I've been very interested in Monaco for while now and I have a couple friends who own it but scheduling multiplayer sessions can be tough for me these days so a decent single player is a big plus.

Have any of you played much single player? How is?

How is it with random groups?

Also, do I need a mic?

It's a game best played with people you know. I made it pretty far in singleplayer, but only being able to control one character at a time severely limits how effective a heist can be.

The few times I've played with randoms, none of us had mics and it ended up being rushed and chaotic. It's pretty much like Payday 2 in that you need to be on the same page planning things out, rather than everyone just doing their own thing.

I still say you should get it because it's an awesome game!

@professoress: Monaco is an o-k experience alone for the first handfull of levels and then becomes really frustrating later on.

Unless you have a dedicated group of friends or at least one other person to play with, I would not recommend it.

Playing with randoms is ok but the matchmaking is a bit odd and certain people, as always, take the game quite seriously.

@professoress My experience with this game is staggeringly different...

Playing Monaco by oneself is fun for a ton of levels, then it gets challenging. Not once did I ever find it truly frustrating or impossible though, just take your time with it and enjoy it :) .
You don't have to get a good time to beat levels in the beginning!!

With random groups it can be more tricky and chaotic, but so long as you're willing to have fun and not take it too seriously it's alright. Respect those making groups to play dead serious, and find those who just want to have fun. You'll have to expose yourself to them eventually to make friends online anyhow like in any game experience, and I now know 3-5 ppl online from doing so.

You'll have it rough without a mic, to be honest. I tried it for a while and figured you have to be so good by yourself or, more likely, you have to listen to those with mics else risk confusing everyone else, which can be stifling ~_~.

Once you've beaten all the levels with or without others, I find the best part is going back and speed running levels, or at least trying to get a better score from what you started out with. Doing so in multiplayer is hard because you'll all need mics, be somewhat skilled and coordinated and not feel everyone is sharing the workload close to evenly. One player all the money is yours, and you can PURPOSEFULLY DIE to switch to another character without losing any time for each extra life you have! Strategy...but it all comes down to preference :P