Recent reviews by MissingNo

nice game, on the up side, the f2p model is fair (ONE EXCEPTION: There is a booster for ranked points. Admittedly i dont now yet how the ranking system works, but if its dependent on points that might be considered pay2win, at least pay to get a higher rank then you should have, aside from that, the loadout cards can be won or crafted by anyone, and the rarest cards (upwards of the bronze tier offer no additional advantage besides a changed look), credits can be earned steadily without grind thanks to the mission system (so far quite the best ive seen in a f2p, you get 3 missions every 3 hours, and you are free to abandon any mission you dont want and have it replaced with the next cycle), gameplay is easy and fun.
Downside: Unfortunately too little players. Can make the wait times eternally long if you play at more obscure times, and can end you with quite uneven teams (but thats an issue almost all shooters suffer from). Another issue for me is the imbalance between mercs, some are extremely useful, others are like a downgraded version of a stong one. Take as example: Aura and Sawbone. Both can instant rez with a defib, but while sawbonez can only equip smg's , aura can equip the strongest smg aviable to sawbonez, or one very strong shotgun and an ok shotgun. The imbalance between these two doesnt end there. In addition to the defib sawbonez has a maximum of 3 big medipacks he can drop anywhere for pickup. These medikits heal over time, and only as long as you take no damage. Meanwhile, Aura deploys a med tower which generates an insanely powerful aoe instant heal effect, working also in combat (can be quite annoying if you have a peashooter and fight someone in that field) . The cooldown for one health pack is shorter then auras tower, but all 3 are about the same if not higher, and aura can pick her tower up to shorten it.

short: 2.5/10

explained:

positive:

-) fun to play with friends (self explanatory and thats the biggest point for it)

-) scenario/play on the evil side (sure, there are enough games playing the criminal like gta or saints row, but not focused on heists and in a coop shooter)

-)music (ive included it because a lot of people seem to like it, but thats a matter of taste and not really valid for everyone, other sounds are terrible)

-) low requirements, pretty much everyone can play it

-) community (overall welcoming and helpful)

-) weapon selection (lots of them)


negative:

-)weapon selection (while there are many, as noted above, most are useless, some even reskins sold as DLC, and about half are locked in DLCs)

-) terribly generic: although the game is a shooter, the shooting elements equal those you can find in indie games programmed by a single intern as project at home.

-) Ai, See above. Must have been programmed by the same intern during his lunchbrakes. It seems to know the following states: patrols: following in intervals a few different fixed routes. advance: advance towards the player. shoot: what it does the entire time. hold: when they are close enough to you. Usually as far away from cover as possible. crouch: what it says. Its also their taking cover. if they happen to stand behind something, by chance. roll: rolling out of the line of fire. that also means, if they get hit while mostly in cover, they roll out in the open. Follow: For bot teammates, or hostages. pathfinding is almost non existent, shooting is managed by two aimbots (two different ones. The stormtrooper: hits 1 of 15 shots, even if you stand point blank, and the sniper, hitting with every shot and doing most of the damage you will receive. They hit from anywhere on the map. if you pay a bit of attention you can spot them and test it, and indicator for a stormtroper would be if a enemy is close to you, shooting, but the shots go high above you. a sniper can be found if the indicator is showing constant damage from the same side. might be hard to spot, can be on the other side of the map ) (you can see the ai holding their aim trough walls and such) And thats it.

-)buggy mess/terrible coding. The game is in a sorry state, with bugs (some gamebreaking) well known since the release still unfixed, inexcusable considering the constant spam of new DLCs. Includes NPCs spotting trough walls and especially stairs (if you are on a stair and an npc steps on it, its, disregard of difficulty and line of sight, and almost instant alarm), objectives might not trigger/work, enemies glitch or teleport (the worst are the cloakers), crimenet (the room browser) is a disaster, the ai might just decide to ignore your commands, some perks & skills wont work properly, guns might be bugged (like no recoil on the minigun), and many more.

-) DLC: horrible spam, at increasing release rate ( 11 new DLC !!!!!! yes, eleven, between Feb. 2015 and 22.Oct. 2015) of usually underwhelming DLCs

-) advertising: Overkill got payed by others to advertise them, leading to: the addition of John Wick (but at least for free), and, the Alessio heist. Pay 7€ to be allowed access to advertisement! Others are cross cooperations with other studios/games, like Chivalry (the content for chivalry players was free, payday players have to pay, it contains some of the mentioned weapon reskins), or Hotline Miami ( If you buy the Miami DLC you also have to own HL:M to access all of the DLC content)

-) no mods: Overkill never released any modding tools for PD2, but that didnt stop the community from creating a host of useful tools and mods. Overkill made them impossible to use starting with crimefest 2015. Allegedly they want to fix that.

-) long-term motivation/variety: The game has little long-term motivation. After a couple of hours youve seen every heist ten times, reached 100, went infamy, reached 100 again, but still, its same ♥♥♥♥, different day, it gets boring. A huge factor there is, that the game actually has little variety, and no difference in approach, no tactics. In the end, it comes down to two ways: 1) Loud. Run in, start the objective (usually drilling), spend the next 10-40 minutes shooting thousands of bots with the classic terrible ai, run out. 2) Stealth. The possibilities this should offer. And still, there are actually none. For every map there are fixed paths, the only variation being the (around 4) different setups for cameras the random paths the guards take. So you crawl along the ever same way, hoping the ai wont bug out and spot you trough walls, do the ever same objectives in the ever same way. Thats it. Both ways would offer so much possibilities. But OK lacks the imagination, or will to do anything.

-) customer support/developer/customer-dev relations: Once one of the biggest + PD2 had. OK was seen as a studio making games for people to enjoy, games that they want to play themselves. They promised to fix the bugs, regular free content, they communicated with the playerbase.
There was some disharmony from the beginning, even growing over time, take the abysmal port to the consoles (with OK reaction to it for the worst of all, the XBOX one port being and advice to buy the PC version), free content came slow and in small bits, bugs werent fixed, while the number of paid DLCs increased, and even advertisement DLCs were introduced.
But with the crimefest 2015 Overkill took the cake. A game ridden with DLC, bugs and broken&unredeemed promises gets microtransaction, as a reward in an event that was supposed to fulfill one of eh vows from the developers, namely adding free content, and thus breaking a second promise from the devs, never to add microtransactions. (see here: http://i.imgur.com/RMqAoie.png). Now microtransactions in non f2p titles are to opposed in every way possible, unless you want to see them become (even more then they already are) gaming standard, like the "2009-MW2-Kotick: raise prices of video games by 20%", releasing unfinished games, Early Access or the introduction of DLC instead of Add-ons.
But thats not even where it stops. These skins, unlike the ones known from CSGO actually boost the stats of your guns, and thus take a step from cosmetic microtransactions in full price games, which are bad enough, to the well known pay to win f2p microtransactions in full price games. (And, for " Oh its a coop game, what does it matter". See above. Allow them a single foot in the door, and before you know whats happening, they are inside). With the update they also altered the gun stats (the rarer the skin, the higher the boost) , making many of them, yes, including your DLC guns, almost useless. Now its: So you are not hitting anything with that LMG you bought for 3€ Does the damage of the gun you got in the 7$ casino heist suck? Well, lucky you, there is a skin just to reduce this nasty recoil, and another one for the damage go ahead, and pay up, maybe you get lucky, most likely not, but hey, keep paying, sooner or later you get it or not. Oh, and talking of DLCs, you can get skins for DLC guns, even if you dont own them, so dont forget to buy all DLCs now while they are on sale, so nothing can go wrong when you gamble /s.
And we are still not at the end of it. With the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that followed, came some revelations that will still be a surprise to many. It seems, "borrowing" ideas from the modders in the community and sell them as DLC was not too low for OK to do (shouldnt be surprising given the theme of the game): For instance the tiara was already made a mask ages ago by steam user I am not a spy, driving vehicles, especially scummy, the FBI files, a ripoff from PD2stats, you can find the story on the website ( if it is already down, to make it short the owner was promised cooperation and informed, he was even invited to the OK studios, then they just blocked him off and backstabbed him).