PAYDAY 2

 Fittingly, Payday 2 is a lot like a bank heist. If you pick your crew well, everything comes together like a well-oiled machine, and everybody gets rich. If, on the other hand, you leave the guy with the IQ of a toaster in charge of grabbing the money while you guard the hostages, you’ve booked yourself a one-way ticket to San Quentin. Like most co-op games, Payday 2 is only as good as the people you're playing with, but when everyone involved plays it the way it's meant to be played, the rewards include challenging, high-tension action, and intense running gun battles.

The core four-player co-op gameplay is really strong, as are the many systems and mechanics that feed into it. Crime.Net is your principal gameplay mode, where you'll choose missions from an interactive city map and get matched up with some partners in crime. Things like safe, guard, and camera placement are randomized every time you play a mission, keeping you and your buddies on your toes at all times, but in a creative and thematically appropriate idea, you get dropped in to case the joint as civilians first so you can get an idea of what to expect. Though it might sound boorish, it's actually one of the best parts of the experience. I never felt more like an uncatchable thief than when I started calling out guard positions to my teammates while waltzing through a jewelry store undetected.

Walking around the maps can be a jarring experience, though, due to some graphical inconsistencies. Out in the streets, environments feel believable thanks to impressive daytime lighting and some truly authentic-looking architecture. But that believability crumbles the moment you step inside, where the geometry is so basic, and the textures so flat, that you'd think you were playing a different game. Both could definitely use an extra round of bug fixes, though – I wanted to immerse myself in the fantasy of being a big-money bank robber, but an endless stream of snafus kept shattering it. Invisible walls? Check. Endlessly repeating civilian character models? Everywhere. By the time I noticed I could stand inside of innocent bystanders, I wasn't even surprised anymore.

Thankfully, the excellent sound design does a lot of heavy lifting, rescuing some of the atmosphere. Rifle fire rings out across the streets as beautifully as a church choir, and the muffled sound of a guard getting plugged with a silenced 9mm feels ripped right out of a good caper movie. Paired with a wide variety of well-animated hit reactions, the sound effects give PayDay 2's gunplay a punchiness that invited me to pull the trigger again and again. The dynamic soundtrack isn’t quite as memorable, but musical flourishes accompany each shift in pace, cuing you in that you need to either buckle down for a big firefight, or haul ass towards that escape van when the cops are hot on your tail.

But unlike its predecessor, that won’t happen every time you play – at least, if you play well – because PayDay 2 actually recognizes and rewards a smart, stealthy approach to bank robbery. Though some of the multi-day missions have unavoidable armed conflicts, most heists allow for a skilled crew to ace them without the cops ever getting involved. Disabling alarms, silently taking out guards, and effectively controlling civilian crowds all have a huge impact on how fast and how severe police intervention will be. A flawless heist is incredibly tough to orchestrate, but it IS possible, and that possibility kept me chasing perfection match after match.

Part of why it's so challenging, and alluring, is all the different details and elements that play meaningful roles. Downing security guards means you'll have to answer their radios to avoid alerting others. You'll need to balance your load-outs between mobility, utility, and concealability. Four robust skill trees affect everything from the kinds of gear you're proficient with to your skill at hand-to-hand combat or lock-picking. The amount of depth is impressive when you add it all up, and the result is a surprisingly strategic affair disguised as a fast-paced shooter. But the best part of all is that even once things invariably go wrong and the focus shifts from executing a plan to thinking on your feet, PayDay 2 remains a blast. The ensuing firefights are long and intense, and the varied types of foes that get thrown your way require good resource management and quick thinking to best.

Which leads us to PayDay 2's biggest, most glaring issue: the offline single-player mode. It should be clear that this is a co-op game that’s meant to be enjoyed with four human players, but if you had any aspirations of making bank as a lone wolf, you might as well shelve them. These AI helpers aren't even capable of interacting with objectives or carrying money bags, making even the simplest, most straightforward missions nearly unplayable. They’re fine as mobile meat shields, but otherwise, they make PayDay 2 look like a much worse game than it is. It’s honestly baffling that they’ve even been included in their current state.

Played as intended with a group of friends, Payday 2 is much like one of its heists: things can get a little sloppy, but the potential payoff is big. Parts of its presentation are lacking, and the state of its single-player is criminal, but overall, it's a deep, addictive co-op shooter that tickled my inner burglar.