GameLight - Payday 2

Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/218620/
Source: Youtube Channel XCVii007r1

I was disappointed with Payday: The Heist.  It's much like Left 4 Dead 2 where you have a team of 4-players and instead of Zombies you have the police and SWAT after you.  You're still trying to escape alive, but you're also trying to gain wealth along the way.  The concept was interesting, but the game was horribly balanced.  Leveling didn't make too much sense.  Weapon acquisition was slow and class focus was confusing.  The one thing I did like was the music.  But despite that, I wasn't interested at all in looking in Payday 2 when it was announced.  I saw a lot of news for it and saw a few friends buy the game to play the closed beta.  Then one of my friends who didn't buy the game told me yesterday that they saw the beta on their list of games.  I checked mines and I saw it in mines as well.  Apparently it was an open-beta of sorts and so we both downloaded the game and tried it out last night.  At first, everything seemed about the same.  Walk around until you decide to put the mask on and start the heist and then everything came into play.  You can start a heist without causing a ruckus and there's an indicator showing whether people are suspicious of you.  That's one new factor that seemed impossible in the first one: stealth.  Then I start shooting and see all sorts of new changes: recoil and sound effects make for a strong feel of kickback and power behind each shot, smoke from the gun barrel looks more realistic, the indicator that shows whether you shot someone is more visible, etc.  To make short of what I'm trying to say: shooting feels more visceral and intuitive to the game's environment.  Enemies are still pretty tough, but they're more fair now.  In the first one, the enemies (even on the easiest difficulty) would have impeccable aim and mob the players in large numbers in kamikaze fashion.  In Payday 2, the enemies are more strategic, they hesitate when firing at times, and come in at a steady rate rather than an alarming wave.  Although I liked the music from the first game, I didn't pay too much attention to it.  But in Payday 2, I kept commenting to my friend on how good it was.  It wasn't until I looked in the description of the game on Steam that I found out that the music was done by Simon Viklund, the same guy who remixed all the songs in Bionic Commando Rearmed and led the development for that remake.  Alongside the actual gameplay of Payday 2 is everything before, in-between and after each mission: inventory management, learning skills, and purchasing equipment.  Leveling granted skill points to add into a class tree.  Acquiring money from each mission and unlocking items allowed the player to purchase equipment.  Focusing on a class tree made it easier to figure out what role a player had within a team.  Everything just made more sense and is significantly more balanced in this sequel than the first one.  I'm glad they allowed players like me a chance to try out Payday 2 yesterday before taking out the beta at mid-night and launching the game.  It convinced me that the changes to the sequel made Payday into a better game.  Payday 2 is definitely a game I'll be getting in the future, but if you're interested in getting it now it's available on Steam for $29.99.