now that i've played both games, it is now time to determine if the sequel is better than the original or vice versa.
to begin, Payday 1 felt more free flow and took itself much less seriously. the developers had it in their heads to try and make Payday 1 based on movies, so that meant a reasonable amount of scripted scenes with less emphasis on a storyline itself, and there isn't. you go from 1 heist to another without so much as a link. each heist in itself could count as a movie with the plot line being: and they steal so and so amount of cash at the end. it is this lightness that makes the game enjoyable. it also allowed the game to send the players to a multitude of different heists without feeling constrained to a story, and if we think about how games should be, too many games follow a linear story path and become boring and predictable. so Payday 1 then, is a refreshing, chaotic gust of wind.
but what about Payday 2? if we are to look at Payday 2 without taking into consideration the web episodes which felt rather strange, Payday 2 feels the same and yet... different. Payday 2 feels like it's trying to take itself much more seriously and that i feel complicates things. i do enjoy the new menu system where random heist jobs pop up as opposed to the older static menu where you could choose from a limited list of heists, however, because it's a near random pop up thing, you might have to do some waiting before the job you want pops up. although, this is remedied by going to the contract broker, it costs in game money to buy the contract or job, so that feels a bit weird.
Payday 2 introduced a small host of new characters who have their individual quirks and traits. these characters for most of the part are the people hiring you to do the heists, which also feels strange but i will explain later. by adding these characters, Overkill is fleshing out the world of Payday better by showing us how deep and how far crime reaches in it. it certainly helps flesh out the contract system as well, but now we get to the flaw in this logic. these people are hiring the Payday gang to go and steal money most of the time. so, not only do the Payday gang profit from their contractor, but also the loot that they acquire, so that feels weird, unless the contractor is also taking a bit off the loot. this is especially evident with Bain. fortunately, this is a small but niggling issue.
Now, we'll get to the special units that are the spice of the Payday franchise. the Cloakers, Shields, Tasers and Bulldozers. I think, it's fair for me to say that they looked better in the original game. they were much easier to identify and looked more menacing, with the exception of the Bulldozer which is terrifying regardless and the Cloakers who more or less look the same in both games. Bulldozers are a olive green and that allowed them to stand out in the original game but in Payday 2, there are now
police who also sport olive green, so if it weren't for the bulk and faceplate Bulldozers are usually not easy to identify till they're up in your face. Shields feel stranger now in Payday 2 as well. in the previous game, grey suited cops with balaclavas would be behind the shields as they pressed forward, making them feel like they were specially trained for this role. Now, you'll notice its some sort of SWAT cop or variant of a SWAT behind the shield, making them feel much less threatening; but is that a good thing? i'm divided on this one because it makes them harder to identify from the back but then again, it's a large shield they're holding alongside the fact, even in the old game they weren't difficult to kill, seeing as they're mostly mobile roadblocks.
the Tasers are the ones that i find the most aggravating in Payday 2. Payday 1 got it correct by giving them electric yellow shoulder pads with black stripes on them. While it makes them look like bumblebees, it also made them easier to spot. In Payday 2, they're now almost completely dark blue, letting them blend in with regular SWAT. visually, their grey ballistic face mask and bulkier armour in the Payday 1, made them look pretty good and menacing, i just don't get the same sense of dread from this new version. The Payday 2 Cloakers are perhaps the only ones that scare me more than anything else and that's a good thing. they've retained their 1 hit KO kick but they've added a hooting sound when they charge a robber and most times, you've no idea where it's coming from making you panic.
while we're on the subject of the mooks, i'll make it clear that Payday 2's normal SWAT units are much more capable than their original game counterparts though i still have some issues with them visually; what's with the weird patches of different colours? but other than that, i find the increased danger from them moving together as a unit than individuals more threatening and for good reason; they can down a high leveled player in seconds... SECONDS on NORMAL difficulty which is the closest thing to easy mode. arguably, they've been capable of that in the first game but it seems to occur much more frequently in this game. so, the challenge factor is there. add to the fact that even special units now spawn in small groups of their own, and you've got the spices you're looking for in a game. the added extra variants of the mooks on higher difficulty settings also makes the game quite superior to it's original.
on the other hand, now missions have a stealth option which i think they've adapted from the original game's Diamond Heist mission. because of the way, the game generates its maps, guards, cameras and civilians on a random procedural engine (i think?), each mission is going to be different and the most frustrating part is when a mission goes south when an unexpected guard turns an unexpected corner. this is largely alleviated by the Spotter perk but the chief problem of the urge for players to stealth a mission entirely is there. this part of the game no longer feels as lighthearted as it should be.
ironically, a core strength of the original game i feel was the lack of stealth missions, where the robbers will fight their way to a target, or out of it. granted, the ability to stealth a mission should warrant a bonus, but i find the lack of non-stealth missions a bit of an issue. perhaps it's the way Payday 2's current missions are done. they don't feel as over the top as the old game, especially the crane lifting up a limo and smashing it through a building over the top. Payday 2 needs more of this i feel if it's going to try and beat it's original. just that flair that's missing.
introducing cash to spend in the game was a clever move because now robbers have a greater motivation to go and acquire money and conduct more heists. the in-game cash also allows players to build multiple weapons in different ways and styles and do the same for masks for cosmetics sake. because of how the game's difficulty increases, it becomes important for players to upgrade their arsenal accordingly. Payday 2 has a drop system that's much more intuitive than TF2's, but that would be because Payday 2 is a paid to play game as opposed to TF2's current free to play system which is unlikely to be changed at all. the drop system in Payday 2 occurs immediately after a successful heist and all players choose from their own hand of 3 cards, so it's almost guaranteed that the players will get something, it might not be what they want though. this method unlocks extra goodies like weapon modifications, masks and masks improvements, which the players have to purchase later with their in-game cash. so, this works well.
the skills system has improved, though currently, it kills a core function of the original game, but i'll get to that soon. the skill trees have changed but for most of the part, they're recognizable because of the skills or perks involved. this fleshing out of the skill tree certainly adds depth to the game and a feeling of individuality; you can customize a robber and feel more like yourself in the game or you know just make him a more bad ass robber than he already is. but now, we get to the flaw. in Payday 1, you were able to make a cop or SWAT cuff themselves regardless of what weapon you're holding, so long as you injured him enough without killing him and that it wasn't during a police assault. in Payday 2, it feels much more complicated. you must equip certain weapons to intimidate police while injuring them without killing them and most importantly, unlock that specific perk in order to do so. this means that on higher difficulty modes where respawning is non-existent, capturing police becomes much more difficult than it should be. so, bad mark there on what would have otherwise been a flawless record.
the music in the Payday franchise has always been high-octane heart-pounders to get you into the mood. Payday 2's music isn't bad but not quite as i expected. Payday 2's mission music is terrifically brilliant and the music changes each time rather than have a mission specific music like the old game, good mark there. unfortunately, the original's menu, failure and set up music feels more happy and closer to the mood of the moment. Payday 2's music in these areas don't feel lighthearted; they feel more heavy and perhaps a little too serious.
one final note, i wonder why they changed Hoxton. His biography is practically the same though there are slight differences, with the American Hoxton in Payday 2 feeling like a watered down version of the original. Vocally, both sound... not too different but Payday 2's Hoxton is lacking all the charm of the original. The Sheffield accent, British cut suit, demeanor and well pretty much everything felt better from the original. Was it to give Dallas more limelight? Or was it to make Hoxton more in line with the web episodes, which leads to a more difficult question. are they introducing the web episodes' storyline into the game on a larger scale? because if they are, i think they'd better have a look at the material again; it sounds like a B-movie writer with a A-movie director's budget.
final score? i'd have to say that while Payday 2 certainly has a lot of promise, but it isn't exactly the game that will completely replace Payday 1. Payday 2 feels more of a slightly different game than a sequel, which isn't bad considering what happened to Left 4 Dead 2 and the overflow of CoD titles. Payday 2 lacks the charm of the original, some of the key aspects of the game like being able to take cops hostage easier. On the flipside, it does have a voice of its own in that it brings new toys to the table, money you can actually use to improve your character in game, a cleverer skill set, some interesting characters and a general improvement to missions though more overt shooting missions will help that case better. is it worth your money? yes, it is. it might not be a true sequel, then again most movie sequels don't do much better than the originals, though at least in this case, it's not a rehash of the same things over and over again.
to begin, Payday 1 felt more free flow and took itself much less seriously. the developers had it in their heads to try and make Payday 1 based on movies, so that meant a reasonable amount of scripted scenes with less emphasis on a storyline itself, and there isn't. you go from 1 heist to another without so much as a link. each heist in itself could count as a movie with the plot line being: and they steal so and so amount of cash at the end. it is this lightness that makes the game enjoyable. it also allowed the game to send the players to a multitude of different heists without feeling constrained to a story, and if we think about how games should be, too many games follow a linear story path and become boring and predictable. so Payday 1 then, is a refreshing, chaotic gust of wind. but what about Payday 2? if we are to look at Payday 2 without taking into consideration the web episodes which felt rather strange, Payday 2 feels the same and yet... different. Payday 2 feels like it's trying to take itself much more seriously and that i feel complicates things. i do enjoy the new menu system where random heist jobs pop up as opposed to the older static menu where you could choose from a limited list of heists, however, because it's a near random pop up thing, you might have to do some waiting before the job you want pops up. although, this is remedied by going to the contract broker, it costs in game money to buy the contract or job, so that feels a bit weird.
Payday 2 introduced a small host of new characters who have their individual quirks and traits. these characters for most of the part are the people hiring you to do the heists, which also feels strange but i will explain later. by adding these characters, Overkill is fleshing out the world of Payday better by showing us how deep and how far crime reaches in it. it certainly helps flesh out the contract system as well, but now we get to the flaw in this logic. these people are hiring the Payday gang to go and steal money most of the time. so, not only do the Payday gang profit from their contractor, but also the loot that they acquire, so that feels weird, unless the contractor is also taking a bit off the loot. this is especially evident with Bain. fortunately, this is a small but niggling issue. 
.jpg)
while we're on the subject of the mooks, i'll make it clear that Payday 2's normal SWAT units are much more capable than their original game counterparts though i still have some issues with them visually; what's with the weird patches of different colours? but other than that, i find the increased danger from them moving together as a unit than individuals more threatening and for good reason; they can down a high leveled player in seconds... SECONDS on NORMAL difficulty which is the closest thing to easy mode. arguably, they've been capable of that in the first game but it seems to occur much more frequently in this game. so, the challenge factor is there. add to the fact that even special units now spawn in small groups of their own, and you've got the spices you're looking for in a game. the added extra variants of the mooks on higher difficulty settings also makes the game quite superior to it's original.
on the other hand, now missions have a stealth option which i think they've adapted from the original game's Diamond Heist mission. because of the way, the game generates its maps, guards, cameras and civilians on a random procedural engine (i think?), each mission is going to be different and the most frustrating part is when a mission goes south when an unexpected guard turns an unexpected corner. this is largely alleviated by the Spotter perk but the chief problem of the urge for players to stealth a mission entirely is there. this part of the game no longer feels as lighthearted as it should be.
ironically, a core strength of the original game i feel was the lack of stealth missions, where the robbers will fight their way to a target, or out of it. granted, the ability to stealth a mission should warrant a bonus, but i find the lack of non-stealth missions a bit of an issue. perhaps it's the way Payday 2's current missions are done. they don't feel as over the top as the old game, especially the crane lifting up a limo and smashing it through a building over the top. Payday 2 needs more of this i feel if it's going to try and beat it's original. just that flair that's missing.
introducing cash to spend in the game was a clever move because now robbers have a greater motivation to go and acquire money and conduct more heists. the in-game cash also allows players to build multiple weapons in different ways and styles and do the same for masks for cosmetics sake. because of how the game's difficulty increases, it becomes important for players to upgrade their arsenal accordingly. Payday 2 has a drop system that's much more intuitive than TF2's, but that would be because Payday 2 is a paid to play game as opposed to TF2's current free to play system which is unlikely to be changed at all. the drop system in Payday 2 occurs immediately after a successful heist and all players choose from their own hand of 3 cards, so it's almost guaranteed that the players will get something, it might not be what they want though. this method unlocks extra goodies like weapon modifications, masks and masks improvements, which the players have to purchase later with their in-game cash. so, this works well. the skills system has improved, though currently, it kills a core function of the original game, but i'll get to that soon. the skill trees have changed but for most of the part, they're recognizable because of the skills or perks involved. this fleshing out of the skill tree certainly adds depth to the game and a feeling of individuality; you can customize a robber and feel more like yourself in the game or you know just make him a more bad ass robber than he already is. but now, we get to the flaw. in Payday 1, you were able to make a cop or SWAT cuff themselves regardless of what weapon you're holding, so long as you injured him enough without killing him and that it wasn't during a police assault. in Payday 2, it feels much more complicated. you must equip certain weapons to intimidate police while injuring them without killing them and most importantly, unlock that specific perk in order to do so. this means that on higher difficulty modes where respawning is non-existent, capturing police becomes much more difficult than it should be. so, bad mark there on what would have otherwise been a flawless record.
the music in the Payday franchise has always been high-octane heart-pounders to get you into the mood. Payday 2's music isn't bad but not quite as i expected. Payday 2's mission music is terrifically brilliant and the music changes each time rather than have a mission specific music like the old game, good mark there. unfortunately, the original's menu, failure and set up music feels more happy and closer to the mood of the moment. Payday 2's music in these areas don't feel lighthearted; they feel more heavy and perhaps a little too serious.
final score? i'd have to say that while Payday 2 certainly has a lot of promise, but it isn't exactly the game that will completely replace Payday 1. Payday 2 feels more of a slightly different game than a sequel, which isn't bad considering what happened to Left 4 Dead 2 and the overflow of CoD titles. Payday 2 lacks the charm of the original, some of the key aspects of the game like being able to take cops hostage easier. On the flipside, it does have a voice of its own in that it brings new toys to the table, money you can actually use to improve your character in game, a cleverer skill set, some interesting characters and a general improvement to missions though more overt shooting missions will help that case better. is it worth your money? yes, it is. it might not be a true sequel, then again most movie sequels don't do much better than the originals, though at least in this case, it's not a rehash of the same things over and over again.
