STAY WAY FROM THIS GAME IT Freezing LIKE CRAZY AND KICKS U OUT OF GAMES ALL THE TIME NOOO DLC AND ITS BEEN OVER A YEAR BEWARE DO NOT BUY THIS GAME TRUST ME THERE IS BETTER GAMES OUT THERE

Payday 2 was a great multiplayer PC game, but the port to consoles is lacklustre and monotonous. With little variety and gameplay and a damning introduction with little to nothing offered to beginners the rewards for persisting are not compelling enough for the early grind and frustration.

If you have yet to play the original payday, I'm not surprised. It was a download-only game released on Steam and PSN and never got an Xbox release. The premise of the game is that you are a heist-man.

It shipped pretty quick, but I am not a fan of this game. The FPS element of it is lacking compared to most modern shooters, and it's almost exclusively multiplayer.

Payday 2 is the follow up to 2011's Payday: The Heist, by Swedish studio Overkill Software (recently acquired by Starbreeze, developers of The Darkness and Chronicles of Riddick). It is a co-op heavy first-person shooter, where the goal is to basically be a dirtbag criminal.

Fun; intermittently addictive co-op gameplay; Skill trees and customizable equipment offer incentives; Good soundtrack

Difficulty level is wildly variable; Essentially no capacity for single-player; Weak graphics

Movies tell us the life of a successful criminal needs to be free from attachment. Unless you want to end up doing a dime in last season's orange jumpsuit, don't cozy up to anything you can't drop in thirty seconds when you smell those handcuffs coming around the corner.

Filled with tense heists and frantic gunplay; Lots of gritty underworld texture; Involved missions with plenty of variables to ease the repetition

Unplayable without a teammate or two; AI ranges from predictable to bad; Often devolves into uninspired horde mode gameplay

We sometimes yearn for an FPS that flips Call of Duty 's "shoot first, think later" script - and Overkill's heist-focused shooter, PayDay 2 , delivers that exact experience. Through its mix of stealth, strategy, and shootouts, PD2 keeps the combat experience fresh and engaging, even despite moments...

+ Engenders co-op strategy on par with, + Insane level of weapon and character customization; good value for $40

? What kind of ragtag heist group starts off

It's time for a history lesson. The heist genre goes back long before the original Payday or even the colourful antics of Kane & Lynch. It also pre-dates the GTA series. We can find its roots in arcade game Bonanza Brothers, Security Alert by First Star (both offering multiple locations to loot) and...

With friends, Payday 2 delivers a multiplayer experience unlike anything else. The levels are wonderfully complicated and the leveling system is incredibly deep. Too bad the learning curve keeps the game just out of arm's reach for most newcomers.

Having never played the original title I couldn't really compare this to the second outing, but the beta program was what persuaded me to part with my hard earned cash and purchase the Career Criminal Edition (pre-launch) in the first place.