Nerding Out: First Experiences with Payday 2 (+ Introduction!)

(This was typed over the course of a few days and some things may have been missed as train of thought derailed)
Well I guess this will be the pilot post to this blog, I suppose I should do a little bit of introduction, since no other information about me is provided at this moment.

This blog is created mainly because my English teacher requires us to have a blog for certain assignments. That said, however, I will try to blog about subjects that I'm more enthusiastic (oh good spellcheck is enabled, I had to type saf to find out) about, and will tend to be more casual in grammar and writing (as you can clearly see from the amount of parentheses used already) in these less serious and professional blogs. Why don't I create a new blog just for my own purposes? I'm way too lazy for that and maybe some random classmates wanting to reference other classmates' blogs stumble upon this and well, become a hardcore gamer? I know I know that's not a really good or valid reason but I just don't feel like spending time making and keeping track of two blogs. I don't just want to write this in a private journal or something because that feels like a waste, and what if some random guy who likes games finds this blog?

As you can probably tell I can get off-topic quickly when I'm in my casual mode, so you might have to endure walls of text filled with pointless ramble.

Now, let's get to the topic that I've been meaning to talk about, hopefully I can get a few pictures in before I publish this, so you can just tl;dr it. (tl;dr sounds like a great column(series?) on this blog, by the way does anyone know how to make actual separate columns for posts?)

Here's a little quick backstory. My friend and I've been playing a few games together, namely Minecraft (with tekkit classic mod), the art therapy levels in Portal 2, and a tiny bit of Risk of Rain. Due to our rapid progression (lol equivalent exchange), however, we had no more games to play (He refuses to play a lot of CS:GO so that's a bit of a problem). He then found Payday 2 on 75% off and long story short we bought the game with the Game of the Year dlc pack. We've played a few hours together and I played a few games alone and here are my thoughts on a so far.

Portal 2, a great game for killing your friends.

First, let's talk graphics. I'm not a big on graphics (I've gone through some old games, C&C Red Alert 1 anyone?) and Payday 2 definitely meets my standards. I wouldn't call the game gorgeous but it won't give your eyes cancer if you stare at it for too long.

Probably pretty good graphics for a game made in the 90s.

I feel like the music comes after the graphics so I'll lightly touch on it. I'm no musician but the Payday soundtracks definitely pumps me up during police assaults, and sounds fine when the popos (I've really grown fond of that abbreviation after playing that game for only a day) aren't on my tail. I have so say though mixed with a lot of other sound effects, character lines, and noises, it's hard to miss a lot of information (it's not until I read the wiki today that I found out cloakers made a special sound). Nothing major though.

I'm going to talk a tiny bit of the interface, namely the main menu. I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND OUT HOW TO START A LOBBY WITH FRIENDS WITHOUT GOING TO CRIME.NET AND LOOKING FOR AN EMPTY CONTRACT, IS IT JUST ME? Ahem. That aside, the keybindings are a little strange. Who in their right mind puts their primary weapon on 2?

Finishing off with gameplay, I think I already have a pretty big wall of text. I'll start with stealth because that's what my friend and I have worked on for a little bit. It's not immediately obvious what one is supposed to do in stealth, maybe that's because I didn't go through tutorial playing with a friend, or perhaps it's supposed to be the learning process. Anyway, starting off in Jewelry Store(the easiest map I've done so far, with no cameras), I think it was my friend who first figured out that we were supposed to quietly take down the guard (we had one spawn inside and one spawn outside for our first few tries) outside in the back alley and then go inside to kill the other guards and crowd control by spamming the f key. A really interesting mechanic that adds some pressure into the game, for if a civilian wasn't controlled for long enough, they'll just pick up their phone and call the popos. In the end you tie as many civilians as you can and start grabbing loot back to your van. This was really interesting because I've never played anything quite like it(maybe I don't play enough games of this genre). The closest game I can think of on the top of my head is Hitman: Absolution, but I tended to go loud in that game anyway. For loud, you can treat it as any generic fps with some additional elements such as police assault added. Interesting death system with custody and bleedout, with the option to trade hostages if available. Nothing too special about loud, but maybe I haven't played too many loud maps.

Essentially we robbed this jewelry store over and over again :)

All in all Payday 2 is a great game to play with friends. I can probably get many many more hours out of this game before I get bored of it. If you have the spare time and money and want to try this game, by all means (though the sale is over and you might want to wait a bit for another one.) Hopefully  I got everything that I wanted to say out and if you have any questions comments concerns queries qualms just leave a comment or something.