Payday: Crime War represents in many ways a return to the past: on the one hand, because it is the mobile version of the famous heist game Starbreeze studios, released with the second chapter back in 2013; On the other hand, because we are talking about a project that dates back to 2019, the year in which it was the protagonist of a soft launch that, however, led to a sensational cancellation.
It really seemed a shame to abandon the game to such a dramatic fate, so PopReach acquired the production rights to be able to proceed with a re-release of the title on iOS and Android. The problem is that practically nothing has changed compared to the version from four years ago: we will talk about that in the Payday: War on Crime Review.
Contents and structure
Payday: Crime War basically presents itself as a Payday 2 direct transpose: the missions are the same, the characters too, but to frame everything we find in this case a free-to-play structure with its inevitable microtransactions and reward boxes, which we can use to accelerate progression and therefore unlock improvements necessary to make our thief more effective and resistant.
This specific aspect of the experience doesn't really carry much weight, given the cooperative character of the experience: accompanied by three bots or three users (but the servers turned out to be terribly empty during our tests, to be honest), our objective will be to access each task and take home our bread, that is, empty the cash registers. from shops, banks and/or commercial activities and escape with the loot before the police neutralize us.
If you have played Payday 2 (or its recent clone, see the Crime Boss: Rockay City review), you know perfectly well how these situations are regulated even by relatively complex mechanisms, with plans and strategies to implement to try to complete the plans in the cleanest and quietest way possible, avoiding collateral damage and getting the most out of each shipment.
In the case of Crime War, the contents are unlocked as we level up, but as we mentioned The missions are the same as in Payday 2 and the structure at this point is still quite immature, with a lot of content marked "coming soon", limiting the variety of an experience that itself has already been largely seen and explored.
Playability and technique
However, the big problem with this reduction on mobile devices is the combination of gameplay and technical implementation, which are intertwined with a series of quite obvious deficiencies for a mobile shooter released in 2023. In fact, we know how the entire genre has advanced considerably on iOS and Android, optimizing controls and activation systems (praise the automatic shooting) to give us the most dynamic and immediate action possible.
Well, from this point of view Payday: Crime War is definitely left behind: although support for Bluetooth controllers was introduced with the re-release, The touch controls leave a lot to be desired. for precision and reactivity, as well as for the very arrangement of the icons on the screen, which leaves very little space for the maneuverability of the virtual sticks.
The result of such a rushed and sloppy implementation is the inability to effectively control the character, making the entire experience very cumbersome but not punishing. As? It's simple: the developers seem to have discovered the control problems. lowered the overall difficulty and consequently the reactivity of the police, who really behave like zombies without the slightest intelligence.
However, we said that the problem also has to do with the technical implementation, and in fact the game is very poorly optimized, so much so that I have difficulty shooting at maximum quality on an iPhone 14 Pro, which until proven otherwise remains Apple's top of the range, overheating the device when 60 fps is selected (but there is also an option of 90 Hz) and the best textures, therefore forcing us to lower a visual quality that is not in itself exciting.
Conclusions
Tested version iPhone digital delivery app store, Google Play Price Free Holygamerz.com 5.0 Readers (6) 5.4 your votePayday: Crime War is a game out of time, the mobile version of a ten-year-old heist game that certainly still has something to say in terms of structure and gameplay, but needed a truly perfect reduction in order to express itself decently. on iOS and Android. It was not like that: the title acquired by PopReach has many problems that are difficult to justify today, in a market characterized by fierce and much more competent rivals.
PRO
- It's still payday 2
- Decent progression system
- It's free to play without too many problems.
AGAINST
- Messy, wooden touch controls
- Terrible optimization
- Little content and few online users.
