By complete coincidence I started playing this game on its exact anniversary. I tried really hard to appreciate Max Payne 3, at times I could see what the game was going for. The apartment scenes with the series theme playing. The super detailed TV shows. The scripted infinite ammo bullet-time sequences. TEARS by HEALTH blasting in the airport. These are flashes of a game I really like, but overall, the experience is meh.
Max Payne 3 is The Godfather 3 of videogames. Made a significant amount of time after an acclaimed, self-contained duology, about an old man trying to cling on for dear life. But unlike the Godfather which kept its main cast and the director, the only real similarity with the previous Max Payne games is James McCaffrey. It’s been Rockstar-ified, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m not criticising the game on the principle that it’s vastly different from its predecessors, but I do kinda miss the unique style and writing of the Remedy ones. At times it’s hard to even compare the games as part of the same franchise.
Firstly, the cutscenes. Unfortunately unskippable. There are a lot of them (probably to hide loading zones) and I found the effects very obnoxious. Instead of a graphic novel, we have TV glitch effects and double vision every 5 seconds (hardly exaggerating), freeze frames and comic-panel transitions. By the fifth mission I was predicting every time BIG WORDS appeared on the screen when somebody said SOMETHING WEIGHTY. You can like or dislike them, but I’ve already seen Natural Born Killers so it drove me kinda nuts. The dialogue is mixed. At its best it’s a mix between Remedy and Rockstar humour. At its worse its “poor bastard had no one to reboot his system” and “I really needed to get moving” when you're trying to find golden gun parts. In a single cutscene you are treated to more swear words and slurs than the entirety of the first two games.
The story itself is a lot of Payne running around without much of a strong reason other than “I had to find someone because…well because earlier I had to find someone else who died and so now I need to find their brother's wife’s sister”. It did lose me at times when it was bouncing back and forth between flashbacks of minimal relevance (although their inclusion was nice) and the “find person E” structure of the Brazil narrative.
In terms of gameplay, this is surprisingly brutal. I don’t know the last time that a ‘Normal’ difficulty kicked my ass this much. Every single bullet that hits you does like half of your health. Enemies will be shooting at you from 5 miles away with insane accuracy, basically anytime you’re out of cover you’re 3 hits away from death. Not even bullet time can protect you that much. Enemies themselves will take dozens of bullets to the body and only reliably die from headshots, which can be really hard to pull off when there are 6 enemies on the other side of the room and 5 seconds of exposure is vitally dangerous. I never actively consumed painkillers, instead I auto-used them through “Last Man Standing” over 100 times.
Max Payne 3 gives much less painkillers and ammo, and every time anything happens you always lose your heavy weapon (this is just a personal annoyance). Scripted slo-mo sequences are cool, although the original games felt more like you were crafting your own cinematic moments rather than letting the game pick for you. Finding clues, collectibles and the “grinds” are something I will never bother to complete, definitely the most generic feature of this game. Generally, I much preferred 1 and 2’s combat - quicksaving and all - to the cover-dependent, low-health fest of 3.
Overall, Max Payne 3 is a game where I can acknowledge its strengths while knowing I probably won’t pick it up again.
Max Payne 3 is The Godfather 3 of videogames. Made a significant amount of time after an acclaimed, self-contained duology, about an old man trying to cling on for dear life. But unlike the Godfather which kept its main cast and the director, the only real similarity with the previous Max Payne games is James McCaffrey. It’s been Rockstar-ified, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m not criticising the game on the principle that it’s vastly different from its predecessors, but I do kinda miss the unique style and writing of the Remedy ones. At times it’s hard to even compare the games as part of the same franchise.
Firstly, the cutscenes. Unfortunately unskippable. There are a lot of them (probably to hide loading zones) and I found the effects very obnoxious. Instead of a graphic novel, we have TV glitch effects and double vision every 5 seconds (hardly exaggerating), freeze frames and comic-panel transitions. By the fifth mission I was predicting every time BIG WORDS appeared on the screen when somebody said SOMETHING WEIGHTY. You can like or dislike them, but I’ve already seen Natural Born Killers so it drove me kinda nuts. The dialogue is mixed. At its best it’s a mix between Remedy and Rockstar humour. At its worse its “poor bastard had no one to reboot his system” and “I really needed to get moving” when you're trying to find golden gun parts. In a single cutscene you are treated to more swear words and slurs than the entirety of the first two games.
The story itself is a lot of Payne running around without much of a strong reason other than “I had to find someone because…well because earlier I had to find someone else who died and so now I need to find their brother's wife’s sister”. It did lose me at times when it was bouncing back and forth between flashbacks of minimal relevance (although their inclusion was nice) and the “find person E” structure of the Brazil narrative.
In terms of gameplay, this is surprisingly brutal. I don’t know the last time that a ‘Normal’ difficulty kicked my ass this much. Every single bullet that hits you does like half of your health. Enemies will be shooting at you from 5 miles away with insane accuracy, basically anytime you’re out of cover you’re 3 hits away from death. Not even bullet time can protect you that much. Enemies themselves will take dozens of bullets to the body and only reliably die from headshots, which can be really hard to pull off when there are 6 enemies on the other side of the room and 5 seconds of exposure is vitally dangerous. I never actively consumed painkillers, instead I auto-used them through “Last Man Standing” over 100 times.
Max Payne 3 gives much less painkillers and ammo, and every time anything happens you always lose your heavy weapon (this is just a personal annoyance). Scripted slo-mo sequences are cool, although the original games felt more like you were crafting your own cinematic moments rather than letting the game pick for you. Finding clues, collectibles and the “grinds” are something I will never bother to complete, definitely the most generic feature of this game. Generally, I much preferred 1 and 2’s combat - quicksaving and all - to the cover-dependent, low-health fest of 3.
Overall, Max Payne 3 is a game where I can acknowledge its strengths while knowing I probably won’t pick it up again.