When you are taken down by damage you go into bleed out mode, from there you can be taken into custody and then have to be traded for hostages. If all players fall into bleed out then the mission is failed. Each mission has multiple objectives and goals like not killing civilians (increases trade wait time, lowers overall score), collect extra bundles of cash, etc. In the end you can think of cash like XP and reputation like levels. There are three types of gameplay archetypes, Support, Assault and Sharpshooter. You can switch between them at any time and each has certain benefits in the leveling up process like improved accuracy, new weapons, larger magazines for more bullets before reloading, etc.
Admittedly, after a while the six levels do become old. Yes, they’re certainly challenging on the higher difficulty levels, but you begin to see some patterns to the spawning and know exactly where to go. The novelty wears off, the fun sort of dissipates and the experience devolves to just another repetitive first-person shooter.
That’s unfortunate because, as I said, this was one of my top three from E3. But the limited amount of levels really does leave much to be desired in the game though for the price it’s a good deal. Hopefully, Overkill have been working on some new levels and missions, even if it were just new missions that used existing levels in new ways, it would certainly go a long way toward giving Payday: The Heist a much longer lifecycle. As it is now, I’m at level 24 and I’m tired of playing the same stuff over and over again.
