Payday Aces High review: This year’s must-play multiplayer VR game

Join up with three other heisters and get revenge on the billionaire who sent you to jail in the first place in Payday Aces High, now available on Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Steam Frame. Payday Aces High is the return to the series’ roots I had been hoping for. Payday 3 wasn’t received particularly well, and while the team behind it has turned things around in the past few years, it’s pretty clear that Payday 2 is still everyone’s favorite entry. But that stops for me now as we enter a new chapter in the series, with four new characters, a new “villain,” and made-for-VR mechanics that shine. 💰Payday Aces High is available on Meta Quest and SteamVR for $24.99. I’ve been playing Payday Aces High throughout the alpha and beta stages and got access to the final review build a week ago. Since then, my son and I have robbed banks, stolen from museums, hoisted a fragile quantum computer out of an icy compound, and generally made life a living hell for Warren Jupiter, the man who made billions framing the characters you play as in Payday Aces High. If you’re familiar with Payday games, this one will mostly feel like a return to the original game with new mechanics in tow. Some of the fan-favorite mechanics from Payday 2 (and even 3) aren’t here — you can’t take hostages, for example — but other mechanics, like gun upgrades and perks, will keep you coming back over and over again. While you can choose from the four main Aces characters — the Ace of Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades — the character itself is just a visual change rather than a stats-based one. You customize your own stats throughout the adventure as you unlock points and earn money. You’ll also collect the infamous masks that each character dons, including DLC sets (and missions) scheduled for the next few months. Payday Aces High begins with six unlockable missions, while a seventh free one (named Coup de Grace) is landing on December 14. Developer Fast Travel Games is a VR veteran and is hosting community challenges throughout the next few months, unlocking special loot when completed. The game has full crossplay support, so it should be very easy to find and invite friends, no matter which platform they prefer. I played the standalone Quest 3 version, which looks quite nice visually and sports great performance. VR-specific mechanics are excellent, including on-body inventory, fun skill check-style minigames to keep equipment working, physical interaction with locks and other environmental details, and lots of shooting with physics-based gun mechanics. Hacking a computer while shooting in a completely different direction is something that only makes sense in VR, and I love leaning into those types of mechanics. The biggest miss of Payday Aces High is not providing enough bespoke VR mechanics. You can’t grab characters, can’t break glass with a melee attack, and the stealth leaves a bit to be desired. I would love to be able to toss an object across the room to distract guards for a moment, for instance, as it would fit the medium very well. But outside of a few immersion-breaking decisions like this, the action is incredibly fun, challenging, and, maybe most important of all, rewarding. My son and I have completed several missions many times over in hopes of perfecting the formula, and the increasing complexity and difficulty of each has proven to be an enjoyable challenge. Payday Aces High is my multiplayer VR game of the year, hands down, not just because I already loved the series, but because I find co-op multiplayer to be the most fun thing to do in a VR headset. AMVR’s new head strap is my favorite way to keep cool with a Meta Quest 3 or 3S Supernatural, the best VR workout app, makes its glorious comeback today Meta is launching ‘VR Glasses’ next year for $1,300 Follow Nick: YouTube, X (Twitter), Threads, Instagram FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.