How the hell do you rob a bridge? I know I’m not the smartest cookie, and I skipped all the Payday 3 cutscenes, so when I saw we were running across a bridge with the objective of “don’t let civilians escape”, I was understandably confused. This isn’t a bank, it’s a bridge that’s still in construction. What am I meant to do, nick the steel beams and trade the hostages? Then came the truck, or as I like to call it, the payload.

Duh, we’re intercepting a vehicle so we can loot its goodies! Right, I knew that. The bridge is just the backdrop. I still want to steal a bridge, for the record. I don’t know what that would look like, but I’m picturing the opening of Saints Row 3 where you lift the vault out of the bank with a helicopter. Only it’s a bridge. Anyway, truck.

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Road Rage tasks you with stopping a vehicle in its tracks and then guiding it to a platform where you break it open and take all the money out. You then throw the bags of cash over the railings at a helicopter that catches them mid-air. It’s a silly B-movie heist, but much of it revolves around escorting the truck along the bridge while fending off waves of enemies.

It immediately begs the comparison to Overwatch and Team Fortress 2. It’s just Overwatch’s Escort the Payload mode where you follow a moving vehicle along a path to several checkpoints before reaching the enemy base and winning the match. Only here, you continue past that endpoint as you fight even more cops while moving hundreds of thousands of dollars to your exfil.

Given that much of Payday revolves around a similar structure - go into a building, find the vault, take the money, exfil - Road Rage is incredibly refreshing. You’re not sneaking around, hunting for keys and files while you carefully plan a break-in that nobody will notice (or just putting your mask on and opening fire like most randoms seem to), you’re getting into the thick of the action. There’s nothing like it, a mission all about holding your own in a neverending gunfight as you guide a slow-moving truck, patiently waiting for the payoff.

It puts the weight on Payday 3’s improvements. Its predecessors didn’t have the best gunplay, so to have a heist hinge entirely on frantic shooting, often in the open where you’re exposed and vulnerable, was a big risk. But it paid off, as Road Rage takes everything about the thrill of going loud and plants it onto a corridor where your equipment has never been more fitting.

You’re running and gunning, quickly dispatching multiple enemies as you move forward - a lot like when you’re carrying bags of cash out of banks. But you’re also defending the truck as you place ladders over holes in the bridge to get it across, playing into that castle under siege moment we so often run into as we stand our ground in rooms while bagging cash or waiting for thermite to blow a hole in the floor.

It’s everything about the ‘go loud!’ approach distilled into one perfect level designed just for it, but so much of that design lends itself to the chaotic nature of a game mode that has solidified itself as a staple of the hero shooter. Dallas and Hoxton might not be heroes, but the over-the-top ridiculousness of such a scenario lends itself perfectly to their eccentric personalities.

Payday 3 isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a melting pot of other games, past entries included, that fits the best parts together to form something fresh. That’s what makes it stand out.

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