Max Payne 3 sticks out in my head far more prominently than it should for any 10-hour game I played only once, eight years ago. The experience of revisiting it this past week has been one of everything clicking into place, a series of realizations of "wow, yeah, I see why this lingers in the mind". It's impactful. Every second of Max Payne 3 feels like it matters, even if - no, especially if - all you're looking at is a fat, drunk American grumbling about being stranded in the middle of a São Paulo dancefloor with people half his age and four times his enthusiasm.

To complain about this game's aesthetic shift strikes me as such a shallow complaint when it works so well with what Max Payne 3 is trying to do. Max Payne 3 is about taking Max Payne - the leather-jacketed cliche - and kicking him in the ribs so hard that he finally tries to wake up, to open his eyes, to shed the short-sightedness. He is reduced from main hero to a gun with a price tag, and it's not particularly important for his employers that he's any more sober than they are. While Max was obviously never enthusiastic about going to Brazil, it's obvious that he held out some hope for a fresh start that never occurred. It doesn't really matter where it is - São Paulo is Max Payne's New York with a different color palette, and by the rules of the genre he must continue to be the same person he's always been and continue pulling the trigger every time he's given the chance.

"...but when was I ever about smart moves? I'm a dumb move guy. I'll put a big shit-eating grin on my face and let these assholes take turns trying to kill me. That's my style, and it's too late in the day to hope for change."

He sure does pull that trigger a lot! It's what he's good at and what he's being paid for! Max Payne 3's gunfights only rarely feel as glamorous as the earlier games, and when they do, it's not because your enemies are dying stylishly. No, it's not Sniper Elite, but every headshot requires the creation of a flesh & blood hole on the front and back of your enemy's skull, and a non-lethal bullet is soon to be followed by a lethal one as they gracelessly Rockstar Leg around before ending up face-down in the mud. Guns in cutscenes have a similarly weighty presence: people waving them around are not doing so for decoration, I'll leave it at that. Max Payne 3 still wants you to enjoy the violence - it's a AAA video game, after all - but with all the debris and blood and painkillers, each bullet should hit like a truck, and each enemy that hits the ground should make you feel something. Max has all the plot armor he needs, but he isn't particularly nimble and Rockstar does a lot to sell his age, making him feel less invincible than he truly is. Every shootdodge begins and ends with a forceful grunt through clenched teeth, every slow-motion trigger pull accompanied by such a rich sound that you swear you hear every part of the gun moving. It's half the reason scenes like the airport shootout are so effective. The other half, of course, is the fact that the soundtrack isn't afraid of crashing in just as violently.

The light at the end of the tunnel only really emerges when Max - finally pushed far enough to consider sobriety - stumbles into a mostly "clean" cop who is much further along in cracking the mystery. We see his mostly flat affect (which, in MP3, feels less like a pastiche of earlier noir works and more like someone who feels inconvenienced by having to work this particular job in between naked attempts at self-annihilation) break more and more frequently as he gets closer and closer to doing something right for once. It feels silly to say it, looking at the grime and blood of the later chapters, but it's... hopeful? The tail end of Max Payne 3 takes the whole formula and turns it on its head, allowing Max to change in a way he was never allowed to before, giving someone well past redemption one last chance to do some good. It's a better ending than Max deserves, of course, but it's satisfying nonetheless. Max has finally broken free from his archetype, and his happy ending is a life too quiet for a Max Payne 4.