PAYDAY 3 PC Review – Great Fun When it Works

PAYDAY 3 is a four-player cooperative heist shooter developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by Deep Silver. This third iteration to the series released on September 21, 2023, on PC, Xbox and PlayStation and sees original heisters Dallas, Wolf, Chains and Hoxton back again for higher stakes crimes. Connectivity issues aside, this is a natural progression for the series with great graphics, decent gunplay, and potential for some awesome co-op sessions in the future.

The game is set in New York and in addition to the four core heisters from PAYDAY 2, two new heisters have joined their ranks in a new story campaign. Pearl is an expert con artist and infiltrator who is as comfortable running street cons as she is rubbing elbows with the rich and famous if it brings home the prize. Then there is Joy who is a genius hacker and security expert. She has a complete lack of respect for authority and a twisted sense of humour, but she’s all aces in a heist.

There are eight heists in eight new locations with short story cutscenes to connect them together including bank robberies, raiding an armoured truck on a bridge, jewellery store robberies, casino robberies, and more. The new heist types are more complex and challenging than the heist types in PAYDAY 2 and require solid communication amongst your teammates. PAYDAY 3 gives us a few options on how to infiltrate a building, utilise hostages to buy our crew a bit more time and control the crowd, and utilise the environment to make our escape.

My first game took around 5 minutes to get three out of four players in the lobby and we eventually loaded in with a bot to fill the fourth spot, and off we went on the first bank robbery. Having played PAYDAY 2 back in the day, I like the stealthy approach to stake out security cameras, guard locations and getting eyes on the prize, forming a plan of attack and more importantly, a plan to escape. However, without voice comms to the other two random players, I had to just hope they were the same playstyle.

Heists now have phases, and they always start with a stealth phase that allows you to walk around the mission area relatively undetected. While things started off well with this random group of players, it wasn’t long before they had tripped security cameras and set the alarms off. When a heist goes loud, the crew will mask up and the phase moves to negotiation. Hostages are taken, and authorities are alerted to the situation. You can grab a hostage and use them as a shield which can help buy some time. Next comes the anticipation phase where a countdown timer signals when the cops will start the assault phase.

As the assault phase commences, you and your team can begin with progressing the primary objective of that heist. In my first example we had to set a thermite charge above the bank vault. The cops kept turning on the sprinklers which threatened to put the fires out, so we had to find the panel to switch them off, all the while some cops were sneaking into the building trying to get to attack positions. If you don’t take them out, you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed. Basic cops are easy to take out with a headshot, but stronger cops start to arrive on the scene.

The No Return phase begins when the heist is at the last legs. There’s no use holding position and trying to take out the cops because they just keep spawning until either you all die or you all escape. In our bank robbery scenario, our escape vehicle had pulled up down the street, but bollards had been erected to stop us. We had to run to either ends of the kill zone to deactivate the bollards, and then make sure all three real players were standing in a zone near the van to escape.

The game is therefore much more enjoyable when you’re playing with real life mates and you’re barking orders over voice chat. My next half a dozen attempts at games had one or two players join the lobby but quit within a few seconds of waiting, so I ended up playing a lot of games with just bots. This is fine as the AI is generally pretty good and if you get knocked down, they are quick to get you back up and are great at dropping ammo bags.

However, when it came to carrying bags of cash and stolen goods to an escape point, I had to do all the bag collecting and running. I don’t know if there is a command to get them to help grab the loot bags, but I couldn’t see one. Thankfully there were heaps of boxes and crates to hide behind and block line of sight. I did get downed a few times but managed to complete the mission. Completing a mission gains you XP in the weapons you used, unlocking a variety of attachments and modifications so you can customise weapons to your playstyle.

PAYDAY 3 has suffered a fair number of connectivity issues in terms of matchmaking, server connections dropping and other problems. Thankfully I haven’t been affected much myself, likely due to my West Aus time zone not being US prime time, however it has meant that I hardly had any games with fully human teams. If you are yet to take the plunge on buying the game, perhaps hold off a little longer until these issues are smoothed out. Starbreeze have been quite communicative on X/Twitter about the issues so hopefully they’re resolved quickly.

Overall, PAYDAY 3 is a worthy third entry to the series but I wish matchmaking was improved as playing with bots gets tiring after a while. It’s much more fun to play this co-op with real life mates over voice comms, but bots will fill any gaps in your squad if matchmaking causes issues. Once these issues are sorted then this is will be an easy game to recommend if you’re into cooperative shooters. Whether you have played the previous games or are fresh to the series, PAYDAY 3 has something to appeal to everyone, but perhaps wait until matchmaking is improved.

This review utilised a Steam key provided by Plaion ANZ and PAYDAY 3 is out now on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.

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