Payday 3

PAYDAY 3 isn’t the seismic improvement over PAYDAY 2 many might have been hoping for, but it is a refinement of the formula with a few fun new additions. Though the number of heists is currently at a modest number, they have a decent amount of replayability whether you use meticulous stealth or go in guns blazing. Despite a very troubled opening week, there are firm foundations for lots more heisting content to come here. Chains, Dallas, Wolf and Hoxton have come out of their latest heist with some scars to show for it, but with a few bags full of cash nonetheless.

All in all I think the game is a fun experience and full of action. The amount of heists leaves some to be desired but hopefully more will be added as updates come along. The launch weekend was pretty rough with some bad server issues but are gone as of now. The competitive price as well as fantastic gameplay, customization and graphics make this a worthwhile title for those into shooter like games. The several approaches of each heist really make for a pleasant experience as well. It helps to keep from being linear and boring as many different outcomes can occur.

Payday 3's eight heists are as challenging as they are entertaining; the inevitable shootouts with the cops are frantic and fun, and the redefined objectives will make onboarding newer players easier than ever. At long last, Payday has become the Ocean's Eleven/Point Break hybrid its fans have always wanted it to be.

Payday 3 is another fantastic entry in a series of well received games. It may fall short in its storytelling and player onboarding, but it excels in providing an interesting plot, satisfying gameplay, well-designed levels, smart enemy A.I., and refined gameplay systems. While it's easy to recommend this for players that have access to a team to play with, the same cannot be said about those that don't; an issue that can hopefully be addressed with the changes and updates outlined in Payday 3's roadmap. Payday 3 is smart, fun, and chaotic in every way and is sure to rope in even more members into the Payday Gang.

Payday 3 takes its beloved predecessor’s multiplayer heist formula and elevates it across the board, making for a thrilling experience, provided you’ve got a crew to play with.

As any larcenist knows, all the best robberies begin discreetly before snowballing into a wild frenzy soundtracked to upbeat electronic music. Payday 3 does this with brimming style, before running away with the money.

The latest entry in the heist series has the potential to become a worthy successor to Payday 2 which managed to bring together a huge community of players. We just need to wait until the developers provide more content and add some pretty basic online functionalities that are missing (e.g. voice chat), because the game’s current state leaves a lot to be desired.

The joy of pulling off an elaborate heist is alive and well within Payday 3, if you’ve got the crew to back it up. Holding out against an unstoppable police force or sneaking around undetected to haul out as much cash as you and your friends can carry is a blast, but it’s an experience that is severely hampered when queuing up solo. The mission structure and heist objectives are enjoyable, but carry risks of becoming repetitive when things go loud, which they often will when playing with strangers.

Payday 3 brings back and updates the formula that made Starbreeze's heist game famous, although not always making the right choices. The decision to sell it at a budget price and the inclusion in the Xbox Game Pass catalog from day one inevitably affected the amount of content available at launch, which was lower than expected, while the progression system must be fixed as soon as possible. However, there is no doubt that the experience works well, although it's still very much tied to the past, and will probably express its full potential in the coming months.

In theory, Payday 3 offers an engaging gameplay loop, and trying to achieve a perfect Stealth heist is both challenging and fun to attempt. However, what Starbreeze’s new game does well is mired down in poor gunplay, lackluster optimization, excessive grind and always online requirements.

It’s an easy recommend for series fans, just don’t expect it to be the lumbering behemoth that was Payday 2… yet.

In summary, Payday 3 shows promise with its solid core mechanics, but suffers from server issues, matchmaking problems, and a lack of content at the time of the review. Character progression is slow and frustrating, and there’s a need for improvements and additional content to enhance the overall experience. Subscribers to the Xbox Gamepass may find it worth trying out, but the game falls short of its potential.

If you’re a returning player of the Payday franchise, you’ll like what Payday 3 offers with multiple heists and keeping its core gameplay design intact. Increased visual fidelity is a big bonus and adding cross-play to increase the player base allows for even quicker matchmaking when the servers are actually online. The first two weeks were difficult, but once in, the confined sandbox design of cooperative heist play is still fun and addicting. Going above those means and looking for something more will mean you will be introduced to the grind of unlocking skills and more guns, no matter how much money you make on a heist. When Payday 3 is clicking on all cylinders, it’s a proper upgrade to the previous game and you won’t care about the grind, but rather the fun that is had on each mission.

Ultimately, PAYDAY 3 offers a fun combination of stealth and action/shooter gameplay in a way that no other game outside of the series does, and that certainly has merit in its own. But it still needs a lot more content if it's ever to replace its established predecessor at some point, and it needs significant redesign in the key area of progression to avoid alienating its audience.

Payday 3 gets most of the important stuff right: the heists offer a nice variety and encourage players to experiment with different systems and mechanics. Customization is deep and will keep players on the hook for dozens and dozens of hours. But it’s hard to overstate the blunder that is the online foundation that this game was built on. It makes Payday 3 needlessly frustrating and was the cause of one of the most severe online game outages I’ve seen in a long time. Payday 2 was a game that grew into a co-op masterpiece in the years following its release, so I’m confident that Payday 3 will only improve as time goes on.

Payday 3 follow the path created by its previous episodes, without taking any risk. The fun is there, just as the "déjà vu" feeling is.

Having great customization options, weapons, and an easy-to-do progression system, Payday 3 has the right ingredients to be a great shooter. On the other hand, with no offline mode and a lack of content, it might be hard to get more players to jump into the world for the long run.

The biggest strength of PayDay 3 is the equal treatment of stealth and open combat. Regardless of playstyle, this heist simulator provides a lot of fun, especially with friends - even if there's no shortage of rough edges that spoil the overall experience. The truth is, that - not counting previous installments - there's no other game like it on the market, and PayDay 3 is simply more thoughtful and better designed in terms of gameplay than predecessors.

Right now, Payday 3 is a foundation. The heisting itself is better than it’s ever been, with quality of life changes, more confident level designs, and improved stealth mechanics that make it stand above Payday 2. But in making the jump to it, you’re also giving up the years of updates and general stuff Payday 2 offered. If you’re a newcomer to the series, or a lapsed crook coming back to it, this is a great jumping on point. If you’re already invested in the series, you might find it difficult going back to basics.

Payday 3 is a solid step forward for my favorite heist simulator franchise, even though that step is a lot smaller than I’d hoped due to a lack of content and the unsurprising but still majorly annoying bugs and performance issues. The awesome combat, greatly improved AI, and especially the stealth options are so massive they alone justify this as a full sequel, and the new and improved heists with clear phases to navigate them are absolutely fantastic. I just wish there was more loot in the proverbial vault at the outset, and that Starbreeze would have used its years of experience in order to ensure this was a more robust and far more stable launch. I’m confident Payday 3 could become the sequel we all deserve with a year or two of updates – for now, it’s a nice start.

Payday 3 could be one of the slickest co-op shooters around, but it's mired by a grindy progression system and its always-online nature. It needs some time to cook before it's worth digging in.

While PAYDAY 3 will no doubt please series veterans and newcomers, it's still a few updates a way from being definitively better than PAYDAY 2. When everything is working seamlessly, it offers some of the highest highs in the series thus far, but frustrating omissions and questionable progression design restrain PAYDAY 3's ability to be consistent.

Co-op action with thieves continues, and while the foundation is good, the game needs time for the authors to expand it sufficiently. Above all, it has only few maps, especially when compared to the previous game.

It has received high expectations from many fans, but it falls far short of surpassing the previous game that was created over the course of 10 years. Irrational matchmaking, lackluster content, and a UI that is unmatched in its inconvenience all raise concerns about the future of the Payday series itself.

With the generous post-launch support that Payday 2 received over years, only time will tell if the same treatment can address the glaring issues with Payday 3's current progression system and evident lack of content when compared to its previous iteration. But it has established a strong foundation for the new, elaborate heists that it has drastically improved upon, inciting you to play Payday in ways you couldn't in the past. If you're more concerned with just having a good time pulling off the perfect robbery with some friends, Payday 3 features rich new challenges and satisfying stealth objectives to keep you entertained for some time. But if you need tangible rewards to keep you around after you've experienced Payday 3's limited number of heists, then its unrewarding grind might keep its limited loot behind a vault door you aren't willing to wait around to crack open.

A routine racket of fun first-person shooter and stealth gameplay and creative heists mired by always online issues and lack of content.

Now I wasn’t expecting Payday 3 to match its predecessor in terms of quality right off the bat (and let’s be fair, Payday 2 is a much different animal today than when it launched), but even with my expectations lowered a bit, I was still pretty disappointed with what we got.

Payday 3 introduces a few changes to its decade-old arcade heist formula, and yet still feels very much like a product of a bygone era. Returning fans will find many missing features and lack of content to grumble about, while newcomers were turned away with unplayable servers during launch week, and it's hard to tell if either group will be back.

Payday 3, from a performance perspective, is an unsightly abomination, which veers unpredictably and drastically between visually-impressive beauty, and screen-tearing, game-breaking insensibility. Its small map pool, inconsistent mission design, and low-quality cutscenes consisting merely of a few PNG files accompanied only by VO and the OST, all collide to form something that can best be described an an early access game. Something that, with the benefit of several years' redemption, might one day live up to the high standards it chose to set for itself. But today is not that day.

Payday 3 is fun to play, but there would be so much more potential in the game. More stealth features could make things more varied and better. Particularly because the shooter gameplay has also some weaknesses like the spongy controls.

Payday 3 expands on the familiar concept, but doesn't go far enough to completely inspire. There's equal parts light and shadow here.

Payday 3 is a game that looks like it ticks the right boxes to look like a next-gen game and nothing else. The game offers a fun and addicting gameplay loop but it's unfortunately bogged down by a series of bugs and glitches that hamper the experience overall. It also doesn't help that the game's launch state is one of the worst in recent memory in a year that had excellent game releases.

Time will tell if Starbreeze can build upon the baseline it has built. As it stands, PAYDAY 3 is worth dipping your toes into for the curious, but almost certainly worth waiting a while longer to see if it reaches its full potential.

Payday 3’s high-octane action and extravagant heists make it another iconic entry into the heist shooter franchise, but it is ultimately held back by a lackluster user interface, matchmaking issues, and online DRM. While these problems can be addressed in later patches — as Starbreeze proved with its post-launch support for Payday 2, the game ends up feeling a little half-baked in its current state.

Payday 3 is a competently made and fairly polished heist-’em-up but while stealth gets an upgrade, the shooting is the same as its decade-old predecessor. Hitman-esque levels provide a nice distraction, but this feels like a foundation for Payday 3 as a live service game rather than a total product.

PAYDAY 3 offers a cooperative gameplay experience with an array of heists and a progression system that has its merits. However, it’s not without its share of issues. AI inconsistencies, unremarkable objectives, and underwhelming audio-visual elements tarnish the experience. While it’s an imperfect addition to the series, it still offers a taste of the criminal underworld. Like any complex caper, it has its moments of brilliance, but also a few unexpected hiccups along the way.

Payday 3 is brilliant fun, but it wears thin very fast. Despite its phenomenal shootouts and the thrill of pulling off a heist unseen, other tweaks are a step back from Payday 2 and the eight levels on offer won’t keep casual players entertained for long.

Payday 3 at launch is a usable starting point, while we wait for Starbreeze to bring in more content in the months and years to come.

With a desire to attract more players to a cops and robbers experience, it’s clear Payday 3 is still continuing to improve itself while aiming to add more content over time.

Heist shooter with a captivating stealth system. Sadly the game is hardly more than a basic framework and also struggles with severe server problems.

Could it be improved over time with updates? Absolutely. The previous game has a long history of improving implementations and walking back on changes. As a fan of the series, this regrettably feels par for the course. However, a new entry should have a strong start and not be equal parts fun and frustrating. It could be fantastic in a year if not less, but right now it’s just squandered potential.

The state in which the game was released cannot be described as anything other than problematic. The game is very difficult to play without Discord friends, and it is rarely a pleasant and fun experience. [Issue#330]