Fittingly, PayDay 2 is a lot like a bank heist. If you pick your crew well, everything comes together like a well-oiled machine, and everybody gets rich. If, on the other hand, you leave the guy with the IQ of a toaster in charge of grabbing the money while you guard the hostages, you've booked...

Deep strategy; Terrific sound; Intense gunfights

Inconsistent graphics; Broken single-player

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

This game is great! The weapons are customize-able, the skill tree's are great, there is good play-ability as the game can be very challenging, the AI is good but it can be frustrating by not being able to issue orders and the police going berserk with blitzkrieg style assaults.

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.

I've been playing this all afternoon (release day) and it is amazingly fun and difficult. There are about 10 maps from what I have seen but there are randomized parts to each map that make it very different.

How is it that a scene in Saints Row 4 about a fake alien drug is enough to incur the wrath of Australia's classification board, yet a scene in Payday 2 where you're cooking up a few fresh batches of speed while you murder-kill hundreds of law enforcement officers doesn't even rate a mention?

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

Hooray at last something new!!! was getting really bored with the same old games ..then this came along and since then ive been totally hooked!...being a fan of HEAT and POINT BREAK and call of duty L4D this totally rocked my boat...even the tunes are very cool!.

Ken resorts to a life of crime in the follow-up to Overkill's unique co-op shooter. See how it fares in our full review.

+ Lots of job types; + Playing with friends is a blast; + Improved shooting mechanics; + Unique concept

Playing solo; Production values