be killed in order for them to be called in, somehow they think they are well equipped and capable of taking you on. Then there are ridiculous "stealth" units that have a clear resemblance to Sam Fisher's tactical gear in Splinter Cell. They can come up to you fast doing ninja crap and all they have to do is hit you once with their magic baton to incapacitate you. Then there are "taser" units that have yellow markings on them and always make a recharging sound whenever they are near. They can manage to shoot you with an invisible taser across rooms and through walls. And you will continue to be tased unless your convulsing self can manage to shoot him or a group member shoots him for you. Lastly there a "bulldozers" that look like bomb squad units. They are damn near bulletproof and walk around with a pump-action shotgun and can take down the entire group with a couple of shots. Don't even get me started if there are more than one at a time. This all makes the heist more difficult then you might think. Not because of objectives you must complete, but because of these endless hordes with their superb marksmanship. It actually makes you feel cheated.
There are two ways you or your teammates can die, so to speak. The first is if you lose all your health, causing you to be incapped. If someone doesn't come to your aid (usually because they are pinned down by the cannon fodder) and press the infamous "f" key within a predetermined time, you will be in custody. The other way is if you are incapped from a ninja or a taser man. Once again if no one comes to your aid you disappear and brought into custody. If this happens there's two options (assuming at least one of you is alive); you can either wait around 3 minutes for you or your teammate(s) to respawn--which is an eternity in this game--or you can take hostages and do a unrealistic trade. The easiest hostages to get are "unarmed civilians". Civilians, when they actually listen to you, will lay on the ground, enabling you to cuff them with plastic cable ties. However you can't move them so when the cops initiate their intermittent "hostage rescues" they can easily find and release them. So a lot of the hostages you take are wasted, especially since cable ties are apparently a scarce resource. Most of the time civilians are a pain in the butt because they don't listen and run around in between you and the cops during gun fights. So it comes as no surprise that while you are taking on a horde you accidentally kill them and then get chewed out by the heist planner, taking a financial penalty in the process. What's hilarious is that you will be more concerned amount the hostages than the law enforcement units that came in to save them. They won't stop firing if a hostage gets in front of them. The other option is to force a cop to surrender. If you shoot them in an appendage they should surrender when you yell at them. But usually they will just continue to shoot you and run away. Which means you'll have to kill them. The other option is to melee them once, emphasis on the "once" part. Many times they will do what they would have done if they were simply shot in an appendage. And if you melee them a second time it results in an instant kill. Which I guess isn't so bad considering it only take one melee hit to kill a civilian. Yet it can take a whole clip to take down a cop.
Once you finally have a hostage, your friend, Mr. Planner, will notify you of a hostage trade. And you will have to find that hostage and press "f" to make the trade. Sometime this hostage can be across the map, forcing you to weave in between gunfire. When the trade is completed, the hostage scurries off and your teammate(s) reappear. What boggles the mind is why would a group of men that are literally responsible for hundreds of deaths of civilians and law enforcement officers be given the opportunity to get one or more of their men back for one measly civilian or cop so they can go on killing hundreds more and complete their heist? It doesn't make sense and is obviously a cheesy game mechanic.
Now for upgrades. The only way you can look at the upgrades is through the main menu screen. You can't doing anything except see what the upgrades are and when you will get them. You can 't even decided which of the upgrade paths you want to follow in the upgrades section. You have to wait until you are in-game to push the "tab" key and switch your upgrade path. Considering this being the game that it is, I would have thought Overkill would go the path of the Hitman series for instance in terms of unlockables. Hitman allowed you to completely customize your equipment and actually spend the money you earned during missions to upgrade and buy new equipment. That is nonexistent here. It's an accruing system where one upgrade adds to the other. So once you get an upgrade for a weapon, you are forced to use it. It makes the game look silly when your default secondary weapon is a suppressed Berretta and your primary is an unsuppressed M4. The Beretta is only one of two weapons that come with a default suppressor, and the suppressors cannot be removed. Not to mention that there are only 10 weapons in the game. Eventually you will get helpful things like communal ammo and medic bags. You only get to bring one of them along and once you place it down you can't pick it up. So you better hope it's in a good spot and hordes aren't shooting at you because you have to press "f" to wait and get the ammo. The same goes for medic bags. Instead of being able to take out an individual medic kit for yourself that you can carry along, you have to wait at the bag and heal yourself. Considering this is the only source of health during a heist, this was not well thought out.
Graphics in the game are above average and you can actually see the textures on the attire that people wear. The gun animations were pretty good for the most part except for the fact that the pistol slides wouldn't slide back once you're out of ammunition. The biggest problem I have was the movement animations of the group--they weren't consistent or realistic. The actions you see in first-person are not translated into what people will see in third-person. This in evident in how you run, reload, shoot, etc. Also little things like when packing bags of money and you press "f". You don't see yourself picking up money and loading it in and no one sees you do it either. You just stand there staring at it, waiting for a bar on screen to fill up to demonstrate that you completed the task. This is true for whenever you interact with anything that requires using the "f" key (which is a lot). It seems lazy like the development team didn't want to include animations if they weren't necessary. Also, other small things like not having bags of money on your characters' bodies once you filled them with money. I mean in the bank level you fill the bags full of money and they just disappear after you're done...
The soundtrack was bearable for the most part. It mostly consisted of a synthesizer that produced what I can only describe as Trance/Techno all though I'm sure there is a better term for it. There was only two tracks that really stood out to me; the intro/theme and the track for the "First World Bank" heist.
Overall Payday: The Heist had a lot of potential that it chose not to meet or exceed. The endless cannon fodder hordes with their Olympics-worth marksmanship, broken drills, and constant "f" spamming, makes the game frustrating and tedious. I was fortunate enough to get the game on Steam for $5 and I would say that at that price it is certainly worth it. Just don't plan to be playing it for too long before you become bored, or frustrated, or both. Overkill recently released new DLC and I'm sure they will continue to do this in the future. But I doubt a few new heists here and there will make Payday that much more enjoyable. I hear there's a sequel in the works so maybe they will listen to the gamers to see where they need to make improvements.