A more frustrating game overall that has a lot of good gameplay elements and flare that makes it unique, but it feels too heavily "rockstar" from it's writing and storytelling, it doesn't feel like it works well with the story it wants to tell. Especially with the non-linear angle they were going with.

gameplay is probably what carries the game the most, the level design is basic but the gun fights between enemies is fun, even with some sections being more obnoxious than others.

Also visually this game is exhausting. Graphics are top notch and I wanna say it's aged pretty well, but at the same time what makes it visually unappealing is the visual effects they go into. I get Max is a drunk guy now, but the way they go about it is awful.

very conflicting game from a lot of angles, very hard to get into properly compared to the first two.

fucking stunner from start to finish. today exists John Wick but 12 years ago Max Payne perfectly blends John Woo gun-fu with Tom Clancy esque military tactility to create the perfect third-person shooter. a noir game with the pompous thematic seriousness and grounded mechanics of a The Last of Us with a DOOM-like sensibility for cartoonish over-the-top mayhem; often an abandonment of reality in favour of action set-piece that live to be referred to as "badass". it is a game about a desperate, broken man, trying to find himself amidst the chaos his poor choices have led him to; it's also a game about human trafficking where you dive in slow motion to take on a shooting gallery Brazilian thugs and goons while HEALTH's "Tears" blares more than triumphantly through the speakers. it's a fucking art piece of action gamemaking; a drunken heavy spectacle of masculine pride and self-loathing. a game that makes me happy to be a worse person so that I can die alone and feel cool about it.

somehow I doubt i'll ever play a game I like more.

Played this as I follow along with Blake Hester and Jacob Geller's wonderful podcast Something Rotten.

Third crack at the Max Payne character, and along with it another fresh interpretation. This time he's a quip-y old dumb alcoholic on a quest to be the most Rockstar Games Guy in Brazil. I for one like the setting change because I don't think there were any Italians left alive in NYC after Max Payne 2. In a flashback, Max discovers that Italians also live in Jersey, and gets to work.

Max runs through expensive and unarguably brilliant level design, and engages in some of the most elegant and weighty gunplay, in search of...what exactly? This game wants to step on thorny issues of class, violence, race, etc. but doesn't want to push the gamer to ask the hard questions or to implicate themselves. All we can do here is bear witness to suffering. A lot of it. A very 2012 brand of political cowardice.

On the other hand, the game represents Max's alcoholism and road to sobriety in stark terms and with real care and purpose, to the point where the game uses visual effects to induce an actual hangover.

Maybe this is the distinction between mere depiction vs. something more meaningful. It's very OK for piece of art to have nothing important to say (I'm about to move on to Kane and Lynch, after all), but if it's trying to convince you that it does, and remains completely incurious about dipping more than a toe into the bloody waters, it kind of pisses me off.

(series replay)
While the story isn't as charming as 1, nor as engaging as 2, it still pulls off a wonderful swan song for Max putting him out of his element. In my opinion the greatest 3rd Person shooter ever made and has yet to be topped. Every shot you take feels like it leads into the next and the freedom to choreograph massive shootout sequences is more satisfying than ever before. Hard mode is just the right amount of challenge to make you feel like you're barely scraping by while still feeling like an unstoppable killing machine.