replicantgestalt
2012
Before this review starts, I would like to preface that this is by no means an actual, in-depth critical review of Max Payne 3. I won’t be touching the story or gameplay AT ALL in this, so let that be warned. This is purely about how I feel about Max Payne 3’s portrayal of my region of Brazil and how it affected my enjoyment of it to the point where I just can’t really stand it and think it is one of the most racist video games ever made. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Resident Evil 5 is frequently cited as a super racist video game when Max Payne 3 is literally right there and does the exact same things that game does!
The average person who played Max Payne 3 will probably not bother to do an inch of research on the country of Brazil, probably thinks Rio is the capital, and believes that it is an absolute warzone hellhole where people get shot on the street constantly. This is the kind of audience Rockstar was trying to appeal to with this game. I do not believe, even for a second, that they made this game out of respect for Brazil. They simply wanted a 3rd world country to throw their white American hero into so he could shoot and kill without a care in the world, because the 3rd world is so lawless, right? They wanted to portray their weird, twisted view of Brazil so much that they even went so far as to scan a thousand residents of the favela of Paraisópolis into the game, acting as backdrop NPCs in the chapters that do take place in the favela. You can kill actual residents of São Paulo in Max Payne 3, which is crazy once you consider how the rest of the game handles this stuff. You can sit there in your little house just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and get your greasy hands on the controller and shoot at people who were probably paid less than a penny for their faces to be plastered onto enemies. It's the most pure depiction of the average 40-something-year-old American going to a country that doesn't belong to you and killing brown people for fun!
There is so much arrogance in Rockstar's approach to developing Max Payne 3. A huge inspiration for the game was the 2007 Brazilian movie “Tropa de Elite," which is very funny once you learn what that movie is about. It's like Rockstar saw that movie as just an average cool awesome shooter romp through a favela and not as a critique of Brazil’s problems and struggle with violence. I think taking a movie that presents a very thoughtful critique of violence and using it for their little American power fantasy video game is insanely disrespectful. But it’s not like it really matters to the audience for this game. The audience doesn’t know what "Tropa de Elite" is; most of them couldn’t even tell what language Brazil speaks, and most of them probably don’t even know Portuguese is a language. It appeals to the naive, the Americans, who think going to Brazil to shoot at some mixed-race thugs is the coolest thing in the world because they can live out their little soldier hero fantasy.
The depiction of lawful Brazilian citizens, who all seem to hate gringos and be aggressive on sight despite Brazil frequently being cited as one of the most friendly countries to foreigners, is an objectively wrong, offensive depiction. Brazilians do not hate gringos; I, being one myself and being friends with a lot of gringos and foreigners, can personally attest to this. I have been around a lot of São Paulo because I live fairly close to it and there are always gringos around, and no one minds, and in fact, most Brazilians really enjoy helping out gringos or foreigners in any way they can! Rockstar seems to have this weird, twisted idea that since it's a favela and not the clean, corporate building of the Brancos, the people are totally different. The people from the favelas are wonderful people, despite the bad hand most of them have been dealt in life: stuck in poverty, living in run-down buildings on top of other buildings, stacked up so high. They have a resilient spirit; they, to me, represent the Brazilian spirit more than any other group of people in this world, and I respect them deeply for it. I think choosing to depict these people as inherently hostile to Max, the American hero, is so disrespectful to them and their home and the culture they were raised around, and it paints a picture that is absolutely not true. I believe Rockstar chose to depict the favelas like that because it would sell. The depiction of the favelas as lawless wastelands with gangsters and thugs at every corner is the most pure evidence you could find of the ignorance of the average American writer. You can visit a country and study it, see how it is, then go home to your little flat in your little apartment and depict it in a way that would make sense to your audience, which is the American, the one you want to please because they at the end of the day give you money; the citizens of São Paulo don’t really matter in the end much at all, and their input was never needed.
Brazil already gets misrepresented by the world at large, and I am a firm believer that media can affect and alter reality and how people perceive things in significant ways. Rockstar seemed to be drawn in by the allure of Brazil that exists in the minds of only foreigners and not the actual experience of the average Brazilian. The funk, the favela, the scorching sun, the people, the beaches, the drinking, the soccer—everything that people stereotype Brazilians as is present in this game! I don’t feel proud saying this is THE game that takes place where I live, that this is THE game that is supposed to “represent” São Paulo. I personally struggled with my Brazilian identity for a long time because of certain notions and preconceptions people held and still hold against Brazilians, particularly online, which tends to get very very nasty and racist. And I cannot sit here and pretend like I am fine with the way these Americans wrote about my country and my people.
Even when you get to the real villains of the game, the Brazilian UFE and Victor Branco, the game never changes from its weird attitude towards Brazilians. Chapter 12 is literally named “The Great American Savior of the Poor,” and as ironic as Rockstar’s intent may have been while writing that, they characterize Max and Brazilians in such a way that that is actually the case! He stops the Comando Sombra, he stops the UFE, he stops political corruption, and he saves a bunch of favela citizens from getting their organs harvested. He, a white American man, really does become the savior of the poor through this game's absolutely naive and frankly stupidly racist writing. And the critique itself towards the Brazilian police and political world is absolutely shallow and warped. I mean, Victor Branco is kind of a silly caricature of a stereotypical corrupt Brazilian politician, but the game doesn’t really delve any deeper than that, and it frankly makes me quite sad. Just a few years after this game came out, Operation Car Wash started, and honestly, I wish this game had come out during that time frame so they could have developed that plot point further. But then I also worry they would’ve handled it in the worst way possible and made the most Brazilian right-wing propaganda piece video game of all time, and that thought alone sends shivers down my spine. Like Imagine in your head right now a game so right-wing Bolsonaro would probably use clips of it in his 2018 campaign. I already think the game is inherently right-leaning simply because of the way it handles a lot of the subject matter, and I honestly fear what a 2017 Max Payne 3 taking place in Brazil during the Temer era would look like...
If it seems like I have gotten emotional or angry while writing this, it is because I have! I do not live in the city of São Paulo proper; I live on the coast. But I have been to São Paulo quite often in my life due to a few of my relatives living there, and those relatives live in the parts that Max Payne 3 chose specifically to depict. It makes me sad that this is the product that was made; this is what Rockstar chose to depict of my family, my friends, and my country. To the people that live here, to the people that know and love people that live in the world Max Payne 3 chose to take place in, it is a very painful experience to go through again and again. São Paulo is really a beautiful state, and most will never ever get to experience it; only the people that have lived here would really understand how amazing and beautiful it truly can be. But to the average audience that loves Rockstar, all of this is alright and fine by them; they’re never going to feel offended, and they’re never going to have a problem with it. They’re never going to feel their blood pressure rise when the game says something so insanely racist you have to take a step back. They’re never going to wonder how their friends and family are viewed due to the negative connotations being from a favela already carried, made worse by a totally inept and ignorant development team. Because they don’t care. To the average American consumer, it is just another game set in a "shithole," a "warzone," where they get to escape their privileged realities and pretend they’re some sort of hero. Rockstar manages to reinforce every single negative stereotype about Brazil for these people. And they’re going to eat it up; they’ll believe it because they are inherently ignorant. It is a game made for Americans, not for the Brazilian people, and there is nothing more American than pretending to be a badass hero in some “shithole” where the only goal is to kill as many brown people as possible.
I have gone on a few tangents here and there, but I have stated my case. Max Payne 3 is a racist video game, plain and simple. It's not going to beat around the bush and pretend it's because Rockstar is doing it by accident because it honestly feels very deliberate. They had writers approve a lot of this stuff, and it baffles me that at no point a writer went and said how kind of messed up it all is. I will leave a single quote here that I feel perfectly illustrates what I mean by all of this:
“We’d half destroyed São Paulo’s most hallowed place of worship.” A stadium.
The average person who played Max Payne 3 will probably not bother to do an inch of research on the country of Brazil, probably thinks Rio is the capital, and believes that it is an absolute warzone hellhole where people get shot on the street constantly. This is the kind of audience Rockstar was trying to appeal to with this game. I do not believe, even for a second, that they made this game out of respect for Brazil. They simply wanted a 3rd world country to throw their white American hero into so he could shoot and kill without a care in the world, because the 3rd world is so lawless, right? They wanted to portray their weird, twisted view of Brazil so much that they even went so far as to scan a thousand residents of the favela of Paraisópolis into the game, acting as backdrop NPCs in the chapters that do take place in the favela. You can kill actual residents of São Paulo in Max Payne 3, which is crazy once you consider how the rest of the game handles this stuff. You can sit there in your little house just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and get your greasy hands on the controller and shoot at people who were probably paid less than a penny for their faces to be plastered onto enemies. It's the most pure depiction of the average 40-something-year-old American going to a country that doesn't belong to you and killing brown people for fun!
There is so much arrogance in Rockstar's approach to developing Max Payne 3. A huge inspiration for the game was the 2007 Brazilian movie “Tropa de Elite," which is very funny once you learn what that movie is about. It's like Rockstar saw that movie as just an average cool awesome shooter romp through a favela and not as a critique of Brazil’s problems and struggle with violence. I think taking a movie that presents a very thoughtful critique of violence and using it for their little American power fantasy video game is insanely disrespectful. But it’s not like it really matters to the audience for this game. The audience doesn’t know what "Tropa de Elite" is; most of them couldn’t even tell what language Brazil speaks, and most of them probably don’t even know Portuguese is a language. It appeals to the naive, the Americans, who think going to Brazil to shoot at some mixed-race thugs is the coolest thing in the world because they can live out their little soldier hero fantasy.
The depiction of lawful Brazilian citizens, who all seem to hate gringos and be aggressive on sight despite Brazil frequently being cited as one of the most friendly countries to foreigners, is an objectively wrong, offensive depiction. Brazilians do not hate gringos; I, being one myself and being friends with a lot of gringos and foreigners, can personally attest to this. I have been around a lot of São Paulo because I live fairly close to it and there are always gringos around, and no one minds, and in fact, most Brazilians really enjoy helping out gringos or foreigners in any way they can! Rockstar seems to have this weird, twisted idea that since it's a favela and not the clean, corporate building of the Brancos, the people are totally different. The people from the favelas are wonderful people, despite the bad hand most of them have been dealt in life: stuck in poverty, living in run-down buildings on top of other buildings, stacked up so high. They have a resilient spirit; they, to me, represent the Brazilian spirit more than any other group of people in this world, and I respect them deeply for it. I think choosing to depict these people as inherently hostile to Max, the American hero, is so disrespectful to them and their home and the culture they were raised around, and it paints a picture that is absolutely not true. I believe Rockstar chose to depict the favelas like that because it would sell. The depiction of the favelas as lawless wastelands with gangsters and thugs at every corner is the most pure evidence you could find of the ignorance of the average American writer. You can visit a country and study it, see how it is, then go home to your little flat in your little apartment and depict it in a way that would make sense to your audience, which is the American, the one you want to please because they at the end of the day give you money; the citizens of São Paulo don’t really matter in the end much at all, and their input was never needed.
Brazil already gets misrepresented by the world at large, and I am a firm believer that media can affect and alter reality and how people perceive things in significant ways. Rockstar seemed to be drawn in by the allure of Brazil that exists in the minds of only foreigners and not the actual experience of the average Brazilian. The funk, the favela, the scorching sun, the people, the beaches, the drinking, the soccer—everything that people stereotype Brazilians as is present in this game! I don’t feel proud saying this is THE game that takes place where I live, that this is THE game that is supposed to “represent” São Paulo. I personally struggled with my Brazilian identity for a long time because of certain notions and preconceptions people held and still hold against Brazilians, particularly online, which tends to get very very nasty and racist. And I cannot sit here and pretend like I am fine with the way these Americans wrote about my country and my people.
Even when you get to the real villains of the game, the Brazilian UFE and Victor Branco, the game never changes from its weird attitude towards Brazilians. Chapter 12 is literally named “The Great American Savior of the Poor,” and as ironic as Rockstar’s intent may have been while writing that, they characterize Max and Brazilians in such a way that that is actually the case! He stops the Comando Sombra, he stops the UFE, he stops political corruption, and he saves a bunch of favela citizens from getting their organs harvested. He, a white American man, really does become the savior of the poor through this game's absolutely naive and frankly stupidly racist writing. And the critique itself towards the Brazilian police and political world is absolutely shallow and warped. I mean, Victor Branco is kind of a silly caricature of a stereotypical corrupt Brazilian politician, but the game doesn’t really delve any deeper than that, and it frankly makes me quite sad. Just a few years after this game came out, Operation Car Wash started, and honestly, I wish this game had come out during that time frame so they could have developed that plot point further. But then I also worry they would’ve handled it in the worst way possible and made the most Brazilian right-wing propaganda piece video game of all time, and that thought alone sends shivers down my spine. Like Imagine in your head right now a game so right-wing Bolsonaro would probably use clips of it in his 2018 campaign. I already think the game is inherently right-leaning simply because of the way it handles a lot of the subject matter, and I honestly fear what a 2017 Max Payne 3 taking place in Brazil during the Temer era would look like...
If it seems like I have gotten emotional or angry while writing this, it is because I have! I do not live in the city of São Paulo proper; I live on the coast. But I have been to São Paulo quite often in my life due to a few of my relatives living there, and those relatives live in the parts that Max Payne 3 chose specifically to depict. It makes me sad that this is the product that was made; this is what Rockstar chose to depict of my family, my friends, and my country. To the people that live here, to the people that know and love people that live in the world Max Payne 3 chose to take place in, it is a very painful experience to go through again and again. São Paulo is really a beautiful state, and most will never ever get to experience it; only the people that have lived here would really understand how amazing and beautiful it truly can be. But to the average audience that loves Rockstar, all of this is alright and fine by them; they’re never going to feel offended, and they’re never going to have a problem with it. They’re never going to feel their blood pressure rise when the game says something so insanely racist you have to take a step back. They’re never going to wonder how their friends and family are viewed due to the negative connotations being from a favela already carried, made worse by a totally inept and ignorant development team. Because they don’t care. To the average American consumer, it is just another game set in a "shithole," a "warzone," where they get to escape their privileged realities and pretend they’re some sort of hero. Rockstar manages to reinforce every single negative stereotype about Brazil for these people. And they’re going to eat it up; they’ll believe it because they are inherently ignorant. It is a game made for Americans, not for the Brazilian people, and there is nothing more American than pretending to be a badass hero in some “shithole” where the only goal is to kill as many brown people as possible.
I have gone on a few tangents here and there, but I have stated my case. Max Payne 3 is a racist video game, plain and simple. It's not going to beat around the bush and pretend it's because Rockstar is doing it by accident because it honestly feels very deliberate. They had writers approve a lot of this stuff, and it baffles me that at no point a writer went and said how kind of messed up it all is. I will leave a single quote here that I feel perfectly illustrates what I mean by all of this:
“We’d half destroyed São Paulo’s most hallowed place of worship.” A stadium.
While I love Skyrim and have spent an ungodly amount of time with it, Oblivion will always be my favorite Elder Scrolls. The last grasp of the golden age of Bethesda... They are never going to make a game this good ever again.
2014
one of my least favorite games ever
i streamed it to a bunch of my friends because i was bored one day and beat it in like 2 hours. the entire games writing is literally written to be shocking but its not shocking at all and instead comes off as edgy, pretentious and downright stupid. i had a miserable time playing this game. avoid it and every single other DSP game, they are not worth your time at all
i streamed it to a bunch of my friends because i was bored one day and beat it in like 2 hours. the entire games writing is literally written to be shocking but its not shocking at all and instead comes off as edgy, pretentious and downright stupid. i had a miserable time playing this game. avoid it and every single other DSP game, they are not worth your time at all
2015
the ending of this game is genuinely the funniest thing ever put in a video game
i have nothing else to add this game sucks but watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PunbEq7koEk&t=70s
i have nothing else to add this game sucks but watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PunbEq7koEk&t=70s
2016
I am incapable of understanding why some people hold the belief that this is the best Dark Souls... Literally just a rehash of everything that the franchise has done before, and while I know there are reasons for that, especially with the lore and stuff like that, I cannot bring myself to really enjoy this one. DS2 better
2017
a lot of people like to treat this one as like Terrible because of the combat i guess but really its okay. a nice improvement on yakuza 6 (worst game of all time) and the story is very good since its just the same story from yakuza 2. the removal from some of the stuff from the original dont really make it a definitive edition or a replacement though, and the original should still be played. tl;dr its alright
2018
The game is good, I think the sequel is better, but its still a fun time. It took me like 12 hours to get a single ending and it was really painful but I enjoyed my time with it
In my winning run of this game I spent like an hour listening to Born Slippy by Underworld accompanied by the games OST and sound and that elevated the experience I think and made me like it more
In my winning run of this game I spent like an hour listening to Born Slippy by Underworld accompanied by the games OST and sound and that elevated the experience I think and made me like it more
I could go on and on about why this game sucks but I hate even acknowledging its existence so I will just say this: This is the worst RGG game ever made and the main writer should be put in jail for writing a story this bad and stupid (Jail whoever designed the combat as well)
2007
The reapers are coming AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I am one of those crazy people that earnestly believe this is the greatest Souls game ever made I love it so much bros
2012
I first touched this game during online school in early 2021 after having beaten all the previous Yakuza titles, at first I was reluctant on even starting it because at that time I had been quite tired of Yakuza and streaming it to my friends on discord but I gave in and started playing it.
The story, while some may consider to be messy in nature, is actually fantastic. The themes of dreams and following them and not letting them die is present with every single major character story told in this game, and the way they go about realizing these dreams, be it their dreams or anothers, is so deeply profound that I fail to see why some people consider the plot to be "messy" or "confusing". I do not like saying this but I really think people that hold that belief actually did not get it at all.
It still has my favorite Yakuza combat of all time (Yes, I would place it highly above 0 and Lost Judgment), all the different characters feel so unique and are evolutions of their respective counterparts in Yakuza 4. The new guy though, Shinada, is usually the one people complain about the most, but he is actually the most fun character in this game both gameplay wise and story wise (If you believe otherwise you did not get it x2).
Overall this game is so good I fail to see what I can say on it other than just "Experience it". It changed my life, genuinely. I still think about those days hunting as Saejima in the mountain while I drank a nice Monster Energy at 3 AM on a school night after having woken up at like 7 PM the day prior (Terminal bumness). Yakuza 5 in the end is all about the Dream, and it has inspired me to fulfill mine. Thank you RGG
Nagoshi I kneel
The story, while some may consider to be messy in nature, is actually fantastic. The themes of dreams and following them and not letting them die is present with every single major character story told in this game, and the way they go about realizing these dreams, be it their dreams or anothers, is so deeply profound that I fail to see why some people consider the plot to be "messy" or "confusing". I do not like saying this but I really think people that hold that belief actually did not get it at all.
It still has my favorite Yakuza combat of all time (Yes, I would place it highly above 0 and Lost Judgment), all the different characters feel so unique and are evolutions of their respective counterparts in Yakuza 4. The new guy though, Shinada, is usually the one people complain about the most, but he is actually the most fun character in this game both gameplay wise and story wise (If you believe otherwise you did not get it x2).
Overall this game is so good I fail to see what I can say on it other than just "Experience it". It changed my life, genuinely. I still think about those days hunting as Saejima in the mountain while I drank a nice Monster Energy at 3 AM on a school night after having woken up at like 7 PM the day prior (Terminal bumness). Yakuza 5 in the end is all about the Dream, and it has inspired me to fulfill mine. Thank you RGG
Nagoshi I kneel
2013
i am not even slightly exaggerating when I say this is my least favorite game ever made like there are worse out there for sure but this is it no game will ever be as ass as this game
even when i was literally like 12 years old i knew this was ass. when i was 13 i bought on steam and still thought it was ass
i want the people who made this game arrested it is genuinely so terrible and the 3DS version is somehow even worse with the 30 minute long snowball level
my personal story with it is that it was one of the only wii u games i even had so i was forced to just replay this and super mario bros wii u over and over again and while the mario game was relatively fun this game made me hate myself every time i touched it. i dont even know why i bought it on steam
i think this game has actually irreparably damaged sonic for me i cannot stand this stupid hedgehog
even when i was literally like 12 years old i knew this was ass. when i was 13 i bought on steam and still thought it was ass
i want the people who made this game arrested it is genuinely so terrible and the 3DS version is somehow even worse with the 30 minute long snowball level
my personal story with it is that it was one of the only wii u games i even had so i was forced to just replay this and super mario bros wii u over and over again and while the mario game was relatively fun this game made me hate myself every time i touched it. i dont even know why i bought it on steam
i think this game has actually irreparably damaged sonic for me i cannot stand this stupid hedgehog
I like Fear & Hunger but F&H2 is an improvement in almost every way. I love the focus on characters, a more involved storyline and all the banter. The combat system is basically the same with a few changes but it was already perfect sooooooo I don't mind that. Unforgettable video game I love it so much
I spent most of December 2023 playing through the first main act of this game (Up until Shadow Lord basically) and my thoughts on this are just like... Wow. This game is old, clunky, grindy, has stupid systems, the story is just average and it really does look like a PS2 game. With all of this you might think wow you don't like this game but no... I actually think all of that serves to make an experience that is filled with so much soul and love and care, it is like every little design choice and every little annoyance serves to just enhance this game and propel it further and further. I loved exploring Vana'diel and spending hours just wandering around the big landscapes fighting like bugs and lizards while listening to the absolutely fantastic soundtrack. Final Fantasy XI is all ambiance and it exceeds in that. I think objectively Final Fantasy XIV is the better game but this game is very very special in its own right. If you only have experiences with XIV, play this, there is a lot to love here.
i think this is the standard that should be set for any remake. it expands and improves on the original script in so many ways that listing them all here would take hours. play the original and then play this to have the most eye opening experience you can have with a video game