Ladies and gentlemen, it's the pain in the butt.
Max Payne 3 attempts to tell a dark and depressing story, and it succeeds, but it's not especially engaging to play through, as Max has no real stakes in the story aside from being a hired grunt. When Max doesn't care, I don't care. He's also no longer a wisecracking jackass, instead being replaced with a foulmouthed, pessimistic asshole that spends the majority of the runtime complaining or talking about how he should've died ages ago.
Max takes about half or a quarter of a second to start moving from a standstill, and he'll occasionally not even shoot the gun when you left click for seemingly no real reason at all.
These are just two annoyances with the controls that you'll have to get used to if you desire to play through this game. Max takes damage incredibly fast in this game and avoiding damage seems nigh impossible.
The game seemingly wants you to play with a bizarre mix of run n gun and cover based shooting, but most of the time your best bet is to hide behind cover and only shoot when you have an opening which, needless to say, isn't fun.
Unlike the past two games, Max can only carry 3 guns at a time. 2 small firearms and a large one. However the game will arbitrarily take away the large firearm from you at certain points. You can dual wield the small firearms but you lose the large firearm when you do so. Out of the large guns, the only ones worth picking up are the rifles and SMGs, shotguns are beyond awful in this game because of how the levels are built and enemy encounters are designed.
Level design is messy. Too many claustrophobic arenas where moving out of cover will get you killed faster than you can react to the gunshots fired. But there are also far too many open spaces near the end of the game with limited cover from enemy fire, forcing you to shoot enemies from a distance to avoid dying. The game will refuse you the liberty of getting your bearings before funneling you towards the next objective, going so far as to game over you if you stop and smell the roses for too long, as they want you to progress into the next "cool" scripted setpiece.
This constant shoving and nudging of the player, with the only breaks being cutscenes with obnoxious visual effects and dull characters being depressed makes for a tiring experience.
Wallowing in constant misery is this games forte.
And unfortunately, that doesn't make for a particularly pleasant game.
Max Payne 3 attempts to tell a dark and depressing story, and it succeeds, but it's not especially engaging to play through, as Max has no real stakes in the story aside from being a hired grunt. When Max doesn't care, I don't care. He's also no longer a wisecracking jackass, instead being replaced with a foulmouthed, pessimistic asshole that spends the majority of the runtime complaining or talking about how he should've died ages ago.
Max takes about half or a quarter of a second to start moving from a standstill, and he'll occasionally not even shoot the gun when you left click for seemingly no real reason at all.
These are just two annoyances with the controls that you'll have to get used to if you desire to play through this game. Max takes damage incredibly fast in this game and avoiding damage seems nigh impossible.
The game seemingly wants you to play with a bizarre mix of run n gun and cover based shooting, but most of the time your best bet is to hide behind cover and only shoot when you have an opening which, needless to say, isn't fun.
Unlike the past two games, Max can only carry 3 guns at a time. 2 small firearms and a large one. However the game will arbitrarily take away the large firearm from you at certain points. You can dual wield the small firearms but you lose the large firearm when you do so. Out of the large guns, the only ones worth picking up are the rifles and SMGs, shotguns are beyond awful in this game because of how the levels are built and enemy encounters are designed.
Level design is messy. Too many claustrophobic arenas where moving out of cover will get you killed faster than you can react to the gunshots fired. But there are also far too many open spaces near the end of the game with limited cover from enemy fire, forcing you to shoot enemies from a distance to avoid dying. The game will refuse you the liberty of getting your bearings before funneling you towards the next objective, going so far as to game over you if you stop and smell the roses for too long, as they want you to progress into the next "cool" scripted setpiece.
This constant shoving and nudging of the player, with the only breaks being cutscenes with obnoxious visual effects and dull characters being depressed makes for a tiring experience.
Wallowing in constant misery is this games forte.
And unfortunately, that doesn't make for a particularly pleasant game.