One of my most-played co-op games is Payday 2, which matches Left 4 Dead in sheer replayability. It has one of the most extensive post-launch update histories and is still getting updates today. Unfortunately, the franchise never really evolved past that, and Payday 3 struggled to live up to its legacy. It’s also unfortunate that we never really got much love for the VR version; it was officially supported in Payday 2, but that update released during the dark days of VR, when developers didn’t really know what to do. Thankfully, Payday: Aces High is a brand-new entry that promises the Payday VR experience I’ve been looking for. 

Aces High does a great job of feeling like a proper Payday.

It’s been a long time since I jumped into a VR shooter, and it is one of the first games I’ve played on the Pico 4 Ultra headset connected via cable using Pico Connect, so it’s to Aces High‘s credit that everything here feels intentional and intuitive. A far cry from the original Payday 2 VR, released during the wild west of VR support, when nobody could agree on standard controls, and everything felt unintuitive and immersion-breaking. If you played a VR shooter in the past five years, you should know what to expect. When you boot up the game, you will get a great tutorial that introduces you to Payday’s more unique features, plus a firing range where you can try every weapon before committing to a choice.

Each weapon has a place on your body; simply grip near it to equip it. With a weapon in hand, you’ll be able to drop mags, reload and cock back slides. Weapons like pistols can be fired one-handed, though automatic weapons will need both hands to control recoil. Payday: Aces High also adds some clever twists on classic Payday mechanics. Remember that drill that has the reliability of anything from Temu? That’s been changed a little bit, so you now need to manually calibrate it to the different materials. A superficial change that doesn’t mean anything substantial, but it shows some thought went into it. You’ll also be manually turning combination locks, interacting with your watch to grab keycards, etc. 

Still, it’s missing some critical features that would have given the game its own identity and carved out something new. You can’t just drag bodies out of line of sight, and picking up loot doesn’t feel tactical; you simply crush loose items in your hand rather than putting them in your pocket. Also, you can’t sling a loot bag over your back like the AI can. A lot of smaller elements add up to make Payday: Aces High feel much more sluggish to play than it needs to. 

Pistols start with suppressors by default and remove when detected.

The franchise’s signature dual playstyles are of course present here as well. Each heist has a slower, stealth-focused way to play. It requires you to avoid guards’ patrol patterns, cameras, and even civilians in some heists. In stealth, avoiding is key, as killing a guard triggers a countdown; if you don’t answer the radio in time, it triggers an alarm. At the same time, you can’t just kill everyone on the map, as killing too many guards will also trigger the alarm. Objectives will be a little different as well, since you won’t be using loud tools to get around, instead relying on hunting down codes to get through security. 

Going loud will throw you into that all-too-familiar horde shooter. Enemies come and go in waves, and you will need to mow down hordes of them whilst completing various objectives to get your loot and squad out in one piece, and these forces are unrelenting. As you enter battle, you face escalating waves that eventually become endless as you make your final escape. It’s a good thing the gunplay is smooth, because things can get intense, and if you are playing solo, it’s a rough ride since the NPCs just aren’t up to scratch. You often lag behind and don’t rack up many kills. 

At launch, there are six heists. Each has two ways to complete, and the variety ranges from traditional banks to museums and penthouses. There’s a variety of weapons that can feel a bit misleading when you walk into the firing range and see some repeats in there. There’s also a skill tree, but it’s the worst implementation for the series, feeling very barebones and basic. The main replayability comes from grinding out the resources needed to level up skills and prepare for harder difficulties, which do a great job of ramping things up. They get really tough. 

Friendly AI leaves a lot to be desired.

Long-term PCVR players will know exactly what I mean when I say that Payday: Aces High suffers from Quest Syndrome. Being a cross-platform VR title that supports multiple systems, including PCVR and standalone systems like the Quest 3/S, you can expect a few drawbacks, and to put it bluntly, Payday: Aces High isn’t exactly a looker. Environments, character models and guns all feel flat and fall behind current other VR titles. The level of interactivity within the environment itself feels scripted and lifeless. You can’t pick up everything there, and what you can pick up feels limited. Little touches like these massively help immersion, but Payday: Aces High lacks them. 

In terms of VR comfortability, there’s not much to complain about here for me personally; I didn’t have a problem with the calibrated height, but others have, so your mileage may vary, and there’s no manual calibration in the game. You can also fine-tune your controller settings, so if your VR controllers are tilted like mine, you can do that in this game too. It has all your standard VR comfort settings: HMD- or Controller-based movement, snap or smooth turning, vignettes and all the usual stuff. You can’t fine-tune your holster placement, but it does give you a few options, like putting the main rifle on your back rather than your chest. 

Payday: Aces High isn’t the full house I was looking for, but it also isn’t a bad game. It’s a fully functional Payday VR experience that brings over everything that makes the cooperative shooter so great, but lacks the meaningful changes that would help it stand out. There’s plenty of fun to be had, and if you are itching for a cooperative shooter in VR, then I can guarantee that Payday: Aces High is a good time regardless of the issues and missed opportunities. 

Payday: Aces High is available now on SteamVR and Meta Quest.

Reviewed on PC with a Pico 4 Ultra VR Headset. 

A copy of Payday: Aces High was provided by the publisher.