Max Payne 3

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List Price: $14.99
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I must say I am impressed and a little surprised with what they have done with Max Payne. I have been building this game up in my head for the past few years since I first caught wind of it and I must say it has met and beat my expectations. The game is very well put together. There is intense action, a lot of violence, and a carefully woven story that is peppered with flashbacks and poetic cut scenes. The single player campaign is roughly 10 hours long and the trophies are split up between single player and multiplayer, though there are a few more single player trophies. Fans of the original games will enjoy this very much. I have a feeling that newcomers may gravitate more toward the multiplayer side of the game, while us old timers play Max Payne for the gripping story and the depressed main characters drunken inner monologue.

The full installation size is 5.5 gigs, there was a 25mb update on release day and a 59mb update on 5-21-12 which may have corrected some of the below issues gamers have been having. You DO NOT need to be connected to the internet for Max Payne 3 to save your game, as others have claimed you do. I unhooked my network and played for an hour, quit, restarted and it went right to where I left off. You also will earn trophies, but you need the internet to sync them to the PSN. Some players have noted that there are audio interruptions throughout the game, I have noticed this as well, however they are very minimal and random throughout the game which does not hinder the game playing experience. My only issue was that the voice did not match the characters lips moving in a short cut scene, again, a very mild issue which may have been corrected with the most recent update as I have not had any issues since.

Pros

+ Beautiful natural feeling graphics. Fairly well detailed and smooth running. It has a unique style that is very entertaining.

+ There is a very nicely woven storyline that really holds your interest throughout.

+ The A.I. is very good in my opinion giving us smart challenging enemies.

+ Music is classic Max Payne, but with a modern twist. Sound is very clear and strong. Voice acting is top notch and funny at times.

+ Bullet time is very well crafted. 360 shooting while on the ground is a nice touch. Shooting from cover is also well achieved.

+ Multiplayer does grow on you after more plays. It is fast, simple and smooth.

Cons

Multiplayer is not as great as I was hoping. It is a bit clunky and only mildly entertaining. Bullet time is fun, however easily becomes a mess with many players. I would not recommend this game simply for multiplayer.

Control in single player and multiplayer takes a little while to get used to. It is good, however it needs to grow on you. Sort of reminds me of the Alan Wake controls and the aiming system reminds me of Red Dead Redemption.

I found that the game does get slightly repetitive after a while, however with the regular scenery change and story jumping it is very minimal.

Bullet time can sometimes actually hinder your game play. If an enemy shoots you and you are near death, you are forced into a locked bullet time, which is cool, but if you need to reload or an object is in your way you will die and you have no control. Very frustrating.

There a few weird clipping issues. Sometimes when you shoot an enemy they will just stand there frozen, and eventually fall.

One little pet peeve of mine in games is when they take the control away from the player, well due to all the loading cut scenes they do take the control away quite often and have varying length cut scenes. It does get annoying after a while and for the most part you cannot skip the cut scenes as it is loading the next section. However I rather sit through a cut scene than a empty loading screen.

As a huge Max Payne series fan, I was a little insulted by them adding multiplayer, though it is mildly fun and entertaining and like any multiplayer game it greatly depends on who you are playing with. Other reviews are saying this third installment in the Max Payne series has drifted from its roots. I agree and disagree. It has been almost 10 years since Max Payne 2 came out and the game needed a facelift. It is still Max Payne, however they have gone above and beyond to make this a new gaming experience yet still hold on to the classic aspects we look for. Max is old, I felt as bad for him as I did for Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4. He still has it though! Max's sad poetic dialogue, painkillers, and bullet time are all here. The game is very violent and intense, mostly seen in bullet time slow-mo kills showing the bullets flying through your enemies like a grapefruit.

The game is very smooth and stable and I have had no issues with glitching or lagging. At one point a multiplayer game did freeze up (the game, not the system) on me and it restarted within 30 seconds and took me back to the multiplayer menu.

Over-all I am very happy with Max Payne 3. It has lived up to my expectations and the hype. However keep in mind it is a single player game, with a less than perfect multiplayer game latched onto the single player for survival. The style is great; it is like a Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire and a Tony Scott (especially Man on Fire) film all in one. It is highly entertaining and the dialogue is fun and holds your interest throughout the game play. The loading times are hidden in the cut scenes, so there are many long cut scenes and they do seem to interrupt often, so if you are looking for a shoot um' up style game you'll get it with MP3, however you'll have to sit through the cut scenes first.

Highly recommended.

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Dark, gritty, and incredibly violent, "Max Payne 3" was clearly inspired by the works of the late, great Tony Scott. Spoken words of dialogue sporadically popping up on the screen as white text... color distortions and filters... multiple frames split with bold lines... a muted color palette... all of these elements of style summoned Scott's films to mind, while playing MP3. More than anything else, however, it was the gritty storytelling and the darkness of character that reminded me of Scott. The first thing that popped into my mind when I began playing MP3 was "Man on Fire", the great Denzel Washington revenge movie. And at its core, that's exactly what MP3 is: an interactive revenge movie.

I can't think of another game I've played that's as atmospheric as MP3. You can feel the suffering of this man, and all his many follies. The other characters are also richly drawn, and the settings of Brazil (both the impoverished areas and the wealthy ones) are created effectively and convincingly. The various chapters are oftentimes brilliant, with some of the standouts being an enormous soccer stadium, a river traversed by speedboat, and a siege upon a luxury yacht in the Panama Canal. The story, voice acting, and cut scenes are all surprisingly good, and they paint a story that at first seems generic, but slowly becomes a riveting force that propels you forward through the campaign, eager to see the next chapter.

I feel like Rockstar Studios would have been better served by creating a new IP for this game, because it's so much more advanced and sophisticated than the other two titles in the series... but that's far more of a compliment than a complaint.

I took off one star for some issues: Foremost, the violence. I understand this is a violent story, and a mature title designed for adults, just like an R rated film. But some of the violence is simply gratuitous, particularly the slow motion, close up kills that signify the clearing of enemies in a roomand to make matters worse, this is hardly a new "trick". "Stranglehold" was doing this way back in 2006.

Second, the mechanics are a tad dated, and not quite as smooth as the best of the competition. Rockstar insists on mapping their aim and trigger inputs to the bumper buttons for some reason (just like in "Red Dead Redemption"), as opposed to the trigger buttons. This is fundamentally inconvenient for a couple of reasons... it defies the industry standards, and makes it difficult for gamers who are hardwired for conventional controls (alternate button mapping is possible, but you can't use the triggers for triggers, no matter what you choose). There is a very good reason why the trigger buttons on your controller are called trigger buttons... it's because they replicate triggers!

The slow motion trick (otherwise known as "bullet time") has not aged particularly well. The combat of this game is at its best when it relies upon the stop and pop, cover based shooting. Diving around in slow motion feels forced, and is not very fun. I only used slow motion when I was absolutely forced to, because there was no cover around.

These shortcomings, however, cannot undo what is a fantastic game, a credit to Rockstar Studios, and a fitting homage to Tony Scott.

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The terrible pun best describes my experience with this game. Really it's a good game (for $20 anyway) but boy does it annoy at times. The story is lengthy and engaging and the acting fantastic, but the main character's bout of depression and self destruction got tiresome. Gameplay is fun but glitchy. As many here have mentioned, you do occasionally get stuck while in cover, forcing a checkpoint reload. Another gripe of mine lies with the game being cinematic to a fault. Whether it be a lengthy monologue while strolling sloooowly towards your destination or a particularly long cutscene (of which there are many), the game is determined to ensure you experience every agonizing second of it, New Game + or not.

The biggest payne though is the difficulty which tends to skyrocket at various moments, leading to retries after retries after retries. I'm not opposed to a game using health items instead of a recharging bar, in fact I prefer that to the tiresome blood-splatter-color-fading screens that accompany rechargeable health. But it takes so little to put Max down that you'll be spending most of your shootouts on the ground writhing in payne than on your feet.

Despite these problems the game is fun, especially considering that it includes cheats which gives it high replay in my book. If you want a good 3rd person shooter and can find this for under $30, you won't be disappointed.

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If you're big on 3rd person shooters, this game is for you. I prefer some stealth in my games, there is none in this. The story left a little bit to be desired as well. The graphic and action were great. Easy controls.

Good game, just not really my thing

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The developers should have asked these questions and then should have picked one approach. Instead now you have a game where you play a shootout for 2-3 mins and then put the controller aside and watch a cut scene for 5-10 mins.

The game looks gorgeous. The cut scenes are not too bad actually. I am just extremely offended by the fact that the developers decided not to let the players have a choice in skipping a cut scene (interestingly you can skip these in Arcade mode but not in Story mode) . I wonder is they sat through each cut scene every time they tested a level. There are just far too many cut scenes. Even the simple act of open a door is a cut scene. And each cut scene changes the weapon selection to default. So... 2-3 min of game play, 5-10 mins of cut scene, change weapon selection... repeat. And if this review is starting to get repetitive, that pretty much what the game experience is like.

The "interactive" part of the game is nice, while it lasts, which is about 40% of the game. Hence my score...40%