Payday 2 Gets New Safe House, New Heist, Much More

Cooperative first-person heister Payday 2 [official site] has concluded ten days of content updates - a little shindig developers Overkill called Hoxton's Housewarming Party. They really make a big scene out of everything, that mob. Don't even get me started on their weddings... Anyway! Additions include a new safe house chill-out zone buttled by John Cleese, a new enemy, new weapons, new masks, new wacky mutators, and a new (old) heist to play. My question is: can I drink all Hoxton's fancy booze then fall asleep on his floor in a nest of half-unpacked boxes?

Let's start with the last of the additions, released on Sunday (yeah yeah, I know, but I was away on Monday) - Panic Room. Ye olde heist from Payday: The Heist, where you need to steal, er, an entire panic room, is now in the sequel all prettied-up.

Perhaps the most long-awaited of the update's bits is a new safe house. This enemy-free level was a weird feature when the game launched years ago, as there wasn't much to do there and you had no reason to visit more than once. Well! The gang have burned down that old place and got themselves a fancy new safehouse, where each gang member hangs around doing their own stuff, John Cleese wanders around as your butler, you can gamble, you can upgrade and customise the place, and you can invite your co-op pals to come along with you. It's still only a fluffy little thing on the side, but now it's a fun one. Here, watch this video by 'FoukelPoint' to see an upgraded safe house.

Folks who've been there, robbed that might fancy checking out the new higher difficulty levels and the new mutators. Those are optional tweaks to the game, which can do everything from making enemies deal more damage to, er, making them split into more enemies when killed or drift up into the skies when you shoot them with shotguns. As often happens on heists.

Then you have new enemy medics who'll scamper around healing folks, a new six-shooter shotgun, new concussion grenades, and... a whole lot of stuff. Go see it. That's all live now.