Payday 3 review: Being bad feels damn good

“I smell bacon!” Shade, our heist team’s eye in the sky, shouts as the gloves come off and the clown masks go on. A moment ago, I was leaning inconspicuously against a wall, using a cellphone to monitor footage from the bug-sized camera I had so carefully hidden in the restricted VIP room of the jewelry store. The subterfuge is about to be traded for gunpowder, and we’re officially doing this the hard way. That security guard just HAD to press the whole “trespassing” thing. All hell breaks loose. My partner in crime begins mowing down the storefront, and then…two of the four players disconnect from the heist.

Payday 3 is a game that knows exactly what it’s trying to be. It has tons of heart, gripping action, suspenseful heists, and, unfortunately—one very frustrating error. Let’s get into it.

The freedom in anarchy

My first clue that Payday 3 was going to be an absolute riot came before I even loaded into my first heist. During a stylized and inky intro animation, a character remarked after learning that somebody had drained the teams’ bank accounts, “It’s a conspiracy theory…” To which another character promptly responded, “well, it’s actually happening…so it’s just a conspiracy.”

Payday 3 is filled with this kind of witty, tongue in cheek humor. It combines some of the meanest, most morally bankrupt ruffians with silly and sometimes downright wholesome one liners. The actual description of one of the weapons is “All the range of a sniper, all the Fuck You of an anti-material rifle.” I mean, come on—who can say no to that?

The writing and general vibe of Starbreeze’s FPS feels like the video game equivalent of that person who is just so unabashedly themself that you can’t help but be charmed. The developer didn’t seem to pander to anybody or play it safe with any aspect of the game—it just did its damn thing, and it’s truly refreshing.

There are two key gameplay elements that go together like vault doors and C4 in Payday 3: suave hijinx that feel straight out of Oceans 11—and action that feels like the lovechild of Tony Montana and a Tarantino screenplay.

A heist can be completed with such stealth that the bank won’t ever even know it’s been hit, or you can have your mask on and gun out before you even walk in the front door. What blows me away is that I can’t decide which approach is more fun. I was expecting to feel that I had “failed” a heist when the police were called and the shooting started, but part of me looks forward to it. It’s a ton of fun to pick locks, override security cameras, and blackmail jewelry store managers into opening biometric locks—but that fun is only enhanced by the knowledge that at literally any second during the heist, it can all change, and you’ll suddenly be just as focused on getting out alive as you are on securing expensive jewelry.

However, this “blink and you’ll miss it” change of pace can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing, which brings me to my primary complaint with the game: multiplayer matchmaking.

Blind Dating

Payday 3 doesn’t give you any say or input on what kind of heisters you are paired with in public matchmaking. If you’re hell bent on trying to stealth your way through a heist, you’d better have friends. Otherwise, you kind of just have to close your eyes and wish for the best—it’s anybody’s guess what your online party will be looking to do.

This creates a very frustrating online multiplayer experience, as it feels like the odds of landing three randos that all happen to be on the same page as you are damn near zero. More than likely, at least one player is going to quit the heist as soon as stealth is broken. It’s hard to blame those players, too. The game offers so many different ways to play, and then gives online strangers the ability to force you to play their way without even giving anyone a chance to talk it over.

Payday 3 is designed to be played online—so much so that there is not an option for offline play. It literally doesn’t have a single player mode. Gameplay is focused entirely on working together, and yet you can’t set a preference for playstyle when entering matchmaking, nor is there any sort of post-heist lobby where you can chat with the people you played with or vote to stay as a team. It’s like Starbreeze made a teamwork oriented game, and then actively tried to prevent players from being able to work as a team.

Payday 3 really is a great time, but only if you have a reliable group of friends to play with. It breaks my heart to say it, because there is SO much that the game does right—but until matchmaking is fixed, I recommend leaving this game in the vault with the other lesser value jewels.