Payday: The Heist could best be described as "Left 4 Dead with cops instead of zombies", and set mostly in a central location rather than a straightforward level with an endpoint.
Payday 2, though, builds upon that and adds much much more, heavily evolving it into a very improved game.
The first game had missions that involved essentially babysitting drills and doing other timed things while simultaenously fighting off endless waves of cops until your job was done and it was possible to escape. The sequel expands the way missions work in several ways.
Many missions start off in "casing" mode, in which you have neither your mask on nor your gun out, and can walk, largely undetected (depending on your loadout before the mission), amongst civilians. It's during this time that you can try to scope the place out to figure out the sneakiest way in, where the security guards and cameras are, the best time to pull out your weapon, and so on. Through abilities such as intimidating hostages, taking hostages so they don't call the police, and so on, you can try your best to "stealth" a mission, but 99 times out of 100, inevitably, the cops will show up and then it's wave shooter time.
Many missions are now divided into multiple levels instead of being only a single level like the first game. There are now aspects that affect which levels comes next based on what you did in the previous, and puzzle-like aspects to some of the missions. Probably one of the best examples is "Rats", a mission which starts out involving cooking meth. First you have to figure out and locate the correct ingredients, and use them. If you do it wrong, you'll blow up the lab. The second level involves delivering meth (if you have it) to gangsters for intel. However, the gangsters are quick to try to burn the intel if you do anything to set them off. The third level has an optional bus you can steal money from, but the money is rigged and can explode if you don't have the intel from the second level.
It's quite impressive how Payday has evolved from a straight-up action game, to an action game with so much depth and non-action game elements such as stealth and puzzles. At times it feels more like a co-op adventure than a shooting game. There's no other game out there like it.
Payday 2 review: A massive evolution, changing a wave shooter into its own unique concept
Payday: The Heist could best be described as "Left 4 Dead with cops instead of zombies", and set mostly in a central location rather than a straightforward level with an endpoint.
Payday 2, though, builds upon that and adds much much more, heavily evolving it into a very improved game.
The first game had missions that involved essentially babysitting drills and doing other timed things while simultaenously fighting off endless waves of cops until your job was done and it was possible to escape. The sequel expands the way missions work in several ways.
Many missions start off in "casing" mode, in which you have neither your mask on nor your gun out, and can walk, largely undetected (depending on your loadout before the mission), amongst civilians. It's during this time that you can try to scope the place out to figure out the sneakiest way in, where the security guards and cameras are, the best time to pull out your weapon, and so on. Through abilities such as intimidating hostages, taking hostages so they don't call the police, and so on, you can try your best to "stealth" a mission, but 99 times out of 100, inevitably, the cops will show up and then it's wave shooter time.
Many missions are now divided into multiple levels instead of being only a single level like the first game. There are now aspects that affect which levels comes next based on what you did in the previous, and puzzle-like aspects to some of the missions. Probably one of the best examples is "Rats", a mission which starts out involving cooking meth. First you have to figure out and locate the correct ingredients, and use them. If you do it wrong, you'll blow up the lab. The second level involves delivering meth (if you have it) to gangsters for intel. However, the gangsters are quick to try to burn the intel if you do anything to set them off. The third level has an optional bus you can steal money from, but the money is rigged and can explode if you don't have the intel from the second level.
It's quite impressive how Payday has evolved from a straight-up action game, to an action game with so much depth and non-action game elements such as stealth and puzzles. At times it feels more like a co-op adventure than a shooting game. There's no other game out there like it.