pretty solid expansion/spin-off. you get more weapons to play with, tho none of them really shake up the core combat loop and some of your options from the original game are pretty nerfed (the flare gun and flashbangs are much weaker and serve more to take off a big chunk of darkness instead of being bfgs while the flashlight doesn't deal passive light damage, only while focusing it) so it kinda evens out to being just a different flavor than necessarily better or worse. the idea here is you're in a timeloop and visit three open-ish hub areas three times each instead of the strictly linear level design from the original game. in practice this feels like a bit of a downgrade, you're still following linear objectives but having to sprint across large areas to get to them so it feels a bit padded out. you do get rewarded for exploring a bit tho as manuscripts serve as the unlock system for new weapons. it also has the obligatory arcade horde mode that was all the rage in the early 2010s that feels like a bit of a throw away here, Alan Wake's combat doesn't really feel suited to this kind of mode and dodging fills up your multiplier quickly so it feels like it would be easy to exploit the scoring system in a not fun way.
the story takes on a decidedly campier tone. the writing isn't quite as sharp as the main game, it feels a lot more 2010s videogame-y, but Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta's combined performance as Mr. Scratch steals the show. You get a bit of insight into how the world of Alan Wake operates, clarifying a few lingering questions from the original game tho clearly saving the best bits for the sequel (that didn't happen for another decade)

Put it down for a few months and came back to realize I had left it off at the skyscraper district and lost interest incredibly hard ngl
JSRF is a bit of step forward step back sequel for me tbh, it doesn't really iterate on the first game as much as just kinda do something different with a similar idea that's better in some ways but also somehow clunkier in others.
It's been long enough since I put it down I feel like I'd need to start over to get back into the swing of it so it's going on the shelf for now. Maybe one day Sega will remaster it with a decent camera and give me the motivation to go back

more like Yakuza PEAK Souls

it really is basically just a Yakuza game but with shooting instead of punching, changing the controls the Japanese default of shoot on square really nailed it home for me. The normal "aim" is really more of a strafe button. Heat actions that aren't the tandem grenade throw feel pretty underpowered and companion AI is pretty stupid, but the core gameplay loop here is solid. In some ways this feels like the last hurrah of classic Yakuza, bringing back classic characters from 1 and 2 and being the last game the 3 iteration of the engine before it was overhauled for 5 to prepare for the next gen. It even ends on a little slideshow of moments from every game leading up to it.

A great DLC, there isn't much new story but it does provide insight into what's going on with Wake post-ending. The difficulty is ramped up with a heavy emphasis on using the environment against enemies with a gimmick from the original game that gets expanded upon. The final boss is a kinda iffy - amazing conceptually, but a little too reliant on physics objects that feel a bit random. Gamer protip, you should have the maxed out flashlight by that point and it can reach pretty much across the whole arena, so take cover behind solid objects and keep your distance.

One of the best games of all time dude

First, the gameplay. I cannot stress this enough: play on a controller and do NOT turn on direct aiming. The default looser camera controls are very carefully tuned to provide quick responsive turning while also being to carefully make small adjustments in aiming without having to hold down your flashlight and dynamically swapping between left and right over the shoulder views points depending on your movement and aiming - this feels amazing and results in incredibly cinematic feeling action. The direct aiming does away with that and is a flat 1:1 curve, meant more for a PC mouse. Whenever I see someone complaining about the game being jank they inevitably have the direct aiming turned on in their gameplay, just avoid it and learn to love not having your “crosshair” centered all the time.

The gameplay design is amazing - levels are linear and tightly paced, but offer ample rewards for going off the beaten path either in hidden ammo caches or manuscript pages that provide a bit more insight to the story. Every level introduces a new gameplay mechanic to play with, some staying on for the rest of the game like the flares and some being one and done like electric fences you can shotgun blast enemies into. You have a small but carefully considered arsenal built around having to weaken enemies with light before you can take them out. The flashlight and revolver combo is your main staple you'll almost always have access to - enemies always take a consistent amount of light damage and bullet damage regardless of where they get hit, so you'll do well to keep track of how many bullets you have loaded and how many hits you need. You get a handful of shotguns you'll sometimes have the option of choosing, the pump action is a direct upgrade on the normal shotgun and is the faster option but does a bit less damage while the hunting rifle does the more damage but is much slower. Your third gun slot is taken up by the flare gun, which is your strongest weapon by far but is low on ammo and can only fire one shot at a time so it's best used for crowds of enemies, especially those damn birds. Then you have the flares which have multiple uses: pop one when you're crowded to get enemies to back off, you can hold one to take the offensive back on an enemy, or drop one to create a temporary safe zone to catch a breath. Your last piece of arsenal are the flashbangs, which can wipe out weaker enemies and stun tougher ones but have a delay after throwing and are relatively scarce. Finally you have a dodge, there aren't any iframes attached to it but instead you need to dodge away from an attack in the right direction to trigger a little cinematic slow-mo you'll be briefly invincible during. Your gear is reset every chapter, sometimes midway through one and you'll always have enough to get you through encounters (at least on Normal PC/Hard Xbox 360, a Nightmare replay is imminent) so don't get precious about holding onto things, use em or lose em. This all adds up to an incredibly unique third person shooter, it isn't much of a survival horror but it does tap into a RE4-esque building of tension.

The story is the main draw of Alan Wake and man it's a doozy. Sam Lake and co have taken all the ideas they'd built on in the Max Payne games and gone a couple extra miles on them. It's metanarratives upon metanarratives upon metanarratives, all told compellingly through the eyes of our favorite washed up bestselling author. While I felt compelled to explain the gameplay in detail because I feel it's a bit misunderstood I don't want to spoil a thing about the story.

The game looks and sounds really good too. The character models are a bit iffy but the environments and lighting are to this day absolutely phenomenal. The original score is subtle and fits well while the licensed needle drops all land perfectly. And of course, Poets of the Fall debut their Remedy alter egos in The Old Gods of Asgard in one of the most memorable sections of the game.

Top 5 game honestly

Pretty meaty expansion clocking at 7 hours for me, being an original story it manages to sidestep the pacing issues that could really hamper the main game. You get some more insight into the inner workings of Avalanche and hints for things to come in Reunion (and spend time with the oomfie Yuffie of course). Yuffie's combat is really good, while the other characters besides Cloud felt a bit halfbaked in the main game Yuffie feels just as fleshed out with a focus on switching between pelting enemies with ninja magic from a distance and getting up close with hard hitting tag attacks. The two sidequest chains early on also feel pretty substantial, especially the fun take on Fort Condor.

Decently fun frankenstein's monster of a game. The story mode is a hoot if you're a fan of Gundam: ostensibly set in Wing's universe, Heero Yuy (in his choice of mobile suit) must bring about peace by destroying every other mobile suit - which he does by fighting a parade of Universal Century Gundam characters from a wide variety of eras who talk about the things they do in their series as if this is the Universal Century. Basically this game is a reskin of the Japanese game Gundam The Battle Master 2, which was set in its own universe with its own characters who all happened to pilot UC mobile suits. For Battle Assault, the AU stuff was all dropped in favor of the original series' pilots and Gundam Wing stuff was slapped on top since it was popular in the US. Virtually all the other assets remain tho, so you get some weird backgrounds from The Battle Master that don't really fit either the Wing or Universal Century timelines. The gameplay is pretty frenetic, you start with a full stock of ammo and three super charges and once you're out you're out so fights tend to be over pretty fast. It's pretty unbalanced tho, with some suits clearly being miles better and enemy AI that flip flops between dumb as a brick and kind of bullshit. There's a decent amount of unlockable suits, but beyond that this is a pretty barebones package. Still, a fun way to kill a few hours.

There's a major caveat you have to accept up-front going into Max Payne 3 - this is a cinematic linear cover shooter made by Rockstar with all that entails in game design, writing, storytelling, and visual direction. If you can come to terms with that and take it as it is you'll have a great time with a game that's one of the more interesting of its time and style, but it's also a massively bitter pill to swallow for fans of Remedy's works especially if you're coming right off of Max Payne 1 and 2, some of the best and most unique third person shooters ever made.

Both Max Payne 3's biggest strengths and weaknesses come from utilizing GTA4-style realistic damage physics.
Starting with the good: the way this interacts with enemies is amazing, letting you pull off tricky shots like shooting an enemy behind cover in the knee, bringing them buckling down and opening them up to a clean shot. When killing the last enemy in the group you get a slow-mo killcam where you can keep firing and it never gets old watching the fucker get blown away.
While you can totally play MP3 like a traditional cover shooter, Max still has access to his shootdodge and bullet time and these interact with the cover system surprisingly smoothly. Bullet time is useful making a quick sweep of a group of enemies behind cover and for maneuvering around the mini-boss enemies who bring in a heavy machine gun. Shootdodging allows you to dive between and over cover to get the drop on enemies and now drops you to a prone position you can keep as long as you like, which is useful for keeping a low profile and finishing off enemies but leaves you vulnerable for a second while getting up. Shootdodging can be done even without any adrenaline in your meter so making the most of it is key to surviving harder encounters. The physics engine also gives Max a really satisfying weight to movement - while Max Payne 1 and 2 felt buttery smooth in PC shooter tradition you can really feel the full weight of every dive and crash in 3. This all adds up beautifully in a section near the end of the game where you take on a shitload of military police in an airport terminal while HEALTH's TEARS pounds away in the background, with the level design being perfectly suited to its style of dodging from cover to cover and for a few amazing minutes MP3 reaches its full potential. If a game could be judged solely by how cool it looks in thirty second twitter clips, Max Payne 3 would be one of the best games ever made

Now the flaws in using this style of physics system: the way it interacts with Max himself can sometimes feel frustrating. Using realistic body position-based damage can lead to the amount of damage you take feeling very inconsistent, which is especially compounded by MP3 being a much more long range game than 1 and 2's tight corridors. Far too often I died to a headshot that I had no idea where it came from. On top of that MP3 opts to not use regenerating health and instead uses the painkiller system from 1 and 2 which is a bit of a mixed bag. On paper it's a great idea, leading to situations where you need to carefully plan ahead while being quick to react when things inevitably go wrong and you have to yolo it by the skin of your teeth. A lot of times tho a stray shot can leave you with almost no health left and while that can lead to the prior exciting situation, it more often than not leads to your death and a reset (which thankfully on PC are at least very fast). There's also some good old Rockstar physics jank, in some situations your weapon model can rub up against some piece of geometry while shootdodging or prone and not actually fire where you're aiming for a crucial couple of seconds. All this ended up making me drop the game down from Hard to Medium halfway through because it started to grate on me, which is unfortunate because when it does all work it feels amazing.

The writing and storytelling are VERY Rockstar and early 2010s AAA game writing. Max is thankfully still played by and now modeled after the late great James McCaffrey which at least helps it still feels a bit like Max Payne, even as his own characterization feels a bit off - the game wants to play at the idea of the white guy coming into a developing country and fucking things up, but Max never felt like the "stupid gringo" this game makes him out to be before and it also just kind of plays that whole trope entirely straight by the end when Max teams up with the Good Cop to go outside the law and take down the Corrupt Cops. The rest of the cast are all very much what you'd expect from this era of Rockstar writing, very loud and in your face and a bit obnoxious. To its credit tho, they are at least reasonably well fleshed out with understandable motivations that line up with their actions that the game doesn't always spoon-feed to you. It isn't a high bar to clear but it's something. You also get to kill a shitload of fascist police which goes some way to balance out the maybe kind of racist bits where you're running through the favelas gunning down random Brazilian thugs.

MP3 also has some weird technical issues on PC, which IS where you're going to want to play thanks to the unmatched precision of a mouse. There's a weird negative acceleration that makes mouse movement feel sluggish above 60fps and sometimes aiming would just feel jittery for seemingly no reason which would have to be solved by restarting the game. The pre-rendered Bink cutscenes (which definitely show their age in encoding quality) were also quieter than the in-engine scenes and gameplay leading to a very inconsistent sound mix. The last cutscene also had glitchy playback even after applying a fix from pcgamingwiki because apparently Rockstar broke it in a patch in a very classic Rockstar move.

All in all - Max Payne 3 is one of the more interesting games to come out of the 7th gen cover shooter boom and definitely worth playing if you can stomach it being an entirely different thing from the first two games, tho even on its own merits it still has a few too many small issues that add up to keep it from true greatness.

if Max Payne 1 is all about shoot dodging, the name of the game in Max Payne 2 is the regular bullet time. You're heavily incentivized to use it with the changes to how it works - it starts out barely slower, but the more kills you rack up in it the slower it gets and every kill refills the adrenaline meter a bit. Combined with the bullet time reload where you do a fast little spin instead of the full reload, running into room full of enemies with a sawed off shotgun and bullet time can keep you in bullet time for a long while and is tons of fun.

Admittedly, 2 just doesn't hit as fully as 1 does for me. It does the right things a sequel should do - the narrative has a tighter focus, the character likenesses have been recast with professional actors and pretty great model work for 2003, the gameplay and setpieces are more polished - but in that it lacks the unhinged diy energy and perfect simplicity that are big parts of why I love 1 and I'm a bit mixed on the bullet time changes. It is a great game regardless, but 1 will always be my preferred of the two to go back to.

Is it good? Ehhh not really. The big problem is that enemy AI consists entirely of shooting at you the second you're in sight, which is all well and good when your dodging around corners but there are lots of situations where you're stuck taking cheap hits. The devs seemed aware of this and gave you four lives per level that instantly drop you right where you died. Even with that some levels can be a bit annoying and take a couple tries, the manor and underground base especially.
Is it incredibly ambitious, impressive, and worth playing for fans of Max Payne? Abso-fucking-lutely. An incredible amount of work has been put in to faithfully demake Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance, with locations seemingly recycling textures from the main game and memorable setpieces recreated. When the gameplay works as intended you're shootdodging around familiar environments and it's all tied together with *fully voiced" cutscenes from the original game! A couple levels had to be cut - the boat and parking garage and the nightmare sequences aren't playable - so there are a couple awkward cuts in the story, but the amount of effort into making it all feel like Max Payne is incredible and worth a couple hours of your time if you're a fan.