PayDay: The Heist GamesCom 2011 Hands-On Preview

When we first arrived to see Payday: The Heist, we came with a basic knowledge of the game but with no particularly big expectations for it. We soon realised that this game is a definite hit and it really sparked our interest.

Resembling a lot of the film Heat, Payday: The Heist is a game where you play one of four criminals and you can select one of six heists to pull off. These heists are available on release straight away and you don’t have to level up, or play through the levels to unlock them. Therefore, if you play with a friend, you don’t have to wait until they have unlock a heist to play it. A few examples of these heists include: emptying the vault at the First World Bank, blowing the roof off a building to extract a safe via helicopter, trading hostages in an armored car hijacking, and a moonlit infiltration of a high-security headquarters. The heist which was shown us was one in the vault of a bank.

It’s a glorious day, and the sun is beating down on you as you have to enter the bank. You and your colleagues have to do a reconnaissance of the area, before locating the bank manager. Once you have found him you begin the heist by stealing the keys off him. You then have to kill off all the security guards, and take the customers and the bank tellers as hostages. You can prevent them from escaping by pressing a button and your criminal will say something along the lines of “Get down!” though, probably a lot ruder than that. Moreover, you can cable-tie your hostages, however, you have a limited supply of cable ties.

You then have to proceed through a number of objectives in order to complete the heist, though in between each objective you have ‘hordes’, as such, of authorities that are trying to stop you. The hordes gradually increase in difficulty as you have different kinds of authorities with different tactics. For example when you start out there are just ordinary police reinforcements, but then soon, they have armour, and then they have riot shields. After that they had snipers on the roofs of other buildings, and S.W.A.T. teams descending from the the top of the bank, and throwing in smoke grenades, obscuring your sight.

The game is dependant on the co-op play. You and your team have to work together and communicate with one another for the heists to go to plan and work effectively. You must devise a plan together and dish out jobs for your team to do, whether it be to do the objective, or to keep an eye on the hostages. You can play online or you can play with the AI, but there are always four players. If you are down, then your teammates can get you up again, and if you are taken into custody, if you have hostages then you can be traded with the hostage.

When you are low on ammo, you could communicate with your team and any spare ammunition can be distributed. Moreover, you can collect spare ammo from deceased authority officers. The bank was large and was spread over multiple floors so it was hard to cover your ground. This really plays on the cooperation between your partners because you have to communicate with one another.


This game looks incredibly interesting and was great fun with the cooperative play. PayDay: The Heist is a one-of-a-kind game and here at GameGrin, we’re surprised there hasn’t been anything like it yet. We are really looking forward to it and the further potential it has with the planned DLC after release date.

The game will be available on the PC via Steam and the PlayStation 3 via PSN and will be priced at a great value for money at around $20. It will be released on October 4th 2011.