--Bain, Payday 2
Payday 2 is one of several games that have probably shocked or surprised many players with their mere presence on a handheld Nintendo platform. A heist simulation game, Payday 2 is a unique Switch title, being one of the only games of its type on the system. It is playable alone or with up to three friends or online strangers, and, for reasons I will detail later below, it is a much easier and less potentially frustrating game when playing co-op.
Production Values
The graphics are by no means spectacular, but this is at least in part because Payday 2 is a port from much older platforms. The civilian and police character models are bland and very repetitive, and the other aesthetic qualities of the layouts inside buildings are repetitive as well. Anyone expecting incredible visuals will find the ones on display very lackluster. Nevertheless, they are sufficient for framing the gameplay. Slowdown is rare, but it can happen when dozens of cops descend on your location at once. The sound could easily annoy players far more than the visual performance, as the same few music tracks play over and over despite the fact that they might not seem to fit the mission at all.
Gameplay
The varied missions require everything from the concoction of illegal drugs to bank robberies to the hacking of voting machines. The same missions will appear repeatedly on the map, but the location of items and rooms within the mission environments change, as does the difficulty level--and therefore the amount of experience points attached. In fact, upon dying or failing and restarting a mission, players may find that the interior of the building which holds the objectives shifted around. This provides a measure of replayability, but the core mission structures never change. Still, revisiting completed missions can be an easy way to level up.
Upon leveling up, players receive skill points that can be used to activate skill trees, while the total amount of experience points earned are translated through a ratio into perk points that can be used on a separate list of active and passive abilities called perks. The skills and perks--not to mention all of the weapon and mask unlockables--contribute to a rather deep progression system. Some abilities are especially helpful, such as the ones that provide bonus XP or permit more uses for particular items (like ammunition or medical bags). One skill literally lets you manipulate captive police officers into fighting for you! Since different skill trees can be active at once, there are incentives to spread one's skill points across a variety of complementary options.
As for the AI behind the non-captive police, don't expect complex maneuvers or strategy on their part. Still, they are more competent overall than your partners when the latter are controlled by AIs, as your partners must be controlled by other players in order to do anything besides revive you and shoot the police. This significant issue delays objective completion in solo heists by a large amount of time. If you yourself do not actively carry each step of the plan forward, your team will make no progress. For this reason, it is not only easier to play online or locally with other people, but it is also far more enjoyable for those who do not appreciate difficulty that is only present because of a massive design problem.
Story
There might be an overarching, background storyline that loosely connects the missions together, but the individual heists are so seemingly detached from a linear narrative that it is as if there is no specific story. Instead, players simply choose from a set of available and time-sensitive heists that might reference companies from other heists without ever overtly developing some sort of foundational plot.
Intellectual Content
The absence of a defined story and character exploration in Payday 2 results in a lack of major theme development, but the very fact that games like this can be played raises questions about the ethics of creating and playing video games. Condemnation of certain video games (and movies) usually revolves around some arbitrary line where violence is deemed acceptable up to a point. While I do not recall being aware of Payday 2 when it was initially released, it is exactly the type of game that conservatives and liberals might panic over.
However, if it is not immoral to carry out a relatively minor act of evil inside a game, where is the line? If it is not problematic to engage in petty larceny in a video game, what would make an in-game bank robbery morally wrong? If it is not wrong to kill enemies in video games outside of self-defense, what makes taking hostages cross the line? There is no Biblical or logical boundary past which one has sinned by committing an act in a video game. As long as a person does not have the motive of celebrating an actual sin, there is nothing wrong with enacting an otherwise immoral behavior in the confines of a virtual world.
Conclusion
If you can play with a friend, Payday 2 can be quite enjoyable, replayable, and rewarding. The limitations of the single player mode are its greatest weaknesses, thanks to the lack of a clearly discernible story and to the largely unhelpful AI partners who are unable to complete objectives. If a given Switch owner can tolerate these problems or can bypass them by simply playing co-op, he or she will find that Payday 2 is a deep crime simulation experience that is not completely marred by its deficiencies.
Content:
1. Violence: The blood effects in Payday 2 are not anywhere near as realistic as they are in more recent shooters, but there is still a fair amount of blood involved in shooting or physically striking cops.
2. Profanity: Variations of "damn," "shit," and "fuck" are used with regularity.
3. Nudity: In some areas, there are statues of the naked male or female body, the genitalia quite overt.
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