Unexpectedly really liked this one. Max Payne 3 is pretty different from its predecessors, both in tone and gameplay, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. MP3 manages to shake up the series in quite a few ways while mostly still retaining the gritty tone and flashy, fast-paced gunplay that the series is known for.
First thing for series veterans to know is that MP3 is a full-on cover shooter, and levels are generally designed around this. Enemy encounters mostly take place at long range with both parties cautiously popping out from cover to take shots at each other. Because of this, most encounters require a relatively slow pace of play with the use of bullet time to line up long range shots and the ocasional use of shoot dodging when switching between cover. There are certain moments (I would say about 20 percent of encounters) that take place at close range and allow the player to easily adopt a more chaotic style of fighting akin to how most people play the first two Max Payne games. In these encounters you can do the Max Payne classic of storming through a door unprepared and trying to survive by strafing wildly and diving over enemies as you pick them off in slow motion. These are, imo, the most fun moments of the game, and I wished there were more of them. That said, the cover shooting segments are still rather fun and can be very chaotic and reactive in certain situations.
One improvement in presentation and gameplay, which is very much in line with the goals of the first two games, is the improved rendering of bullets and bullet wounds. One of the selling points of Max Payne 1 was the fact that every bullet in the game (apart from the sniper rifle) was a fully rendered object that had to leave your gun and travel through the air before hitting an enemy. You could pretty easily see this during bullet time or shoot dodging. Shoot dodging away from an enemy and being able to actually see a cluster of buckshot whiz past your previous location is still awesome and exhilarating even 20+ years later. MP3 does its best to recreate and improve upon this effect and definitely succeeds. I’m unsure exactly how bullets are rendered in this game or if MP3 utilizes the same technique as MP1 but the resulting experience for the player is largely the same. MP3 further ups the ante on this by rendering the actual location of bullet wounds on enemies in great detail. When you’re shoot dodging or getting a kill cam you’re able to see exactly where and how each bullet is entering an enemy. This gives gunplay a hugely visceral edge to it making each of your shots feel weighty and powerful. Placing a kill cam (the most violent gameplay visual in Max Payne by far) at the end of each encounter also produces a possibly unintentional but really interesting effect for the player. A lot of the encounters in this game are pretty difficult and can really get your blood pumping even on normal difficulty. Because of this seeing the game enter a kill cam can be a very cathartic moment of relief - you’ve finally done it, you’ve killed the bastards, and now you have at least a short moment to rest and collect yourself. Max Payne 3 gives you the option to keep shooting these already dead enemies during kill cams and will show each new bullet entering their still standing corpse as you do it. With all the residual adrenaline and relief present in some of these moments I actually found myself continuing to shoot these enemies not out of a desire to see the effect but out of a heightened sense of emotion - part anger, part adrenaline, and part inability to get myself out of simulated fight or flight mode. It was a really interesting and disquieting experience that I’ve never had playing a video game, and I would honestly recommend playing MP3 just to check it out.
One of the most immediately obvious things about Max Payne 3 is that it doesn’t take place in the bleak, isolating, and snow covered streets of Max’s hometown of New York City. Instead Max Payne 3 chooses the neon lit and sun soaked nightclubs and favelas of Sao Paolo as it’s setting - literally the opposite MP1 and 2’s in many ways. A lot of fans didn’t like this change, but I think it works. Setting a third game in New York would have felt a bit too safe for my liking. The setting of Sao Paolo and it’s outskirts also allows MP3 to have the greatest variety of mission locations in the whole series. Almost single mission feels totally different from an environmental standpoint, which helps to keep the game fresh. Sao Paolo is definitely not quite as noir-ish as NYC, but this makes sense given MP3s slight shift away from the noir cliches that defined MP1 and to a lesser extent MP2.
MP3 doesn’t carry over all the noir conventions of the previous games but does adopt enough of them that it ends up as a sort of uniquely sun-soaked and action oriented take on the genre. A lot of the noir conventions of the previous games - some of which have probably just become Max Payne conventions for a lot of people - like Max’s narration, the presence of corruption, crime and conspiracy just below the surface of Max’s world, and a sense of fatalism are still here and work well. The game, however, does sometimes lean heavily into action movie tropes like big car chase set pieces, which leaves it feeling less noirish than the previous two games.
Max’s characterization in this game is also brilliant and one of the few instances of the middle aged self destructive anti-hero that I really enjoy. This is an honestly brutal depiction of substance abuse and depression - with Max drinking enough and taking enough pills that his doctor - were he the kind of guy who’d bother to go see a doctor - would probably tell him he’d be dead in five years if he didn’t stop. Max also at various points strongly implies that he’s half hoping to die in a shootout. Both of these things tie into gameplay in interesting ways. Max’s substance abuse of course relates to gameplay with pills being health items and his death wish nicely ties into the incredibly reckless combat style the player can adopt. There are a lot games out there that address depression and substance abuse through metaphor and abstract imagery - trying to give the player a sense of how these things feel to go through; This is not one of those games. Max Payne 3 is unapologetically blunt in the way it addresses these topics, and I think it works for the most part. Seeing this really ugly portrayal of a severe depression and substance abuse problem - of an intensely self loathing and guilt stricken character at deaths door in more ways than one because of it feels very refreshing. Max knows that he’s sick and that he’s hurting other people because of it, but for most of the game he doesn’t have the desire or wherewithal to try to help himself. One of the most emotionally compelling and resonant elements of Max’s story was how Max could see the negative impact his lifestyle had on other people, felt guilty about it, and then recklessly threw himself into doing anything he could to make up for it shy of actually getting sober (at least for most of the game). I think this is a dynamic that in broader and more grounded sense will probably be familiar to certain players and one I that I feel is underutilized in media in general. I do have some qualms with how the game portrays Max quitting drinking however. This is mostly due to how unrealistic it is, and think it would have been more effective had the player been forced to deal with his withdrawal symptoms (or if the game had at least shown something or this kind) or if he vowed to quit and then quickly relapsed, in part due to the stress of the situation he was going through. Regardless, this game does do a lot right IMO, and I certainly commend it for that.
This is a bit of a weird game to recommend because it’s so similar to MP 1 and 2 but so different from them in a lot of ways. For MP fans I think reactions to this game will be very split. I can, however, recommend this game to people who enjoy cinematic shooters and cinematic 3rd person cover shooters especially. This is probably the best one of those that I’ve ever played both in terms of gameplay and story. Rock solid satisfying gameplay and a surprisingly insightful and emotionally resonant story that knows exactly what it wants to be and doesn’t overreach or undo itself through pretension or muddled writing.
First thing for series veterans to know is that MP3 is a full-on cover shooter, and levels are generally designed around this. Enemy encounters mostly take place at long range with both parties cautiously popping out from cover to take shots at each other. Because of this, most encounters require a relatively slow pace of play with the use of bullet time to line up long range shots and the ocasional use of shoot dodging when switching between cover. There are certain moments (I would say about 20 percent of encounters) that take place at close range and allow the player to easily adopt a more chaotic style of fighting akin to how most people play the first two Max Payne games. In these encounters you can do the Max Payne classic of storming through a door unprepared and trying to survive by strafing wildly and diving over enemies as you pick them off in slow motion. These are, imo, the most fun moments of the game, and I wished there were more of them. That said, the cover shooting segments are still rather fun and can be very chaotic and reactive in certain situations.
One improvement in presentation and gameplay, which is very much in line with the goals of the first two games, is the improved rendering of bullets and bullet wounds. One of the selling points of Max Payne 1 was the fact that every bullet in the game (apart from the sniper rifle) was a fully rendered object that had to leave your gun and travel through the air before hitting an enemy. You could pretty easily see this during bullet time or shoot dodging. Shoot dodging away from an enemy and being able to actually see a cluster of buckshot whiz past your previous location is still awesome and exhilarating even 20+ years later. MP3 does its best to recreate and improve upon this effect and definitely succeeds. I’m unsure exactly how bullets are rendered in this game or if MP3 utilizes the same technique as MP1 but the resulting experience for the player is largely the same. MP3 further ups the ante on this by rendering the actual location of bullet wounds on enemies in great detail. When you’re shoot dodging or getting a kill cam you’re able to see exactly where and how each bullet is entering an enemy. This gives gunplay a hugely visceral edge to it making each of your shots feel weighty and powerful. Placing a kill cam (the most violent gameplay visual in Max Payne by far) at the end of each encounter also produces a possibly unintentional but really interesting effect for the player. A lot of the encounters in this game are pretty difficult and can really get your blood pumping even on normal difficulty. Because of this seeing the game enter a kill cam can be a very cathartic moment of relief - you’ve finally done it, you’ve killed the bastards, and now you have at least a short moment to rest and collect yourself. Max Payne 3 gives you the option to keep shooting these already dead enemies during kill cams and will show each new bullet entering their still standing corpse as you do it. With all the residual adrenaline and relief present in some of these moments I actually found myself continuing to shoot these enemies not out of a desire to see the effect but out of a heightened sense of emotion - part anger, part adrenaline, and part inability to get myself out of simulated fight or flight mode. It was a really interesting and disquieting experience that I’ve never had playing a video game, and I would honestly recommend playing MP3 just to check it out.
One of the most immediately obvious things about Max Payne 3 is that it doesn’t take place in the bleak, isolating, and snow covered streets of Max’s hometown of New York City. Instead Max Payne 3 chooses the neon lit and sun soaked nightclubs and favelas of Sao Paolo as it’s setting - literally the opposite MP1 and 2’s in many ways. A lot of fans didn’t like this change, but I think it works. Setting a third game in New York would have felt a bit too safe for my liking. The setting of Sao Paolo and it’s outskirts also allows MP3 to have the greatest variety of mission locations in the whole series. Almost single mission feels totally different from an environmental standpoint, which helps to keep the game fresh. Sao Paolo is definitely not quite as noir-ish as NYC, but this makes sense given MP3s slight shift away from the noir cliches that defined MP1 and to a lesser extent MP2.
MP3 doesn’t carry over all the noir conventions of the previous games but does adopt enough of them that it ends up as a sort of uniquely sun-soaked and action oriented take on the genre. A lot of the noir conventions of the previous games - some of which have probably just become Max Payne conventions for a lot of people - like Max’s narration, the presence of corruption, crime and conspiracy just below the surface of Max’s world, and a sense of fatalism are still here and work well. The game, however, does sometimes lean heavily into action movie tropes like big car chase set pieces, which leaves it feeling less noirish than the previous two games.
Max’s characterization in this game is also brilliant and one of the few instances of the middle aged self destructive anti-hero that I really enjoy. This is an honestly brutal depiction of substance abuse and depression - with Max drinking enough and taking enough pills that his doctor - were he the kind of guy who’d bother to go see a doctor - would probably tell him he’d be dead in five years if he didn’t stop. Max also at various points strongly implies that he’s half hoping to die in a shootout. Both of these things tie into gameplay in interesting ways. Max’s substance abuse of course relates to gameplay with pills being health items and his death wish nicely ties into the incredibly reckless combat style the player can adopt. There are a lot games out there that address depression and substance abuse through metaphor and abstract imagery - trying to give the player a sense of how these things feel to go through; This is not one of those games. Max Payne 3 is unapologetically blunt in the way it addresses these topics, and I think it works for the most part. Seeing this really ugly portrayal of a severe depression and substance abuse problem - of an intensely self loathing and guilt stricken character at deaths door in more ways than one because of it feels very refreshing. Max knows that he’s sick and that he’s hurting other people because of it, but for most of the game he doesn’t have the desire or wherewithal to try to help himself. One of the most emotionally compelling and resonant elements of Max’s story was how Max could see the negative impact his lifestyle had on other people, felt guilty about it, and then recklessly threw himself into doing anything he could to make up for it shy of actually getting sober (at least for most of the game). I think this is a dynamic that in broader and more grounded sense will probably be familiar to certain players and one I that I feel is underutilized in media in general. I do have some qualms with how the game portrays Max quitting drinking however. This is mostly due to how unrealistic it is, and think it would have been more effective had the player been forced to deal with his withdrawal symptoms (or if the game had at least shown something or this kind) or if he vowed to quit and then quickly relapsed, in part due to the stress of the situation he was going through. Regardless, this game does do a lot right IMO, and I certainly commend it for that.
This is a bit of a weird game to recommend because it’s so similar to MP 1 and 2 but so different from them in a lot of ways. For MP fans I think reactions to this game will be very split. I can, however, recommend this game to people who enjoy cinematic shooters and cinematic 3rd person cover shooters especially. This is probably the best one of those that I’ve ever played both in terms of gameplay and story. Rock solid satisfying gameplay and a surprisingly insightful and emotionally resonant story that knows exactly what it wants to be and doesn’t overreach or undo itself through pretension or muddled writing.