Geekscape Games Reviews Max Payne 3
With its dark and ever depressing undertones, the Max Payne series has always been able to deliver an amazing story set to some pretty outrageous John Woo style gunplay using the slow down effects of bullet time. Now, after 9 years since his last outing, we check in on Max in Max Payne 3 to see how life has been for the former NYPD cop. And from the look of things, it’s business as usual.
Still living in his past, Max Payne routinely drowns his sorrows in booze and pills. It’s amazing to me that Max still has a liver with all the drinking he does. The story for Max Payne 3 starts with an old police academy buddy, Raul Passos, finding Max in a dive bar doing what he does best. Raul’s offer, an easy job protecting rich people, at first sounds uninteresting to Max. But after certain events happen in the bar, Max is more than eager to get the hell out of New Jersey and off to Sao Paulo, Brazil. I’m not sure I would want an alcoholic, pill popping ex-cop to guard me but when things start to go wrong in this seemingly easy bodyguard detail, Max finds a way to shake the drug induced haze long enough to start trying to figure out just what the hell is going on.
Anyone would be hard pressed to not say that Max Payne 3’s story and presentation doesn’t resemble Tony Scott’s Man on Fire. I couldn’t help but also see Max Payne as Arnold Schwarzenegger in End of Days. The similarities are that both characters begin the story as drunks with a past that they can’t seem to let go of. The choice of the blurring effects mixed with the split screen scenes presents a believable state of mind that Max is in throughout the game. These provided some exciting and seamless transitions from the past to the present of the story, so when I say that we’re catching up with Max after 9 years, I mean it. The story in Max Payne 3 covers a lot of ground.
Even the way that the cut scenes flow right back into gameplay seem like magic to me. The characterization and writing is so good that, throughout my journey, I felt like I should have broken out the bottle of rum and had a drink with Max. Making me feel that sorry for a character in a game is an amazing feat, one that Rockstar knows how to do very well as of late (Red Dead Redemption anyone?). Still, the writing does have its brief moments of slipping into terrible and the pacing is erratic during the final acts. Though the ending may not satisfy me as much as Red Dead Redemption’s ending did, Rockstar still manages to pull a smile out of me before the closing credits rolled.
Of course, what really makes a Max Payne game is the combat. Endless streams of bullets while diving in slo-mo is a trademark thing for this series. With Max a little more broken down by age and a “healthy” diet of alcohol and pill cocktails, he has lost a step or two. Controls seem to be sluggish overall when moving Max around. I honestly don’t see how Max doesn’t break a hip diving in to the air and landing on the ground. Bullet-time is still here as well as shoot-dodging. Shoot-dodging is a gamble this time around due to how slow Max gets up afterwards. Diving into a group of gun-toting mercenaries only to land in the middle of them as they laugh at you is downright embarrassing.
Even with bullet-time and John Woo action diving, the combat didn’t feel like a Max Payne game. Essentially, bad memories of the terrible combat from Uncharted 3 rushed over me when I was in my first gun fight. Instead of the run-and-gun, bullet hell ballet that is a trademark for Max Payne, you are forced to play the game as a cover shooter. Between the enemies being sponges for damage, deadly accurate in aiming and the fragile nature of Max Payne’s body, doing anything but hiding behind cover will put you on the fast track to the death animation of Max getting a baseball sized hole in his face. Some of the enemies were wearing flak jackets so I can understand that shooting them in the head is your best option. What I can’t understand is how a ratty button up shirt can take half a clip of an Uzi before the person wearing it dies. I was very tempted to lower the difficulty to easy just to see the story to its end. Even with the options for soft lock or hard lock aim assist, I couldn’t be more disappointed with the combat.
Not surprising, there is multiplayer in this installment of the Max Payne series. With Rockstar really pushing the aspect of creating or joining crews in Max Payne 3 (will carry over to GTA V as well), it is a crying shame that they lock the Gang War mode behind what seems to me like arbitrary goals. I am not sure I want to complete 7 different goals to unlock new play modes. Infinity Ward and Treyarch did this with their latest Call of Duty games but things were locked behind what level you were, while leveling up was not very hard.
If Rockstar wanted to use these goals to get players acclimated to the controls and combat for multiplayer, they should have taken the route that Epic Games did with Gears of War 3. People can play in the casual playlist until they either feel comfortable enough to venture out to the regular playlists or reach a certain level, thus having the casual playlist locked out to them. What is baffling to me as well is that there are only 2 different modes besides Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. I would have liked to see the sniper level in the beginning of the story to be a mode for multiplayer. Have 2 players on a team , one covering the other with a sniper rifle while the other team of 4 or 6 tries to keep the player not using the sniper rifle from reaching some goal.
While the story of Max Payne is engrossing, it is not enough to wash out the horrid combat and some poor choices made in the design of multiplayer. Sort of like drinking a whole bottle of whiskey to chase the Oxycodone down with. It’s all fun and games until you vomit a liver and Max Payne 3 sounds like a good time but it leaves a hell of a painful hangover.
