Payday: The Heist Free Weekend

The Overkill guys are having a free Payday: The Heist weekend allowing you to play the game in full for free (who would have guessed) until Sunday at 1PM PST. This game is a 4 person co-op game where you have to pull off heists such as Bank Jobs, Diamond heists and escort missions. It is a awesome little game, which I haven't played for a couple months now, but I bought it on release and played so much of this. If you can get three of your buddies to play along with it is definitely a much better experience than playing with either bots or randoms on the internet. Along with it being a free weekend to try out the game, it is also available to buy at the discounted price of £7.49 or £22.49 for a four pack of the game, 50% of the usual price. I would definitely suggest picking this up, or at least give it a play over the weekend. This has also reminded me that I still have a draft write up of my thoughts of the game to finish off for this game I started a few months ago, I get distracted and forget about stuff, so I will get that done in the near-ish future (hopefully).

My favourite games of 2011

Believe it or not Battlefield, CoD and Skyrim are not on my list like most others. I'm not the biggest fan of military shooters and as for Skyrim it's not that I don't like games like that, it's more the fact I will never finish the storyline as I will always get distracted by side quests and randomly killing shit. I've still not finished Oblivion purely for that reason. Anyway I've sat and came up with a list of 7 games released this year that I've really quite enjoyed.

Payday: The Heist - This is a little multi player where you play and 3 others play cooperatively in order to pull off heists, be it robbing banks or ripping off drug dealers. I've put so many hours in to game since it's release, it brings a different twist on the team coop style of games, you can definitely tell it was inspired by Left 4 Dead by the gameplay, but it is a awesome game in its own right. It has seen a number of patches already with some DLC on the way, no doubt being a map pack.



Bulletstorm - While this game didn't get the warmest reception upon it's arrival I loved this game it is the most fun I've had playing a shooter for quite some time. The skill shot system this game had is quite ingenious. The better you played the more points you got leading to you getting more and or better weapons quicker, leading again to more points. The game made you play better in order to get decent guns. This game was fun as hell.



Orcs Must Die! - This is a little indie game that I came across on youtube, possibly a Machinima video about it I can't honestly remember. It is pretty much a tower defence game with a playable character in them rather than from the top down perspective which they started off as. I release there are many 3rd person tower defence games out there these days. This one is quite a good one, only flaw in it is the lack of multi player which I could see being a lot of fun, especially if they put a harder difficulty in.  It would be good to see, but like I said there are many out there if you do want a multi player experience.



Bastion - This is another little indie game. Which has seemingly done very well for its self since it's release back in August (I believe it was out on Xbox before then but that is its Steam release date). It is a single player hack and slash adventure game. If you haven't played this game before I highly suggest picking it up. It costs about a tenner but is definitely worth it. The story, the gameplay, the music, the narration especially. It is a really good game.



Serious Sam 3 - Not much to say about this one. It's Serious Sam, if you don't know the series. It's a old school kind of shooter. Levels consist of a shed load of enemies you get a shed load of guns and you work your way through them.



The Baconing - This is the 3rd installment in the Deathspank series. It's weird, it's random and it has orphans and robot hookers in the game. If you liked any of the other Deathspank game you will like this game. It's definitely worth a look in to at the very least.



Hard Reset - This is a decent little shooter, it's also pc exclusive. It is a fun but really quite difficult game. I struggle on Normal difficulty and it's got hard and insane after that as well. I put this in the same boat as the  likes of Serious Sam and Painkiller. It's a good attempt at bring shooters back to what they used to be like. You get a variety of weapons, it's quite good what they have done with it though. They merged the two weapon system of todays shooters with the multiple weapon system of yesteryear by letting you upgrade the two weapons you do have letting them become multiple guns in one. I quite like this feature. On release it cost just over £20 and is now down to £12.99 on Steam. Definitely worth the money I would say.

Payday: The Heist - Patch 3

The guys at Overkill have released another patch for Payday: The Heist. Below are the details, biggest new features being Normal mode for Diamond Heist and Slaughterhouse, the ability to join games that have already started and new masks. Also I am still getting round to writing up my thoughts on this game. I'm lazy what can I tell you.

The PAYDAY Xmas update!

Thanks to all you players who have robbed countless banks, snuck off with thousands of diamonds and scooped up gold bars by the tonnes!

OVERKILL Software has monitored you closely through the security cameras and here are our counter measures:

PAYDAY Xmas achievement!

Find a Christmas present on any of the levels in multiplayer - take it and you will be given a Santa mask! Plus you will get the chance to be surprised later on...

Big features

Player drop-in ability in load-out and in-game!

You can now join an ongoing game! You will no longer be locked out of games just because they have already started or because you dropped out during play. Just rejoin and continue collecting those precious dollars and gems!

These are the rules: Players who are downed or in custody and drop out only to rejoin the same game will respawn in custody. Drop-in is disabled during the "point of no return" phase of the heist, as well as on the end screen.

Heavily improved fighting and acting by team AI and enemies

New features and fixes include:

• New events and enemy tactics on all levels

• Team and enemies now pick better cover and firing positions, and use more intelligent firing lanes for suppression and sniping

• Enemies now master additional acrobatic moves (such as dashes and slides) and they can fire at you while doing them!

• More cover moves for team AI and enemies

• Enemy AI move in tighter formations and coordinate better

• Team AI now keeps up with human players much better

• Smoother turn and aim on team AI, and reduced animation glitches on movements

• Better looking weapon recoils on team and enemies

• AI teammates now pick weapons that better suit the current combat situation

• Combat will now be more mid ranged and not run-in gun battles

• Team AI no longer has "ants in the pants" (they don't move around so much) when there are no enemies around

Advanced GFX settings menu (AG menu)

Custom visual settings and optimizations, including:

• Texture resolution setting "low" to "high"

• Texture filtering "off" and up to x16

• V-synch on/off

• AA on/off

• Light streaks on/off

• Animation level-of-detail setting for better performance

• More suitable default resolutions to fit laptops etc.

• AlienwareFX on/off (for Alienware computers)

• Added eight color grade filters (inspired by a range of heist and action movies)

"Payday +"

"Dinero"

"In Traffic"

"Bastard"

"BHD"

"Xgen Brown"

"Future of Gaming"

"The Matrices"

New masks

To celebrate that yet another bunch of military shooters was released recently, we've added four new masks to Payday!

Improved network code

Disclaimer: We did not fix the Internet. Please talk to Al Gore about that.

We've added a red toothbrush to Panic Room, and we've made sure this one's worth the hullabaloo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT1HShMInUs&feature=youtu.be

Additional features and fixes

Slaughterhouse and Diamond Heist are now available in the Normal difficulty setting

Single Player has improved scenario and difficulty balancing

Added more money bundles to First World Bank

The legendary über killer sniper removed from Heat Street

Teammate "mugshot" icons (lower left corner of the screen) now flash to indicate who is talking over VOIP

You can now see the cash value of the "near completion challenges" in the TAB menu

Fix to better hear team AI voices

Fixes for random crashes

Fixed the drill that kept resetting to full time for some people

Fixes for fake lobby appearing

Changed [Enter] to $Continue; to fix binding of enter to block the final stats screen.

More camera impacts on explosions

All weapons now have alert ranges, unique for each weapon

Chains is no longer replaced by Wolf on rare trade occasions

Bain will now correctly call the equipment "saws" (not "drills") in Panic Room

Now have fun, fellow heisters! DLC is of course in the works, as well as Patch 4! :-) 

/The OVERKILL Crew and Sony Online Entertainment

Games I have been playing.

So it's the end of the month and with it another post of me rambling on about what games I've been playing since the last time I did this. To start things off I am still playing Payday: The Heist (which I still need to finish writing up on here I'm about halfway done but keep getting distracted by other things, I'll try get it up soon). It is seemingly getting more popular. A number of people on my Steam friends list have now bought it, more than likely due to the recent Steam sales. I love this game it's great and I suggest you pick it up if you haven't already, I've put a good 60 hours in to it already and at £15 I feel I've got more than my moneys worth out of it already.

I gave the new Jurassic Park game a download recently as well whether you will like it or not depends entirely on how much you like quick time events. I happen to like them I feel it adds to the immersion of the game but that's just me.

Next on the list is Titan Quest, it's a pretty old game now as it was released back in 2007. I got it ages ago when I bought a THQ pack during a Steam sale at some point, and have up until now had only played a couple hours of it when I first got the game then more than likely got distracted by other games. I have got properly in to it this time round and am quite enjoying it. It's got a kind of Diablo type feel to the game. I'll admit it's not the greatest game in the world but it's pretty cool and easy too get in to. I'm about 20 hours in and am up to level 25, I believe the level cap is 65 so I've got a while to go yet. It's one of those games you can either play little by little doing a quest or two every time you play or you can easily get sucked in and play for hours at a time.

There is only a couple more games I have been playing first one is Serious Sam 3. I have been looking forward to this game ever since I heard it was coming out. Saying that I haven't played all that much of it so far. I have played a good few hours, I have died a lot and not got too far yet as I am playing on Hard, I am glad I didn't choose Serious though. At times it is quite ridiculous, but it is fun, it is challenging and it will take up a lot of my time over the coming months.

Last game I am going to mention is a small indie game which has taken up far too much of my time under the name of The Binding of Isaac. It's quite a strange little dungeon shooter, the levels are all randomly generated so each time your play it will be a different level, unless you play the game so many times it starts to repeat itself but that would take an extremely long time. Anyway it's strangely addictive and for a few quid you can't really go wrong with it.

I lie about the last game being the last game for this post. I found Psychonauts going cheap during the last Steam sales and picked it up for £3 I think it was. Anyway if you haven't heard of it you should check it out. Here's a trailer for it.

Games I have been playing.

I haven't been posting much on here as of late, I just haven't had the enthusiasm to do so. I tend to either read loads of gaming news and write a lot or just game a lot. Lately I have been gaming loads so I felt obliged to do an update of what I have been playing. While we are seeing a fair amount of big titles coming out, none of them really take my fancy. Battlefield I couldn't give a damn about, same goes for CoD. I generally play military shooters for single player, yes I know shock horror, someone who doesn't fall victim to the multiplayer military shooter trap which has seeming caught a boat load of folks over the past few years. Then we have Skyrim coming along, I did play Oblivion a while back with games like those I always get side tracked and just end up just going round killing stuff rather than following the story and never end up finishing it, I probably will get it some point down the line but really it's not all that high up the priority list. We have Rage which I'm kind of semi interested in, but due to my graphics card crapping out a couple months ago, I doubt a Radeon 3850 would do the game any justice, so I will probably get that at christmas along with a new graphics card. There is one game I am truely looking forward to though which is out later this month. That game is Serious Sam 3, if you do not know about this game go look in to it, and if you can't be arsed to do that I will sum it up for you in one simple sentence: Lots of enemies, lots of guns, lots of violence and lots of fun. That about covers it.

Now I will actually get on to games I have actually been playing. I will start off with a little game under the name of Payday: The Heist, this game came to my attention a few months back through some random playstation promotion they had on. About a week or so ago I noticed it was available on Steam as well (has yet to be released on Xbox). The game cost a mere 15 quid. So I thought I would pick it up and give it a shot. I am glad I did, at the point of writing this I have played about 18 hours according to Steam and that is within a week. Needless to say I have been quite addicted to it. The game is 4 player co-op where you get to pull off heists such as banks jobs and ripping off drug deals. The game only has 6 levels thus far however the last 2 in the list can only be played on hard or overkill difficulty, both levels in question I have yet to beat but I am working on it. I will do a little piece on the game in the near future giving a bit more detail about the game and my thoughts about it. I strongly recommend you go pick up the game if you have a spare £15 laying about with nothing to do.

While Payday has taken up a fair amount of my time, I have also been working through some of the games I got on the Steam Halloween sale. Which makes a change from me randomly buying games on Steam due to the ridiculously cheap price of it and never getting round to playing it. I bought Bioshock, Resident Evil 5, Painkiller and Ghostbusters all for £17. I haven't touched Bioshock or Ghostbusters yet, but I am about halfway through Resident Evil and slowly making my way through Painkiller, though I am playing PK on the hardest difficulty which is ridiculously hard but it has to be done. Just like Serious Sam has to be played on Serious difficulty otherwise your not doing it right. Anyway Painkiller will no doubt keep me occupied for months to come but I will persevere and eventually beat the damn game. I have also started to play Borderlands again as that was in the latest Steam sales so no doubt people will be playing it again.

I think that's about it really. I shall do another post about what I've been up to either late this month or beginning of the next.