So finally after 2 years of this game being in circulation, and my friends telling me "Hey Dan, you should get this" I finally caved in to peer pressure and bought it, and that was totally not down to the fact that the GOTY version was on sale for £7.50 *inconspicuous whistling*
Where to begin...
Well it wasn't what I was expecting, that's for sure. I assumed because of the mainly multiplayer focus of the game that it would actively punish me for not playing with friends. I was wrong. The AI is helpful, its not useless, can actually kill people, and as far as helping you up when you get downed is concerned they put their life above yours.
The gameplay is great, its nice to have a game which gives the players so many ways to achieve an objective (mission dependant). You can do the missions quiet or loud, meaning you can go in kill few people, steal the stuff you came for and leave without triggering the alarms, or you can go in all guns blazing, let the alarms trip, and fight wave after wave of police. My only real complain about the missions is they can get some what repetitive with a slight variation on the themes, but again its typical of my rocky relationship with the shooter genre, because I just get bored of it and stop playing. (Borderlands 2 for instance). The 5 different difficulty settings (Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Overkill, Death Wish) make each mission more replayable too, as well as the special quality of Pro Job, meaning that if you fail you cant restart it, but you get more reward if you succeed. It has the effect of adding a fresh layer of icing to a mouldy crumbling cake. You will however get increasingly frustrated at the drill.
The graphics, even on the lowest setting, as I cant go ultra high due to my PC having the gaming power of the average household toaster, still looks really nice. Its better than The Order 1886 as it doesn't put how the game looks over replayability, mechanics and playability. The game does crash more often than the average plane, but its nothing that I cant deal with, because it doesn't take 3 million years to boot up again, and if im in a heist when it happens I only loose the XP and Money gained up until that point.
The Classes are good enough to keep a nice variety to the play styles, some being more effective than others. The Skill trees make it worth investing in more than one otherwise you will end up being forced to struggle in certain missions. Perks are a nice addition, however I was disappointed that I couldn't respect them, as I could with the Skills. That and they were very ill advertised, as I only found them at level 40 after being told about them and how to get to them by another player (thanks again Tim).
The characters are, well, characters in their own right. to begin with you have the charismatic leader, Dallas, the token black guy, Chains, the charismatic leaders brother who replaces a guy from the first game, Houston, and the tech guy, Wolf. However the DLC for the game (Some free, some paid, some from pre-ordering other games) Adds:
Clover, the Irish lady
Bonnie, the Scottish Lady
Sokol, the Russian hockey player
John Wick, the film promotion
Dragan, the croatian cop
Jacket, the Hotline Miami 2 deluxe edition reward, and character from the first game
and last and by no means least
Hoxton, the British guy from Sheffield, Yorkshire, from the first game, whose voice actor was busy when the second game was being made, so they said he was arrested, and then you rescue him.
The Mask collectable system and weapons collection system are well implemented. Masks do fuck all, Weapons kill people, Weapons can have silencers .etc added to them to make them better at killing or easier to hide, masks can be customised, to look unique. Obviously some weapons are better than others... and this is where my problem is.
The best weapons come from DLC. This makes the game somewhat pay to win. However some of the worst weapons come from DLC too, making it pay to whine. I will say that even without the best weapons you can still do pretty good, but it does make the balance of the game unfair to some extent.
Also there is too much DLC for the game, although props to overkill for making a portion of it free.
In all, its a fun game, good with friends, good without, runs well, decent graphics, nice community
However as one Steam review put it
"The real heist is on your wallet"
and one more thing, FUCK THE DRILL.
Link: http: http://store.steampowered.com/app/218620/
Level: 8 (+1 for the inclusion of a character from my hometown)
Dan
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