Payday 3 Review

"Stealing with the Times"

Multiplayer

September 20, 2023 at 6:26pm
By Jason Stettner

It’s been quite awhile since the previous Payday experience and while time has gone by, it would appear that the Payday series has largely stayed the same. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it will feel very familiar to those that have ventured into the series prior.

The general goal here is to go about heisting from various situations and also doing a bit of investigation along the way. At least, to a degree as that’s how the narrative elements are framed. The team is back and you’ll work through several scenarios finishing missions and ultimately wrapping things up by escaping.

It does come across as slightly more repetitive in comparison to what I recall from Payday 2, but it is expanded upon within those missions. I did each level at least three times over and feel rather concluded with the game past that particular point. The missions are neat though as the expanded options for finishing them allow you to take differing approaches to get the job done.

Think Hitman discovery, but on a much smaller scale. I do also wish that with that, they did change things up a bit further as the objectives are basically the same every time. It’s an alright amount of content, but after several hours I do feel done with it for now until more content is released.

Gameplay

It’s a first person shooter of course, but you do have options to tackle missions using stealth. At least, for the most part that is as one mission is fully focused on doing a guarded run and gun setup alongside a truck. I did rather like the club level though which is a good showcase of what can be accomplished using differing tactics.

This space has many layers of actual thought and player discovery. You’re working as a squad of four whether that’s alone with bots or with others. It’s not an offline game which may disappoint some, but that does make sense as you play. Your success really does become a make or break element based on how your team approaches a situation.

Using stealth in say the club offers neat elements of play. You’ll be hacking cards, gathering items and ultimately sneaking out the cash. The real fun is however based around things going wild as opposed to just sneaking past cameras, but either way is fascinating to see play out. There are many options for stealth approaches and some ways to deal with being detected.

Again, experience and also aspects of how well your team is leveled will factor into how the situation is dealt with. You will be leveling up skills, eventually getting better equipment for weapons and that does factor into things. It just takes awhile to get better gear and some may get bored before getting to the more fun selection of tools that are available. I do like that they did expand customization and personalization choices, those are neat and all able to be earned in-game from what I’ve seen thus far.

It just takes quite awhile to get better tools, almost too long. Supporting the game are audio elements which were slightly strange when it comes to music and while gunplay is improved I still found it somewhat wonky at times. I do like that they’ve moved away from the constant drilling aspects of Payday 2 which is nice, as there are many more ways to break into spaces. The crowd handling elements are also well handled here as you use them for more time negotiation wise or even to get resources.

It’s just, more ways to handle situations that happen. I was however very impressed with the visual options when it comes to the Xbox Series X options. There were a few visual settings and also anti-aliasing solutions alongside the FOV adjusting. I would recommend quality with performance anti-aliasing for the best look versus performance on each level of play.

The Conclusion

Payday 3 does play it safe, it feels like Payday 2 with some refinements and modern elements while not greatly expanding upon the core concepts of play. I would have liked some smaller, randomized type missions to allow for more replay. I like the spectacle of the larger scale levels, but at some point they feel too similar upon each play which doesn’t leave room for much replayability.

It’s neat to figure out what you’re doing, but once you do the execution of action from a team is the same each time. You can scale the difficulty up if you’re into that, but I was looking for something with a deeper level of content. I think that visually it looks great, it’s nice to have modern heisting elements and the switch from just drilling is awesome.

At the same time, it feels too similar to what we’ve seen prior and there’s not enough here to really hold me long term and I’ll have to revisit once more content is present to see if this one really hits its full potential. I believe that mostly I was just hoping for some a tad meatier to bite into Payday wise, particularly since it’s been so long since we’ve seen a new release.

It is well polished though, it runs well and it offers neat ways to figure out what you’re doing and those parts are fun. I just think that slightly more content or randomized aspects would have done wonders for more replayability. A good foundation, but more is needed.

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Payday 3 Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Deep Silver Collective

Rating Overall: 6.7