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Payday 3‘s release is coming September 21st, 2023, so we’re gearing you up for games like Payday to play in the meantime. Payday is about as unique a game as there is, tasking you and a team of customizable bank robbers to take on heists of varying stakes. The ability to play multiplayer is what caused the massive popularity of the series, and to this day, you can hop online and easily find a crew to take down a bank with. While it’s tough to replicate just what Payday does to maintain its popularity, here are five games like Payday 3 that can tide you over until the king returns next month.
Top 5 Games To Play While Waiting for Payday 3
From shooters to hack and slashers, here are the best games to keep your crew ready for Payday 3.
5. Grand Theft Auto 5
Although it’s already a decade old, Grand Theft Auto 5 has stood tall as the years have gone by due to its impressive online presence. Grand Theft Auto Online allows you to team up with your friends to take on tons and tons of heists that require tight communication with your teammates in order to succeed.
Rockstar has supported the game every year, consistently adding new content and recently embracing the fantastic modding community to create a gaming experience on par and possibly beyond what Payday 3 has to offer. If you don’t like playing online, you can still enjoy the fantastic single-player campaign that has plenty of fun heists to take part in, along with the normal chaos a Grand Theft Auto game has to offer.
4. Red Dead Redemption 2
It’s a Rockstar special again, but if you’re looking for high-tension bank robberies, Red Dead Redemption 2 has a ton to offer you. Throughout the main campaign, you take part in several intense bank robberies culminating in shootouts and even some tragic deaths. While they aren’t the most difficult things to pull off, the variety is what makes them great.
Riverboat gambling heists, train robberies, bank robberies, and more will be on the docket for Arthur Morgan and the gang, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s all supported by some of the best voice acting in videogame history. Much like Grand Theft Auto Online, there is also Red Dead Redemption 2 Online. In this mode, you can take on endless heists with your friends during the frontier era, requiring smart strategy and generally providing more challenges than the base game has to offer. It’s not supported to the same level as Payday 2, but there is a lot of fun to be had here if the era speaks to you.
3. Warhammer: Vermintide 2
Not exactly a heist game, but Warhammer: Vermintide 2 provides plenty of incredible co-op action that Payday 2 fans thirst for, and it provides a wild setting for it to go down in. You will face off against various horrors from the Warhammer universe and do so primarily with melee weapons.
There are guns to keep the hordes at bay too, but you’ll be missing out on the best first-person melee combat around if you stick to them over the melee weapons. As far as 4-player co-op games like Payday 2 go, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is about as good as it gets, and while the genres differ aplenty, they still share fantastic online co-op gameplay.
2. Thief
If you feel like being a bit stealthier with your thievery, look no further than 2014’s Thief. In this long-running series, you play as Garrett, a master thief, and you are tasked with stealing some highly valuable items from some very dangerous people. The gameplay involves you carefully casing levels to figure out the best path to achieve your goals. You will manipulate the environment to your advantage, trick your enemies, pick locks and engage in anything thief-related you can imagine.
You won’t have any massive battles here, and you’re not going to be teaming up online, so this one is for players who are looking to steal stuff and get out unnoticed and have a great time doing so. Payday 3 will definitely be a loud experience, but there’s something special about a stealthier experience.
1. Cyberpunk 2077
While it’s not a heist game per se, there are plenty of times that Cyberpunk 2077 tasks you with stealing an item or two or teaming up with an unruly bunch to pull off some serious thieveries. The best example of this comes a few hours into the story on a mission called the heist. This is arguably the best-designed mission in the entire game, and it involves step-by-step planning of the heist of Yorinobo Arasaka, the Emperor’s apartment. You’re tasked with finding a seemingly simple data chip that ends up being much, much more.
The build-up to this mission is just fantastic, and the dialogue throughout keeps you on your toes, waiting for something to go wrong, which, spoiler alert, it absolutely does. Along the way, you use high-tech robots to scout the area, gather intel, and finally infiltrate the apartment in one of the more tense scenarios in the whole game. After this, you get involved in high-tech military heists with Panam and various side quests where the people of Night City sometimes require you to steal a certain valuable item for them.
The Payday 3 release is set for September 21st, 2023, for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC on Game Pass.
