Max Payne 3 Review

Written By: Ice Cold Tabasco

After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into...

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After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into, being the PC, which is notorious for subpar console ports. Forcing anti aliasing and having a very limited graphics options menu does not equate to a great port. Reason being why I should gush over how buttery smooth Max Payne 3 ran on my rig, with its rather extensive graphics menu and fantastic optimization. You never really appreciate a good port until you run across a shit one.

Anyway, lets get down to business…

Fuck. You. Alan. Wake.

Theres a lot of good in Max Payne, and quite a bit of bad to compensate. One is something the franchise has never really been able to accomplish, being, having an engaging narrative. Max, finding himself in the crosshairs of a New Jersey mob boss, travels to Brazil with a man named Passos, promising tons of cash and escape from his current predicament. What ensues is, from what I’m able to muster from my playthrough was just a fuck ton of noise and bullshit. It’s standard action movie fair, with little creative flare. You’ll end up forgetting this the entire thing, along with its unique setting.

Forgetting my two sentence limerick, I like Passos. He’s a funny guy and always has your back in the middle of a fire fight. But everyone else are simply cardboard cutouts, completely two dimensional with zero personality. Whenever someone is killed off, you don’t really give a flying fuck. You just want you mate to stop crying so you can move onto the next shootout.

That’s another issue, as Max Payne 3 seems to fall into this cycle of moving from shooting gallery to shooting gallery. While, yes, that pretty much describes every single FPS in existence, they at least offer engaging combat mechanics and enemy variety to compensate. While bullet time remedies the issue slightly, a dude with a gun is virtually the only dude you're going to kill. Still, it retains tension and is engaging with the bullet time (effectively slowmo) mechanic, which is a godsend in hotter fire fights. Longer play sessions will tend to get grindy and feel as if Paul W. S. Anderson was behind development.

It's quite the visual spectacle as well.

Going with the theme of combat, the gun-play is fan-FUCKING-tastic. Whether it be magnum, pistol, shotgun or assault rifle, every round expended has kick and power. When you clear a room of enemies, you can’t help but feel like god. Contributing to this is the expertly balanced difficulty here. Powering through on Hard Mode, I couldn't help but feel a sort of Dark Soul’s type of challenge in which it is completely fair and challenging. If you die, you died because of you, only amplifying the euphoria of victory.

Now, using what I learned from Alan Wake, is that only animating a character models lower jaw and hiring the most inept voice actors does not lead to a satisfactory audial or visual experience. So, I feel I should note Max Payne 3 has some pretty good talent with is animators and voice actors, feeling very close to real thing. And NOT the atrocities that walk Bright Falls, with cold, unfeeling eyes. Expressionless faces and barely moving mouths, you can understand why Alan Wake was a horror (as well as learning) experience for developers.

Moving away from the mechanical aspects, the game looks fantastic. Its has a widely variant color palette, with bright colors and high contrast for sunny Brazil. To the drab brown and greys of a snow blanketed Hoboken, Max Payne 3 is quite the visual treat. You’ll often be left in awe at the detail that was carved into the world. Bullet impacts, soaked fabric, creasing cloth, and trash on city streets all contribute to the immersive side of the overall experience.

Definitely a looker.

Despite its forgettable story, characters, and shooting gallery mentality, Max Payne 3 is still an enjoyable experience. With tight gun-play, bullet time mechanic, and decent voice acting, I’d dare to say that Max Payne 3 is a pretty good game overall. Though, don’t expect much to think about when you set it down.

Verdict

7/10

Good