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Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

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  • Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

    Welcome to the first part of our Max Payne 3 review, made possible by Rockstar Games and Rockstar Vancouver. Max Payne 3 tells the tale of a man perpetually down on his luck that just happens to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the time.


    Oh, did I forget to mention that it's a totally awesome Photoshop video review? Hey guys, it's a totally awesome stick-figure Photoshop review since I don't have a video capture card for my Xbox 360, and guess what? We have a planned part two that will focus on the game's multiplayer and arcade modes that will also make use of stick-figure drawings! Horray! Look for that in a day or two.

    This review was made possible thanks to Rockstar Games providing TGN & CSN with a review copy. Max Payne 3 is available now on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in North America. It will be made available on the PC on May 29, 2012. All three base versions of the game retail for $60 (USD).

    Max Payne 3 -- http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne3/
    Rockstar Social Club -- http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/

    If sitting and listening to my voice or looking at my mad stick-figure skills is too much for you to handle, perhaps you'd prefer to simply read the text of the script for the review. That text can be found below.


    [spoil=Max Payne 3 Text Review - Click to read only if you hate videos]
    Hello everybody and welcome to another spectacular Total Gaming Network and CS-Nation presentation. As always, I'm Zips and today we're offering up a special review of Max Payne 3 by Rockstar Vancouver and published by Rockstar Games. Yes, this review contains no video footage of the game since I do not have a capture card for my Xbox 360. Enjoy my crappy MS Paint skills instead!

    Let's just get this out of the way right now: Rockstar Games has managed to do it again. I really just don't understand how they manage to keep releasing these stellar titles like this. (Grand Theft Auto IV and the two add-on packages of The Lost and Damned and Ballad of Gay Tony, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and now Max Payne 3.) In fact, the only game I can recall off the top of my head that I could fault them for is State of Emergency.

    Granted, that one wasn't developed by Rockstar themselves, merely published, so that game might be pushing it.

    Max Payne 3 is the complete package of stylized visuals, an action noire story, varied gameplay mechanics, and a soundtrack that is easily one of the best fitting collections of music I've had the pleasure of experiencing in any recent title. Sure, it's not to say that Max Payne 3 isn't without a few faults but in the grand scheme of things this is definitely a worthy successor to one of my all-time favorite game franchises.

    If you have never played any of the previous Max Payne games prior to this, you should really do yourself a favor and play through them beforehand. I understand that Max Payne 2 is available through Xbox Live's Games on Demand feature, so that might be a good place to start. Otherwise, while you won't be too lost in some of this game's story elements, it does provide a wealth of background story that explains in much greater detail why max is an alcohol abusing pill popping ex-cop from New York.

    Let's just say that Max has not led the best or easiest of lives. Fresh from a re-play of Max Payne 2, it's interesting to see how a number of people in the gaming community are concerned at how "action" oriented the title character seems to be in Max Payne 3. I suppose he does perform a few more "action" oriented moves in this one, including having him jump from rooftops onto scaffolding or slide down and kick through a window in a football stadium but having experienced some of his equally over the top actions in Max Payne 2 just two days ago, it doesn't seem like any of his actions in 3 are out of character or over the top at all.

    The man has been blown out of buildings, fallen through scaffolding, had construction debris fall on him, shot multiple times including at least twice in the head, survived death, experienced the loss of his wife, his kid, and his new love interest Mona Sax and the man just keeps on going. He's like the gaming equivalent of Vigo the Carpathian or even the Energizer bunny. He is, without a doubt, the most unlikeliest of heroes.

    The game opens with a series of cuts between Max in present day Sao Paulo, Brazil and Max in New Jersey in a life led prior to the events of Max Payne 3. Perpetually drunk, hung over, and killing his pain with a constant stream of pills, Max was hired by a wealthy industrialist, Rodrigo Branco, at the insistence of an old acquaintance of Max, Raul Passos.

    The story is told both through a series of present day events throughout Brazil and a number of flashbacks to the cesspool that is New Jersey when the shit really started to once again hit the fan. Let's not forget that the timeline in the previous Max Payne games wasn't exactly linear either, so the flashback sequences fit in quite nicely here. Sorry, there are no nightmare sequences this time I am sad to say.

    The events in Brazil center on Max's bodyguard duties and repeated efforts to bring justice against a gang that just happened to have it in for Max's employer's young wife. I won't spoil the story for you as it is one that is better experienced through gameplay than a simple retelling, but let's just say that as is always the case with Max, nothing really ever goes his way. There are other factions to contend with, including paramilitary groups, other gangs and mobs, and even some unlikely allies, and they're all tied up in this intricate story of revenge, betrayal, and class warfare. The story is carried out through a series of spoken exchanges between max, his friends, his employers, and his foes in a series of in-game cut scenes punctuated with freeze frame graphic novel stylized frames that replace the illustrated segments of the previous games. I thought I wouldn't much like these new methods of story exposition at first but damn if they didn't quickly grow on me. It also doesn't hurt that there are seamless transitions between story segments and gameplay.

    When Max isn't voicing his troubles verbally, a number of internal monologues from Max keep things from going quiet, just as it was in previous games. James McCaffrey once again reprises his role as the voice of the title character, bringing life to a character that has nothing left to really live for. The mood is somber and actually comes across as quite a bit darker than the previous two games. You really get to feel for Max and the hardships he's had to endure any time he states how he isn't even sure what he has to live for or even why he's still alive.

    The game is brutal. And what do I mean by that? Well, to start with the difficulty is about on par with the previous titles, that is to say that even on Normal difficulty the game presents one hell of a challenge for even seasoned veterans of the series. You will die, you will replay parts and you will still enjoy every moment of it. However, beyond the brutal nature of the game's difficulty the game is brutal in the sense that it's quite violent. This is as close to a mature, adult title that you can possibly get right now. The game features slow motion shots of round after round blasting their way through bone and tissue, blood spurting out of the gaping holes left by a well-placed shot, limbs blown off in violent explosions, and so much more. Yes, there is also at least one portion of the game that features nudity. This game is not for the kiddies to sit down and watch you play, that much is apparent.

    Even some of the game's smaller touches have an element of brutality associated with them. If you should happen to find yourself close enough to enact a melee attack on a foe, prepare to watch Max beat the guy with a gun before firing a round into the poor sap's face at point blank range. Truly, if ever there was a game where the main character gave zero fucks about what it was going to take to reach his goal, this is that game. Oh yes, it should be mentioned that while the melee sequence is carried out by Max, the action of pulling the trigger is left entirely up to the player. This game holds nothing back.

    For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of a Max Payne game, it should be noted that Max has the ability to slow down time for short periods. During this, Max can more easily dodge bullets, leap out from cover to fire back, seek cover, or get a bead on his enemy's head without much worry that they're going to quickly dart out of the way. Yes, it's bullet time and it is spectacular. It's never overused and is replenished only at certain key sequences in the game or more slowly replenished as Max gets shot at.

    While the bullet time actions may have been amazing already in the first two games, this game's use of the Euphoria animation system just sets Max Payne 3's movement and style on a level all their own. It. Is. AWESOME. There are so many little details here that I could easily go on and on about just how mind blowingly good the animations, physics, and mechanics are in this game. Thanks to the methods with which Euphoria blends animations, nothing is ever really canned. Interactions and movement are all done on the fly. For instance, if you leap out of cover towards a railing, Max may clip the top of the railing with his shoulder, altering his trajectory causing the still moving mass of his legs and lower torso to twist a bit mid-air and ultimately kill his momentum, forcing him to the ground as he lands on his side. All the while this is happening the player is still in control of the weapons in max's hands, blasting away at enemies as he struggles to get to his feet.

    This isn't the first time Euphoria has been put to good use in Rockstar's games. If you've ever played Grand Theft Auto IV or Red Dead Redemption then you should know a bit about what's in store for you when you fire up Max Payne 3. The fact that a majority of the game is carried out through slow motion bullet dodging maneuvers means that the animation blending is more easily apparent and it's just... Wow. Honestly, it's probably the best thing to ever happen to character animation in videogames since the simple ragdoll became the norm.

    Euphoria and gore aside, the visuals in Max Payne 3 feature some of Rockstar's finest work. While it may not make use of the facial animation tech seen in L.A. Noire, the characters are all wonderfully animated and convey emotions that can be read from a mile away. The lighting and shadow work is again, some of the best I've seen from Rockstar and is, in fact, better than most other games currently available for consoles. It looks natural. Little touches such as how Max's clothes and hair blow in the wind are a great attention to detail. The world of Max Payne 3 simply feels alive. Gang tags that were painted onto walls look as though they've been there for quite some time, worn away by the acts of weather, repainting, or rubbed away by passersby. If there's one thing that should be a given by now, is the fact that Rockstar knows precisely how to make a game environment feel like it has actually existed long before you ever picked up a controller.

    The experience is rounded out by additional touches such as the TV shows that Max could watch on some of the TV's scattered around the game. Segments include news of current events, most of which Max had a hand in, commercials, and even bits of an episode of a certain bat carrying youngster. Max's appearance changes throughout the game as do the appearances of other characters and really does a great job at showing either a passage of time or period of time when things weren't quite so crazy. Again, it's the little touches like this that really show the extra TLC that Rockstar put into this. These guys have done a fantastic job here and makes me even more excited for what we may see in Grand Theft Auto 5.

    Visuals aside, a game just wouldn't be complete if the sounds and soundtrack didn't stack up. Fortunately, the voice acting is superb even if Max and his voice actor James McCaffrey are starting to get a little up there in age. The supporting cast feels as though they would be right at home as much in this game as in a more mature version of Grand Theft Auto and are just as superbly acted as Max. The soundtrack is headlined by the American rock band Health. The group did the game's title song, otherwise known as the soundtrack to Max's life. It's a tune that should be familiar to any fan of the series. They also did an all new song, TEARS that might be my new personal favorite song of the month for how much I have enjoyed listening to it. Other artists include the Brazilian rapper Emicida and the Brazilian composer Pedro Bromfman. As strange as it may sound, all of these artists and pieces work really well throughout the game and really set the tone for the on screen events.

    Max controls as well as a middle-aged ex-cop could possibly control. His character feels as though he's got a good bit of weight on him, which is certainly not a bad thing. You wouldn't want someone who looks to have packed on a few pounds over the years to control like a spry 18 year old. That's not to say that Max feels sluggish, far from it. It's again, just a matter of Euphoria and the game's physics at work here. He feels like you're controlling an actual person instead of merely moving around a mere avatar. Momentum needs to shift before a change in direction can take place, which is just fine with me.

    As far as weapons go, Max may have an arsenal at his disposal that could rival many country's combined armed forces. Pistols, SMG's, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers and more are all at max's disposal. Gone are the mechanics of yesteryear where max could carry all of those weapons with him at once. The game allows you to carry two single-handed weapons that can be dual-wielded at your discretion and one two-handed weapon that is tossed aside the moment you dual-wield anything. It's a system that works because it always keeps you on your toes and actually introduces an added level of difficulty in that you need to decide what you should take with you into the next game segment.

    A cover mechanic has been added to the series. It's certainly not over used but can be utilized in conjunction with bullet time to pop out and take out a few enemies before dipping back into cover. This isn't some easy out by any means. The AI is smart enough that they will try to flank your position at any given opportunity, so you are still always on your toes and as a result, you're still moving around almost as much as you were in the first two games.

    Last man standing is another new gameplay mechanic that was added for Max Payne 3. If you happen to have at least one painkiller in your inventory as max is "killed" note the implied quotes there, then max has one last chance at redemption. Simply kill the person who took max out before Max hits the ground and he will pop those pills and get a second chance at life. Without this new feature I can almost guarantee that I'd have died at least twice as often as I have.

    With special regards to the AI, they are relentless. As noted, this game is quite hard and you will die quite often. Fortunately, the game offers up a variety of difficulty levels but most fans will probably start things off on Medium. Easy is also an option if you're new to the series or just want to have a more relaxed experience. To further enhance your gameplay experience there are other difficulty levels including Hard which reduces the health and bullet time rewards, Hardcore which continues to reduce the rewards for health and bullet time, and Old School where last man standing is disabled.

    Finally, the major difficulty elements are rounded out by a choice of three different aiming assists. Hard lock is for those who just like to immediately lock onto the nearest enemy and blow them away. Though there is little challenge here. Soft lock is a middle ground aim assist where you actually need to train your aiming dot near enough to an enemy before it locks onto them. It won't stay locked on unless you keep your view centered on your enemy and offers up a slight challenge to the player. Free aim is the final level and for most fans of the series it will be the aiming mode predominately used. There is no aim assist with this mode and it offers up the greatest challenge. Though, it could be said that some of the challenge in free aim is the fact that the aiming dot sometimes gets lost in the environment.

    Now, we've talked up the gameplay, the story, the visuals, the sound, but what about the game's negatives? To start with, there are a few glitches still present in the game. I'm not sure how common this particular problem is but I can say with certainty that at one point in the game I died and upon respawning at the most recent checkpoint, Max was not holding any weapons in his hands. He would hold out his hands as if he were dual wielding the pistols that were in my inventory but I was unable to equip them nor fire anything. It wasn't until I purposely went into last stand mode that my weapons returned and I was able to continue the game as normal.

    As I am playing on the Xbox 360 version, there are also a few periods where the framerate is less than optimal. It's a rare occurrence and rarely if ever actually happens during gameplay segments, but it is something I'm sure some people may take issue with. There were also a few times where Euphoria seems to act a little weird when Max dives into an object. There were a couple of times where the animation engine decided to have one of max's arms end up behind him on the ground and if you're still firing the weapon it can look a little silly. Again, this was a very rare and very minor issue that certainly doesn't break the game in any way.

    It's really kind of odd that there were many non-gameplay sequences in the game that could have easily been gameplay sequences. It sometimes feels like Rockstar overdid a few of the story elements that could have and should have been left to the player to carry out, especially when it came to some of the rather short action sequences that really did not need to be told through a non-interactive sequence and would have been more thrilling for the player to take control of for themselves.

    The difficulty may be another point of contention for some gamers out there. Fortunately, you can adjust the difficulty on the fly if you so choose to. The harder difficulty levels need to be unlocked before you can test those waters, which is a shame because the game will sometimes try to hold your hand by offering up fully replenished health, bullet time, and or pain pills at your next respawn if you keep dying in a particular area.

    Another minor issue I had was the fact that as Max entered into many of the game's cut scene transitions, it would force him to stop carrying the two handed weapon I was equipped with, leaving him with just a single handed weapon equipped. Now, either the two handed weapon would need to be re-equipped after the short story segment played or would be gone all together. This proved to be a little frustrating at parts where I much preferred to use the two handed weapon. I had to re-equip it and then continue on playing. Again, it's a minor thing but over the course of 9 hours it tends to add up.

    The extremely dark mood set in the game may actually be too dark for some players. As mentioned, Max is a man who has led a really shitty life and the fact that the themes of murder, death, drug addition, alcoholism, and suicide are prominent throughout the game may be too much for some players to deal with. However, the overarching narrative of the differences between upper and lower class citizens probably won't be too much of an issue for most gamers to contend with.

    Clocking in at just shy of 9 hours for the first play through on Medium with Free Aim, Max Payne 3 offers up a lot of bang for the buck. This was done with casual searching for clues and golden gun pieces in each level. Some effort was made to find these added content pieces but I did not go out of my way and spend additional time searching. Most gamers will probably complete their first play through at about 8 to 11 hours. Multiple difficulty modes ensure that you will be back for more before the bullet casings finish hitting the floor. As mentioned, Golden gun collectables and clues are also there for Max to find for the completionist in all of us and Rockstar's new addition of Grinds ensure that all of your on screen action is measured in some meaningful way. This, of course, all ties into a robust stat tracking system through the Rockstar social club.

    Is Max Payne 3's single player worth your money? Absolutely. Is it a perfect game? Not by any stretch of the imagination but it is a hell of a lot of fun and the issues that it does have are fairly minor save for the no gun on respawn issue which, again, only occurred once.

    Now, for as much as we've talked here, we obviously did not even touch upon the game's Arcade and Multiplayer modes! Look for all of that in part 2 of our review of Max Payne 3 from Rockstar Games. Until then, this has been Zips with Total Gaming Network and CS-Nation.[/spoil]

  • #2
    Re: Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

    I loved the review and your drawn images with your great ever-present humor!

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

      Sounds like another great game. Im glad there are no nightmare sequences, I hated those.

      Also, who thinks Max Payne cant be action oriented? HE'S MAX PAYNE!!

      Glad they kept the comic book style.

      Great "video" The cinematics are awesome!

      No Max Payne game is for the kids.
      Twitter: @CptainCrunch
      Battlelog/Origin: CptainCrunch

      Comment


      • #4
        There is a small Easter Egg in the video as well. Nothing major.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

          HAHA, I thought that was an issue with youtube.
          Twitter: @CptainCrunch
          Battlelog/Origin: CptainCrunch

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

            I CAN'T FIND IT


            oh, and after watching it again with more attention I really need to give you props once again for your humoristic skills!

            Comment


            • #7
              I played some SP, but somehow I find it lacks that *thing* that keeps me wanting more. Don't get me wrong, it's still a fantastic game. And worth every penny.

              Comment


              • #8
                nice review, waiting for the PC release myself all in good time i guess can not wait after what i heard watching your review Zips.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Max Payne 3 Single Player Review

                  Originally posted by Eagle101
                  nice review, waiting for the PC release myself all in good time i guess can not wait after what i heard watching your review Zips.
                  this, I really hope my pc can run this as I am really exited to get this game!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I can't wait for the multiplayer review!!

                    Comment

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