When Payday 2 was announced for Nintendo Switch, I got incredibly excited. It’s not a game I’ve ever played, first-person shooters on the Nintendo Switch interest me (there aren’t too many) and I know that it’s had a serious following in the PC world ever since release.
Payday 2 doesn’t have much of a story. Essentially, you play as one of 17 characters (who don’t really differ a lot from each other outside of appearance), who takes part in a number of different heists across parts of the world. It’s a basic concept that works well for the most part. You get in, have the choice of going in all guns blazing or trying to sneak your way around and then have to return to your getaway van.You’ll play through each heist with three other people. You can either play through these missions by yourself (with bots), or with people online but here’s where my major issue with the game lies. The A.I in the game is fairly terrible. It’s just very hard to instruct them to do what you want and if you’re down, often they’ll just neglect to heal you which results in you needing to start the entire mission again.
Obviously, the game should be played online with friends, but with no voice chat on the Nintendo Switch and the game being $100 (utterly ridiculous for a five year old game). This game will live or die based on how well the community is populated, which makes Payday 2 a risky value proposition
Whilst the game is a fun FPS game for the most part, I still felt myself getting bored with the concept fairly quickly. The policeman feel lifeless and often just stand there until you shoot them, the worlds feel empty and without much threat and most of the missions are repetitive. In saying that, there’s not too many FPS games on the Nintendo Switch, so if you’re after some first-person action, it’s worth at least giving it a go.When it comes to performance, the game doesn’t look all that great, but what’s even worse is the fact that it runs extremely poorly. I play my Switch in handheld mode most of the time (which is always going to be slightly worse performance-wise) and the game chugs along at way less than 30FPS at times when you really need the frame rate to be solid. I’d often trying to be zipping around corners, trying to take down police only for severe slow down to be one of the main reasons that I’d die. The draw distance is also terrible and textures are blurry.
Not only is the game overpriced, it’s also behind in content. There’s less content of offer than with the PS4/Xbox One versions and the PC version is far ahead in terms of heists available. Apparently some of the weapons and newer masks are available, but it’s unclear whether we’ll be charged for this future content or whether it’ll be available at allDon’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of content here, but it just feels a little rich when it’s a full price game, released so long after release. I understand the need to reach new audiences and also those that potentially want to double dip to play Payday on the go, but it does feel like a step too far in terms of trying to make a quick buck. There are some Nintendo Switch exclusive features in terms of a new mask (Joy), touch-screen controls (which work better than most games) and HD rumble.
I’ve also experienced some odd glitches along the way. The main one being an escape indicator never appearing in a mission (despite me trying absolutely everything and retrying the mission several times). I’ve also had issues getting into online heists, with it often spitting out errors or just getting stuck on loading and forcing me to reboot the entire game.