Payday 2 has a very good concept. Robbing banks. I only know some guys that have this concept, buy Payday 2 is the only one of this style. It's a 4-Player Co-Op game, reminiscent of Left 4 Dead. Overall Payday 2 is at times sloppy, but worth the purchase, especially with the game being around 30 U.S. dollars. Now allow me to explain why.

 Graphics - 4: This Payday 2's weak point. The game has terrible graphics, especially in this day of age. The game looks like it could run on an original Xbox, and barely surpasses Counter-Strike: Source in terms of graphics. The game has flat low resolution textures, the geometry at times is bland, and the textures themselves are bland. Characters don't look too good, especially the cops. Also, there is probably 7 different civilian models, so expect to see 3 Bobs, 9 Sarahs, and 2 Jimbos in one bank. The guns look okay when in hand, but when looking at guns when they're on the floor or in your friend's hand they look like a deformed plastic mold of the real thing. Thankfully, the lighting and the areas outside the buildings you are trying to rob are done well. One quirk is that invisible walls are EVERYWHERE. They don't even try to be somewhat clever on hiding these impenetrable walls of horribleness. Imagine, you're exploring the vicinity of the bank you are trying rob. You're scouting the area for your entry point, exit point, and escape van. While you are walking down the street of the bank, BAM, you hit face-first into this damned wall. Some players may not notice this, but this really kills how well you can be immerse yourself into being a bank robber. But please, don't let this scare you away from buying this, as this game has a lot of fun in store.

 Sound - 9: While the graphics sink the ship, the sound is the life boat. This game sounds as beautiful as birds chirping in the morning. The guns sound crisp and realistic, characters can say humorous quotes at times, and enemy's hit reactions sound awesome. I love it when I pull out my silent MP5, line up the sights, aim at an unsuspecting guards head and listen to the bullet fly through the air and pierce through his head, it's like a church choir singing to my ears. It's always fun to have a gunfight in a 4 against 20 battle with this kind of sound. The only problem, and only slight problem this is, is that the soundtrack is mediocre. At least the sound changes with situation that you are in. The only quirk is that it seems like the overlord of your operations, Bain, has 2 different voices. It seems like they changed voice actors during development and were too lazy to replace the original audio.

 Addictiveness - 8: This is a game that you will definitely be starting up again and again. Not only does this game has the 4-player Co-Op feature, it also has a full leveling system and four different skill trees. I won't be talking about the leveling system as much here, as I'll touch on that in the depth section of this review. Now this game is a Four player Co-Op, which already in itself very addicting. You can either jump in a random game with co-robbers, or meet up with your friends for more strategically influenced play. This is hard for me to write without mentioning something that is supposed to be in the depth section, so I will end this here.

 Story - N/A: The game has no real story, maybe little short ones associated with each job you do, nothing really noticeable. Let me mention his here, the game works like this. You open up "Crime.net" menu, which essentially a program that allows you to look up jobs to perform, like robbing banks or smuggling drugs. Yes, this game isn't only about robbing banks. Or smuggling drugs for that matter. After you open up Crime.net, it shows you map, with markers containing information of said job. The markers location aren't special as a job can appear on the south end of the map while that same job could also appear at the north-east end. After that, you pick a job, and go to the briefing screen, and start the mission

 Depth - 8: The developers made sure this game has a lot to offer, as there is a full leveling system, and four character trees, aforementioned. Also, the game has an array of weapons ranging from assault rifles to the OVE9000 saw. Yes I know, the name OVE9000 is similar to the quote, OVER 9000. Even though this game has its fair share of references, I doubt that as the developers of the games are named Overkill, and there name is in all of other places in the game. This game also contains different armors, all that have different visibility ratings. Visibility is how well you are detected by officials in casing mode. Casing mode is where you have your mask off, and your weapons concealed. So if you're gonna try to steal diamonds from the jewelry store stealthily, it might be ideal to trade that heavy-duty armor for a regular two-piece suit.  Now the game has four skill trees, Mastermind, Enforcer, Technician, And Ghost. Each also has their own unique item. Mastermind has a doctor's bag, which could used to heal other players, Enforcer has an ammo bag, used to replenish ones ammo, Technician has trip mines, which laser activated C4, and Ghost has an ECM jammer which could be used to open digitally locked doors or temporarily disable alarms and surrounding electronics. Now allow me to explain the individual trees. Mastermind is sort of a jack of all trades, but a good Mastermind would be watching over the civilians and helping out his team. Enforcer is a heavy duty rushing player. A good Enforcer would be rushing in towards the cops with his/her shotgun intimidating his enemy. The Technician is to help out with explosives, drills, and picking doors. A good Technician will be able to place shaped charges on locked doors to open or will be able to fix drill faster when they get stuck. The Ghost is primarily for stealthily executing targets and infiltrating banks. A good Ghost will likely have ranged weapon with a silenced sidearm, preferably a SMG. and will know his way into a bank without getting caught. Each time you level up, you will get a skill point, which will be used to acquire a skill from a skill tree. Thankfully you don't have to be dedicated to one skill tree, so you can be Enforcer/Technician, or a mix of all of the trades. Once you spend enough points in one section, a new one will be unlocked. As you go deeper, skills will require more points to obtain. Also, you could ace a skill which is essentially upgrading it. You could only do this once per skill. Unfortunately, this game only has a handful of jobs to do, and some of them are just the same level but different situations. Luckily, some jobs have different days which means you will be going through different levels as you progress, hitting with bursts of gameplay. This is the only thing that keeps the Depth from a nine or a ten. But wait, I'm not finished yet. This game has different masks. Basically, you obtain them by picking one of three cards the end of a level. You could obtain either a mask or mask accessory or an attachment for a gun. From there, you could make a custom mask from the actual mask, the mask material, a mask pattern, and the mask pattern colors. Also the card picking system is the way you obtain attachments, which adds a whole layer of depth. So the jobs may get boring, but you're still grinding for that silencer on your favorite pistol.

 Difficulty - 5: The game isn't that difficult, but failure will happen if you're playing single-player or have an uncoordinated team. Failure obviously happens when all players are dead or downed. When you're downed you could get revived with half health. When you die you're not actually dead, you have just been arrested. If you have a hostage, you could trade a hostage for one of your buddies that were arrested because they rushed a horde of a cops carelessly. There is two things to discuss here. The first is that jobs have 4 degrees of difficulty. When you pick a job, the could be special, where you they're more difficult than usual. No stars in normal. One is hard. Two is very hard. Three is overkill. Also, the job could be a pro job. this means if you fail the job you cannot restart it. This also means if you fail on day three of a job, you have to wait until it reappears back on the Crime.net menu, and start all over. The second is that there is different types of cops, like the aforementioned Left 4 Dead. There is your normal street cop, then you're SWAT guys, then your heavily armored FBI units, and then you have more special units. These are the Shield, a guy who has a riot shield, the taser, a swat unit that has a taser attached to his gun, and the bulldozer, which is the equivalent of a juggernaut. Now you see, with all this seemingly difficult stuff, why do I say it's not that difficult? It's because the AI are as dumb as a tree stump. This game easily takes the award for the dumbest AI I have seen in the 14 years of my life. I have stood before a cop, a having a staring contest while he doesn't even have his finger on the trigger. I have seen the Shield turn their backs on me so I could shoot them. I think I could make a better AI system. Thankfully the developers seem to realize they can't program AI worth a damn, so they are always an abundance of cops. Like grunts from Halo, one isn't a problem, but they could easily swarm up on you.

 Overall - 8: To conclude, this game is a fantastic concept, but at times doesn't work. The game has some exploits that could take the fun out of the game. But even at that, the game is still very addicting and deserves a purchase. Now I would like to quote IGN employee Vince Ingenito. "PayDay 2 is much like one of its heists: things can get a little sloppy, but the potential payoff is big." Two things I would like to mention to you before I end this, one, for some reason that still baffles me to this day, is that there is no local Co-Op. Two, is that if you're looking at this game for a single-player experience, then you'll be disappointed. Due to the s***ty AI and the lack of presentation, it's probably not worth trouble. So unfortunately, this game will never last because when the servers go down, this game will pointless to play. Forgive if there any sloppy grammar, as it's 2:40 in the morning right now and I just want to go to sleep.