{"id":14773,"date":"2012-01-15T07:40:13","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T12:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=14773"},"modified":"2012-01-15T11:39:43","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T16:39:43","slug":"payday-the-heist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=14773","title":{"rendered":"Payday: The Heist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Payday was on sale recently, and I&#8217;ve been wondering what it was all about.  Rutskarn and Jibar (more commonly known by their hip-hop street names: Skarn and J-Bar) played through the game, and it told me everything I needed to know:<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tDXznlxXfR8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tDXznlxXfR8'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>Hilarious to watch.  Probably less so to actually play.<\/p>\n<p>So the pitch seems to be something along the lines of &#8220;Left 4 Dead styled dynamic gameplay&#8221; mixed with &#8220;Kane &#038; Lynch styled ugliness, awfulness, and childishness.)<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>No attempt to make your in-game goals follow any kind of logic.<\/strong> Don&#8217;t even get me started on the part where you painstakingly escort a horribly burned man through a downpour of gunfire by pointing a GUN at him because you have no way of getting the briefcase handcuffed to his non-bulletproof hand.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>The characters are generic clown-faced idiot men.<\/strong>  Is your favorite L4D character Francis? Or perhaps Bill? Maybe you appreciate the chance to play as your own gender with Zoe? Pfft.  Screw that.  Do you want to be clown-faced guy #1 or clown-faced guy #2?  Even stranger that they actually did create four characters, but made three of them brown-haired white men, and one of them a black man.  And then hid all their faces behind masks so you can&#8217;t tell who is who in the heat of battle.  WHYYYY!?!?\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gameplay that doesn&#8217;t seem to require or even encourage organization and teamwork.<\/strong> Try playing L4D like this and see how far you get.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dull foes that border on the offensive.<\/strong> I&#8217;m not sure what my threshold for number of police officer widows I want to create in a single game session, but I would say it&#8217;s probably less than this.  It would help if there was more variety among your foes.  Guys with bullet-proof riot shields that can slowly creep closer and closer until you headshot them. Guys with automatic weapons and minimal armor who sprint at you. Throw in an APC with a turret that&#8217;s almost impossible to destroy but has limited ammo. Guys rappelling from rooftops. Tear gas. Give the cops some San-Andreas styled combat taunts that show them to be ridiculously overbearing and corrupt tough guys so we can mow them down without needing to be emotionally numb first.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>No levity, no personality.<\/strong>  A bit of Tarantino-style dialog would have transformed this from an ugly macho slog to a witty, subversive adventure.  As it is, you&#8217;re just playing boring incompetent jerks who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penny-arcade.com\/comic\/2008\/03\/07\">murder hundreds of people<\/a> because they can&#8217;t think clearly.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Underneath the stupidity and primate grunting is a brilliant game, crying to get out. <\/p>\n<p>As I said, I haven&#8217;t played it. Maybe it&#8217;s pure wacky fun when you&#8217;re in the driver&#8217;s seat. I remain skeptical. <\/p>\n<p>EDIT: So it sounds like a lot of the different police types I mentioned are actually in the game.  That&#8217;s good to hear.  Still, it FEELS like a march of same-y foes. I&#8217;m not sure if they need the specials to show up more often, if they just need a more striking profile, or if Rutskarn needs to go easy on the methamphetamine before they record. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Payday was on sale recently, and I&#8217;ve been wondering what it was all about. Rutskarn and Jibar (more commonly known by their hip-hop street names: Skarn and J-Bar) played through the game, and it told me everything I needed to know: Link (YouTube) Hilarious to watch. Probably less so to actually play. So the pitch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-cast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}