Earlier today, through their Official PlayStation Blog, Sony announced Payday: The Heist – a downloadable PlayStation Network title set for release sometime in the future. Using the familiar first-person shooter design and structure, gamers will attempt to pull of heists in banks and prisons. They will also get the chance to try to take control of an armored vehicle and its cargo currency. The objective is quite simple, really – get the goods and make it out as alive as you possibly can.
It has been said that Payday: The Heist will be similar to Valve’s popular Left 4 Dead series, but it also sounds somewhat similar to the multiplayer modes in each of the two Kane and Lynch titles. The announcement mentioned that it will feature quite a bit of depth, with incentive to keep players coming back created by an experience-based unlock system for new weapons and accessories. Its graphics aren’t going to blow you away, but addictive content is promised.
Like the titles it’s inspired by, this release is a multiplayer-focused title. The campaign’s six missions/scenarios are playable with bots in single player, but the experience is at its best when you take on the heists with up to three friends over the internet. Choose your approach (safe and steady or all out gunfire,) two completely different tactics that each yield different results – especially if you shoot the hostages, which ramps up the difficulty quite a bit.
Downloadable content is already in the works to add more content to what the title will release with. No details are available on that, but the chance to replay its six missions using different tactics (to achieve varied results,) is sure to allow for a decent amount of replayability.
Payday: The Heist does not yet have a release date or an estimated target window, but we do know that it’s being developed by Overkill Software – a studio headed by former Grin developer, Bo Andersson. His pedigree and experience come from working on the Tom Clancy’s: Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter ports for the PC, as well as Bionic Commando: Re-Armed, while he was working at the Swedish development studio.
It sounds quite interesting. We’ll see more of the criminal simulation next week at E3, which will be nice.