Payday: The Heist..What Would you Like to Rob Today?

In a previous post I went over the basics in the game Payday: The Heist for PS3 and PC. Today, I'll be looking at the levels and objectives.

The first mission most people will jump into is First World Bank. It's your typical bank heist. You walk in, draw your weapons, and try to crack the vault. The objectives are quite vast, ranging from finding the bank manager to burning a hole in the vault using thermite. I enjoy the smaller things in this heist, such as shooting out cameras helps shroud you from police. This is one of the easiest of the 6 missions, but that doesn't stop it from being fun. I join the bank heist without any hesitation when I see a game for it pop up. The escape is really the only lackluster part, besides waiting for drills (a common occurrence in these levels). It involves blowing a hole in a wall with C4, and running downstairs to a waiting garbage truck.

The next heist is called The Panic Room. This involves going into what they call a meth lab (though it appears as though there is no equipment in this meth lab, and looks more like cocaine or heroin sitting on the tables) and getting the panic room that is loaded with cash out. It starts with you pretending to make a deal with the dealers and ends with a chopper pulling the panic room out via the roof. I feel as though the level could have been so much more, but instead you get a 6 story building, with the inside all looking exactly the same. A pretty boring local for the most part. While I don't mind playing it, it's one of the few I don't really want to play multiple times in a single session.

 

The next mission is called Heat Street. It starts with what appears to have been a successful heist. Problem is one of your men turn on you, locking you in a room and driving off with the cash. Your objective here is to get it back. The one you're chasing ends up in a car crash and you and your team have to fight your way up the streets that are swarming with police. Once you catch him, you see he has the briefcase with the cash handcuffed to himself. This now turns into an escort mission to the helicopter. It's an alright mission, the other one that I really don't enjoy playing multiple times. It can be brutal on higher difficulties, with little cover besides cars to fight back the police. The only problem is, the direction of the level. When I played it for the first time, I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. After playing it a couple times I understood everything, but even your radio man doesn't explain things very well.

Next is Green Bridge. This is my absolute favorite mission. Many loath it, but I just can't get enough. It's the only mission where really the only way to survive is to work together and communicate, even on normal. It is hard. Even on the lower difficulties. It took me probably close to 10 tries with random groups before I got one that really worked as a team. It takes place on a rainy night on a bridge. You're to stop a prison transport and get a man out. Problem is there are 4 vans, so you need to saw into each of them and find him, while fighting of swat coming in on helicopters and assault waves of police. Once you find him, you take him to a scaffolding and extradite him via what appears to be a skyhook (the hook that dangles from a plane and can grab things, in this case, a special chair he sits in. Think the Batman one.). That is all easy compared to the last part. You must make your way up the bridge, while an endless assault of police bear down on you. It's all about moving from cover to cover, running and gunning, and staying together. Most groups want to hunker down and just shoot police as they come, leading to no ammo and death. A good group and this mission is great.

Diamond Heist is really the only one that is quite different from the others. You are in a corporate building that has a vault full of diamonds. You begin this one in stealth, and must work your way toward the vault. Getting caught doesn't end the mission, it just makes it that much harder. Once you make it to the vault (caught or no), you input a code that, according to one of the team, paid a million for. There is a random chance this code is right, but 9/10 it is wrong. If it's right, things are easy. If it's wrong, things get difficult. It forces you to find the CFO and take him hostage, taking him up to the helipad for a waiting chopper, trying to ransom the codes. That has a chance of working, if it doesn't, he is dropped from the helicopter to his death, and it continues. You then have to take the CEO's son hostage, this always works. You then open the vault, grab the diamonds, and high tail it via helicopter. I enjoy this mission just because it's so different from the others. Problem is, with a random group, it rarely goes smoothly, especially on the higher difficulties, but it can usually still be beaten unlike Green Bridge.

The last mission is call Slaughterhouse. It involves ambushing a van holding a boatload of gold. You fight mercenaries from Murky Water (an obvious reference to Black Water), trying to get this gold. The van careens into a slaughterhouse, and that is where most the heist takes place from. You first open the armored van with a saw, to get the gold. You then have the option of either getting one load of it and escaping, or going back multiple times for a bigger payout. The option is nice, adding a bit of stress. Want to be greedy and get it? Or play it safe and escape with what you have? Whatever your option comes to, the next point is lighting tires on fire to give a smoke signal for the pickup. After that it is just waiting for the chopper and getting to the extraction. This is also hard, comparable to Green Bridge, but more so because you want to be greedy most of the time, since you'll level faster. It's quite fun, probably my second or third favorite behind Green Bridge and maybe Diamond Heist.

That's all the mission overviews. If you have any questions about the game or levels, just post in the comments and I'll be happy to answer them as soon as I can.