Payday 2: I like you guys too

Welcome to Payday 2

I've been playing this a shit ton over the last few months.  I've been playing with my good friend Kira, that's her mask... the amount of comments we get it rather absurd and I love it.

Payday 2 represents something absolutely wonderful in the gaming world, a good community.  I'm a recluse, I dislike people in a general sense and let's be really honest here, the multiplayer world of gaming is fucking god awful and I hate them.

The Payday 2 community is absolutely lovely.  I can't stand to play with pub scrubs in any other game, but I will go out of my way to boot up Payday 2 to meet new people.

I don't really know how to describe Payday 2.  Lot's of people have played some form of the 4 player coop game genre.  It may be Left 4 Dead, it may be Alien Swarm (please play this game,it's lonely right now), but you've never met these people.  Let me explain as simply as I can, even the hackers are nice.  Yep, they're awesome.

Smells like profit

Payday 2 is an inherently flawed game, there's no getting around it.  There's no denying that there are good builds and there are terrible game builds.  You can respec, so that's nice.  But it's so god damn endearing and engaging that the balance issues don't really bother me.

You get to spec two skill trees on your way to level 100, there's some good combos, there's some bad combos and there's a couple of skill trees that if you don't spec one specific skill people won't like you.

I'm not going to speak in all caps again but please infer the excitement I feel for this game.  It's horribly balanced, has really odd AI with some really odd reasoning behind they're actions but holy shit, I've rarely felt such a sense of achievement from a game.  Landing on Mun might be the closest I can get.

There is no feeling in the gaming world better than pulling off a Pro Job flawlessly with some of your new closet friends.  I started playing this game with 14 friends on my friends list, I now have 32 and I love them.  There's this massive bond of brotherhood you form with your fellow heisters as your chug your way through the missions.

There's moments in this game that define you, shape you, make you feel like a team player.  There will be a point in your heists where you will "Go loud", this means that you're going to take the bank or store by force.  This involves a series of extremely choreographed moves, you need someone or two people on guards to answer their pagers, you need someone on crowd control you need someone on pedestrians, you need the situation under control and if a single person fails it's all over.  And the absolutely amazing part is, this goes off well, frequently.

Those guards are down and taken care of, two flawless headshots in a move cycle.  The person on the crowd chimes in with "All good on the floor, How's outside?" Ready to ditch and run to assist.  The two on the guards VoIP with  "All set, who's got the drill?"

I'm serious, this is a normal regular game with public game randoms.  Even better is the feeling when it all goes to shit, which it does often and a stranger's voice over the the VoIP says, "Okay, we'll hold up here, get those medkits down, we're going to need ammo, watch for the specials and focus on getting everyone up."

The whole game goes to shit on a really regular basis and everyone just roles with it.  I've never met a better set of people in random games than Payday 2.  They're just so accepting of fuck ups.  Maybe you missed a pager because the guard slides down a set of stairs, it's happened to the best of us, maybe you didn't notice that pedestrian outside before they called the cops, this shit this happens, and people realize it happens, I've made a lot of my Steam friends through this scenarios

And the most wonderful part, is that a number of hours into the game you will become that person. I wish I could add this game to my CV as "Leadership Experience"  I have become the calm voice on the other end of the microphone.  "We can do this, we need medic kits and ammo dropped.  Who has the most powerful weapons?  Let us know if you're getting low, I have the perk for armor piecing on my pistol so get primary ammo first."

Get a bit of sun

Now, here's where I'm going to talk about the shit.  There's unfortunately a lot of it.  The game is good but not because of it's mechanics.  There's a ton to be frustrated about.  For the biggest example, you can't restart any heist at any point without mods.  So my friend Kira and I got really fucking good at suiciding to restart because as soon as everyone's down you can restart the day with no penalty.  If you install HoxHUD you can restart, but it's technically a hack,

And the hackers are abound.  They're actually rather nice, which is something very rare.  The Hackers with grant you a huge amount of money and allow you to complete super difficult heists with no challenge what so ever    They'll generally tell you that they're hackers and don't hold a grudge if you kick them.  I managed to get all my achievements via legit means by kicking hackers at their request (not to brag but I've done Pro Job Framing Frame on the hardest difficulty, #humblebrag)

But honestly there's not even close to enough flaws to not recommend this game.  It feels so good to play and win.  And as a huge salute to Overkill because when you download their DLC it just means you can "start" that new heist, but the ability to join that DLC heist in not restricted.   That means I can experience the new heist with my friend who bought the DLC with no restriction.  I can try out the new DLC before I buy it.  The weapon DLCs aren't so forgiving but there's enough people with them that it doesn't matter.

I won't ask you to buy this game, I'll ask you to join the community because it's amazing, it gives me hope for games in the future having at least half as good of a community, I love you guys.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence: That's not a real word

I have a new job.  A real one, with health insurance and all that good shit.  The bad part is that holy shit have I been exhausted.  I really haven't been motivated to write much recently.  This has changed.  I played Metal Gear Rising: Revengence.  Yep.  Yeah. 


HOLY FUCKING SHIT HAVE YOU PLAYED THIS GAME!? 

Go, now, pay all the money for it, now.  Stop reading, right now, get the credit card out, tell the kids you're eating ramen for the next two weeks, go buy it.  Have you bought it? No? Go fucking buy it.

Okay now I'll tell you about the game. 

I love the Japanese Action genere, like way too much than is healthy.  Devil May Cry 4 is seriously in my top 10 games ever.  I know the story sucks, I know the characters suck, I love it so very, very much.  Action games are now being aware that they're satire and I love it.

So why should you actually play this game?  Well there's several reasons.  Reason 1, you like Metal Gear Solid.  If you've played them all the number of references will keep you going.  Reason 2, you were pissed about Raiden being the main character of Metal Gear Solid 2.  Reason 3, you like technical action games.  Reason 4, you enjoy a good spectical.

If you go into this game expecting a compelling storyline, deep characters, realism, character development, or realism, you're going to hate this game.  If you have the ability to shut your brain off and tap into your inner 10 year old then holy shit is this the game for you.

It seems like every time I get tired of gaming I'll find something that sucks me back in.  Let me paint you a picture.  A young Jack, that's me, the main character's name is not lost on me, was watching his older brother's friend grind out Metal Gear Solid one Sunday morning in 1999.  It blew my 10 year old mind.  Cut to two years later, I have acquired a windows copy of Metal Gear Solid (yes, they really did make a PC version) back when you could just copy CDs.  Blasting it out on my 266MHz Pentium II.  I played through it 20 times, minimum.  It was one of the key reasons for me buying a PS1 when I finally had the money.  My copy of Metal Gear Solid is still sitting 20 feet from me on a shelf.  Metal Gear Solid 2 was the reason I bought a PS2, that and Final Fantasy.  And honestly I didn't hate Raiden.  Hear me out now, his character development is way better than Solid Snake.  Snake's betrayer was real, but Raiden's was much more complete.  While I loved MGS 3 very much, it doesn't really apply, still amazing though.

So here we are, we have literally the worst setup ever.  Metal Gear game not 100% cannon, pass.  Raiden is the focus again, pass.  You basically play as Grey Fox in a world with guns, pass. 

So why would I pay money for this game, a game, I might add, that takes up 50 fucking gigs of hard drive space?  I heard it was good from people I respect and it was the right price. 

Warning:  the rest of the review is going to be in caps.  Because there's literally no other way to discuss this game.  You have been warned.

 

DO YOU SEE THIS SHIT!?  I'M RUNNING DOWN A FUCKING BUILDING CHOPPING MY WAY THROUGH SHIT WITH MY SUPER KATANA THAT CAN SLICE THROUGH ANYTHING.

ARE YOU READY TO COMMAND A SUPER CYBORG WITH THE BEST SWORD EVER!?   THERE'S A MODE IN THIS GAME THAT YOU CAN SLICE SHIT INTO AS MANY PIECES AS YOU CAN HANDLE.  THERE'S A FUCKING COUNTER TO FIND OUT HOW MANY PIECES YOUR SLICED THAT ASSHOLE INTO.

I LITERALLY RIPED A MINI METAL GEAR'S DICK OFF, SLID UNDER HIM AND SLICED HIM INTO 680 PIECES, I KNOW THIS BECAUSE THE GAME FUCKING COUNTS THAT SHIT!

YOU WANT DEPTH OF COMBAT!?  THE FUCKING PARRY SYSTEM WILL CAUSE YOU TO GROW A FUCKING BEARD IN SECONDS! YOU'LL BE A FUCKING MAN 30 SECONDS INTO THE GAME!  NAIL THAT PARRY SHIT AND TIME STOPS SO YOU CAN SLICE YOUR ENEMY OPEN AND RIP HIS FUCKING SPINE OUT TO REFILL YOUR ENERGY!  THE MAIN MECHANIC OF HEALTH AND POWER INT HE GAME IS RIPPING OUT CYBORG'S FUCKING SPINES OUT AND CRUSHING THEM IN YOUR ROBOT FIST!  YOU SEE THIS CHICK RIGHT HERE?

 

SHE HAS 12 FUCKING ARMS AND WHEN YOU BEAT HER, HER SEVERED HEAD TALKS TO YOU AND YOU PUT THOSE ARMS TOGETHER HOLDING SUPER KNIVES INTO A GIANT SPEAR MADE OF FUCKING CARBON FIBER ARMS! A SPEAR MADE OUT OF FUCKING ARMS!  AND IT FUCKING OWNS SO MUCH FUCKING ASS YOU'LL BLOW A LOAD!

YOU WANT FUCKING PRETTY!?  THIS GAME WILL BLOW YOU LIVER OUT YOUR ASS!  IT'S SO FUCKING PRETTY.

AND IT RUNS LIKE A FUCKING CHAMP!  FUCKING 60FPS WITHOUT SHAKING A FUCKING BUDGE!

I WAS SO FUCKING AMPED ABOUT THIS GAME THAT IT FINISHED DOWNLOADING AT 2 AM AND I WENT TO BED AT FUCKING NOON THE NEXT DAY BECAUSE I WAS SO FUCKING AMPED I COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO SLEEP!  I HAD TO CHOP THOSE FUCKS INTO TWENTY BILLION PIECES, SO MANY PIECES THE FRAME RATE WOULD DROP ONCE I HIT OVER 2000 BECAUSE THERE'S SO MANY FUCKING PIECES TO RENDER!

BUY THIS GAME RIGHT THIS FUCKING SECOND AND BLAST ROCKETS AT MINI METAL GEARS AND THEN RIPE THEIR DICKS OFF AND CHOP THEM TO PIECES WITH YOUR PHYSICS DEFYING KATANA.

I'm going to stop the caps here because it's exhausting to type that way.  But the game is seriously amazing.  Turn your brain off, become 10 again and enjoy what you're playing.  It's frustrating in the best possible way, with a super high skill cap.  I played with a controller for the last bit but int he beginning I played on mouse and keyboard and it was just fine.  I'm actually rather impressed how well it controls with the keyboard.  The port is fine as far as I can tell.  It's such a nice departure in the action game genre.  It's not serious, the storyline is insanely contrived, the characters and interactions are terrible in the best way you can imagine.  But I have not have this much fun in a long time.  I
 was so excited to play it the whole way through.  And I was not disappointed.  If you're even remotely interested in Metal Gear Solid or the action genre in general you owe it to play this self-aware departure.  Play it now.