If you've ever looked at a cashier register or bank and thought “I could totally rob that”, without actually acting upon the well laid out plan in your head, then congratulations, because you're an upstanding member of society. However, Payday 2 offers you the chance to act on these odd thoughts by putting you in control of some of the dangerous criminals to grace video games, without the jail time.

Released originally in 2014 by Starbreeze and 505 studios, this entire game is all about making obscene amounts of money from underworld jobs or heists that often see you tangling with the law in very messy ways. Whether you and your crew are masking up to take a half ton of gold from the nearby Harvey Trustee bank, chasing down a crazy Russian mafia leader with a fetish for cocaine or simply wrecking havoc on that shopping mall across the street, is up to you.

The game places an incredible amount of trust in the player straight away, offering up no tutorial, narrative or directions on where to go next. You simply have to figure out logically which option looks best in the menus for you, and if you're ready to jump head first into the insanity that is online co-op. Which isn't exactly helpful for the new players on this scene, as feels like the developers leave you floating in a canoe without a paddle.

Payday 2 thrives off the largest community on PC, boasting a healthy, expanding fanbase of around half a million members. This love and passion has moved to the next generation consoles in the form of the Crimewave edition, with newly added weapons, missions, characters and much, much more.
Having played the 'vanilla' version on the 360, the additions made to the PS4 edition are utterly astounding to see. Aside from a few graphical upgrades that should have been added much sooner, a couple of patches/lifts and a whole load of smoothing, this new edition also features every DLC pack that the PC has, barring just two missing.

With this community around it, Payday 2 has become something of a phenomena. The gameplay only becomes better with this fervour around it, as every person playing actually seems to care whether you succeed or not. In a nutshell, the objective of this entire game is to amass as much money as possible for your offshore accounts so you can retire early, on your own island, with a cocktail and sunny beaches.

Every job is graded using a simple difficulty system that dictates just how much you'll get upon completing whatever the job was. Normal jobs are easier than Very Hard jobs and as such, pay far less overall, and so on. At the end of every job, you and your crew will receive twenty five percent of what you earned, so it pays occasionally to try your hand at a Pro Job or three days of Very Hard against the police.

Variety in missions is something that Payday 2 doesn't lack, however the heavy focus on grinding up through ranks, while sometimes very fun, can really stifle your progress if you simply cannot bothered doing anything but that one missions that yields just over one hundred thousand in only five minutes.

This magical twenty percent is given directly to you, as pocket money, to spent on new weapons, perks for your class or to do nothing with. Choosing the right weapons and class to mix with your player style is actually incredibly crucial, more so than other shooters. Every unique perk tree in Payday 2 has a role in the mission both covert or otherwise and understanding which is capable of what can save you in tight spot.

Assuming you've got a ton of time to spare and about five million dollars of in-game spending money (plus the points from actually levelling up enough), then you'll be able to make each class totally viable and vital, regardless if you're online or not. A total of five classes means that you've got your work cut out for you when deciding what to upgrade carefully and later on, you unlock 'active' slots that allow you to swap between different sets entirely.

The Mastermind is best deployed at the front of the crew, as the skills in intimidation and scaremongering are invaluable when trying to control a crowd of civilians. But if things do go topsy turvy then you can always rely on them for the healing kits and god-like ability to revive players simply by shouting at them.
Both the Enforcer and Technician classes are primarily hard hitting, close quarters tanks who can run straight into a fortified building, take no damage, then break open a vault in ten seconds flat. Due to the perks from both trees that allow for fast entry and then explosive results, these guys are essentially the cream of the crew when it comes to defence or bank heists.
Lastly, the more stealthy classes, the Ghost and Fugitive, allow any player to take on a single mission without help because of their inherently low detection rate and focus on suppressed fire and clean kills that leave no trace.

Despite all these amazing bonuses added to the title over the past year, it still stands as a re-release for the next generation which is not something the market needs at the moment. The original versions were simply left behind to boot, without any explanation or additions made and while that makes sense, it's not fair to that section of the community.

Everything considered though, Payday 2 is some of the most fun you can have on any platform to date, with or without friends. Every asset comes together, working hand in hand in the system and even though the graphics aren't the most sensible or smooth from time to time, it is the closest thing we've got to actually being criminals and we love it.