Payback 2


Payback 2: The Battle Sandbox is an action video game developed and published by Apex Designs Entertainment, and is a remake of, or sequel to the original Payback. It was released on November 20, 2012 for Android and iOS, and became free to play in 2013.

Gameplay

Payback 2 has a story mode with multiple chapters. The player must accomplish missions for a crime lord, to obtain enough money to complete the level. There are various ways to obtain money; completing missions, destroying objects like cars and killing pedestrians. Payback 2 has a campaign mode, with multiple chapters, with different mini-games against the AI characters.
The multiplayer mode features four public game servers which can each host multiple multiplayer games, and the players in each game can vote on which game will be hosted next. There is a private multiplayer mode too, in which the player can invite others using a shortcode. Payback 2 has an online challenges mode where hourly, daily and weekly challenges are automatically generated for the players to compete with each other. The player competes against the AI characters, with their result submitted to the leaderboard.
There are various weapons in game, such as a shotgun, pistol, knife, rocket launcher, handheld mini-gun, auto turret, grenade, flamethrower and more.

Development

The original Payback focused on single-player gameplay in creating Payback 2 the developer decided to use a different game engine than the original's, create better graphics, and putting emphasis on multiplayer gameplay.

Reception

When it was released, TouchArcade praised the game for being a competent Grand Theft Auto clone, but criticized its lack of a story. Slide2Play was less enthusiastic, claiming that the game "still has issues with its basic design. Winning a race is literally as easy as pushing forward... it's hard to target the bad guys in the game's on-foot shooting mission... Shooting is also made difficult by the fact that everybody on-screen is tiny and seems to blend in with the dull environments." Multiple journalists noted having issues connecting, or finding, people to play with online as well.