[notbov]

That all depends. Will the selectbros playing this be on PS3 or Steam? I'm mostly in for this now that Serious Sam 3 got pushed back a month :(
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Sony's site for the game is saying the 4th, so, this Tuesday. You know, that day Rage and Dark Souls comes out.
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I remain cautiously optimistic. Emphasis on the cautious part.
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[notbov]

Oh, hey, the PC version is live. Anyone had a chance to mess around with it yet?
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I'm finding this pretty entertaining. So far, the aspect I enjoy most is that shit tends to escalate pretty fast and to humorous effect. The one map shown in the Kotaku video (Heat Street) will snowball totally out of control if you don't keep the pace up as the assaults (think horde waves in L4D) start eroding at your health and especially your ammo. Even with cops dropping ammo, you can and will easily run out between assault waves and the occasional boss cop. The maps are varied in terms of both scenario and design and they each, for the most part, have their own distinctive style; the aforementioned Heat Street is a mad dash and you spend the entire map fighting for progress, whereas First World Bank (probably the most "heist"-like of the maps) is a lot of digging in and fending off attacks coming from the outside. Diamond Heist (with a Die Hard-esque premise) even starts out as a stealth mission, up until someone fucks up because co-op stealth mission and the top floors and roof where the action takes place starts flooding from every which way (again, to hilarious effect: some of the cops and SWAT attacking you can appear on the roof by appearing to have climbed up the sides). It's a hell of a lot faster and more frantic than either K&L game, and it's probably better for it, instead of trying to ape the cover shooter pastiche Dog Days managed.

My main complaint so far has to be, since they did the metagame thing where you level up, you can level up during a heist and actually get your health and ammo refilled, which does a lot to kill the tension when it happens. Somewhat lesser is that the last two of the maps available (Diamond Heist and Slaughterhouse) are only playable on the harder difficulties; if they wanted to have a natural difficulty curve, they should have designed it in to the maps instead of applying an forced set of conditions to them.
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It's worth noting that it's totally possible to do maps on the harder difficulties starting out once you get a feel for the game. It's even in one of the achievements (doing a job on Overkill with all level 1's). Then again, the achievements in Payday are generally crazy ( I love the one for beating Heat Street on Overkill with a team accuracy of 60% or more, which I will never, ever get).

I'd recommend leveling up sharpshooter (which boosts the starter AR and gives body armor I believe) and support (Medic bag) first, then going through and seeing what you want next and going after it. Oh, and whatever gives you ammo bags, which I can't remember off the top of my head. You really, really want ammo bags.
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PAYDAY 2 Pre-Beta Stream

with gameplay and whatnot, going all weekend
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so hey, if you own Payday on Steam, you get access to Payday 2's beta until release

starting now
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my god, this game's soundtrack is amazing
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I've only played a few games, but the most noticable change (one that I love) is that carrying stuff is an actual, physical thing. if you pick up a bag, it slows you down and your viewpoint gets shifted and it actually requires that people have to cover you if you decide to brave crossing the street with a money bag instead just running around with a bag of air. it shows that Overkill sees what can make the game better without dramatically altering it (because it isn't that much different, but the execution is on another level compared to the first)

oh, and they sent out a press release on how the game is already profitable just off of pre-orders and have embarrassed every other company in the business
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it's a little unwieldy, but it fits the game like a glove and still isn't the worst server browser I've used

(looking at you, BF3)
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