Max Payne 3 Review

I just finished Max Payne 3 and it was a blast. This concludes my playthrough of the Max Payne trilogy.

Story

The game is set in 2012, which is ~10 years since the events of Max Payne 2. Max is a washed up alcoholic who moves into the private security business, being employed to protect a rich Brazilian businessmen and his family. Due to a series of telenovela-esque events, people are kidnapped while under Max’s watch. In response, he goes on a shooting rampage, from taking out goons in the favela ghettos as well as paramilitary forces.

The story feels like a worthy continuation to the trilogy. It feels like a nitty film noir, with all the tropes:

• “too old for this shit, close to retirement”
• Max rambling and making observations about the world. This serves to tell the narrative but also to get us into his head and mindset
• Failing to save the girl, continued failures tacked onto his life.
• Depression and addiction to painkillers
• American trying to be the hero and visibly failing to the world at large

It diverges from the first two games, as the plots surrounding Valkyr and the inner circle have been wrapped up tightly. The new setting is welcome and makes sense to do here. There are only small references to events from the past game but they don’t influence the plot of this game at all. This was a gripe for many players but I think it’s fine to wrap up those arcs. They have a lasting impact on the character development and that carries onto this game: Max is depressed, has experience continual failure, is cynical, etc.

My complaint is that the story is convoluted. Like telenovela-levels convoluted. You have rich guy who is assassinated in a conspiracy by his brother, who employs an unwitting private security guard, who returns to New York with a fake cover story to entice Max into joining, who becomes the fall guy to the cumulation to all the machinations. I scoured the internet but it seems others are in the same boat. The motivations of some characters don’t make much sense and many events coincide. But it’s exactly the level of convolution that you can see in 80’s action movies, just accept it as the justification to go on a revenge rampage.

Aesthetic

Setting

This game is beautiful. The first two games took place at night and typically in warehouse or a few buildings. Now we’re going from nightclubs to favelas, to yachts. There’s such a variety of settings and they’re all so well decorated and feel alive:

• a shootout in a cemetary
• a bar brawl in New York
• aboard a private yacht party, stationed in the Panama Canal
• bus repair depot
• funeral home, that has a church and morgue
• the favelas
• an airport terminal and hangar

This is contrasted with the first two games, where were dark and took place in a common settings in New York, such as apartments and warehouses. It was a bold move to move the setting to Brazil but it worked out well for them.

There’s criticism regarding the portrayal of Brazil but I understand this is a game and they’re likely over-exaggerating certain aspects. It can also be interpreted as the cynical view of Max, an outsider. He’s not a tourist, he doesn’t want to be there, no one wants him there. It’s hard to convey this intangible tension and easier to exaggerate or emphasize it through the actions of NPCs.

Motion Capture

This games uses motion capture and it’s stellar. It feels like I’m watching a movie. All the character motions are realistic and smooth.

The ragdoll effects are phenomenal. It seems very realistic. The physics engine they used to model everything is outstanding. In fact, the entire engine is incredible. Most cutscenes are scripted events and not pre-rendered. The guns you hold changes the scene or any damage to the environment carries over. Many games that have tried this before experience a lot of glitches, such as items clipping through each other or bad camera angles or resetting the game environment.

I would literally pay money to watch this game being played, it’s literally an interactive movie. Or to make movie that’s simply rendered with the game engine. It’s that good.

Comics

One of the iconic elements of Max Payne was the comics, used to narrate the story. That’s gone now and replaced with comic-esque neon-pastel transitions during the cutscenes. While it does invoke and is reminiscent, I wished they kept it more static. As a comic book, I was in charge of transitioning the pages of the story at my own pace. The cutscenes run on their own pace and these transitions got tiring quickly.

There’s also a blurring effect and potions of the dialogue text that would be repeated as words on screen. It was all very distracting, especially once you’re a few hours into the game.

But after playing through this game for 30 hours, I think this is more of a preference to the original aesthetic design. On its own, the styling in Max Payne 3 is perfectly acceptable and stands on its own. It’s definitely distinctive enough to be memorable and age well.

TV

The TV still exists and you can watch it. Unfortunately, there’s only about 4-6 TVs, scattered throughout the game. They’ve increased the production value (the original were 2-3 screen caps and mostly voiceovers). So it feels more of an homage to the original games.

I really wished they kept it in or put in more effort into this. These little things are what made the previous games endearing.

I think the inclusion of this would have made this feel much more like the prequels.

Piano

In the previous games, Max would play the theme tune on the piano. It was one of those fun things they stuck into the game that was great. They’ve continued that here but it’s even better: there’s demonstrable progression as Max gets better, in chronological history (game plays out of chronological sequence).

Also, there’s a reflection against Max’s own character: the pianos range from nice to crap and it’s the crappiest one that he finishes this arc on. He’s rugged, broken, and failed to succeed in the light of the glitz and glam.

When I first saw the piano, I was pumped. Again, it’s these little things.

Slow-motion Sequences

There are many slow-motion, action sequences in this game. These are so well-done, I’m sure they’re one of the most memorable aspects of the game to most.

You have Max:

• sliding along on a pushcart, taking out 8 bad guys with a revolver
• running towards a chain, getting pulled up 2 stories, taking out bad guys
• shooting out bad guys, mid-flight on a speedboat

Each and everyone of these sequences is so badass, such an action-movie trope. This is the first game where I’ve felt like an 80’s action movie star. The adrenaline gets pumping the first time you experience these events. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare had sequences but it never felt as 80’s action movie as this.

Interactive Objects

Max Payne games had interactive objects. The toilets flushed, the vending machine would dispense canned pop. That is largely gone from this game.

The only interactions are the physics engine. Lights can be shot out, things like leak fluids when shot, or break.

But other than that, they didn’t put focus into this. And that’s a bummer, I really liked the small details they put into the game. They were a nice way to break the pace and immersion of the game, to allow players to mess around and explore the world.

Gameplay

Using the modern engine, this game introduces more gameplay elements that became common in early 2010’s.

Cover

The cover system became popularized due to Gears of War and many games have their variants of it. I think it’s implemented very well here.

When behind cover, you can still get shot if you peek your head out or if you get flanked. A game play style is to run from cover to cover, minimizing exposing yourself out in the open. Be careful though, the enemies in the game will flank you and will charge if you spend too much camping.

When behind cover, you can blind-fire, which serves to minimize exposure and to lay down suppressing fire. Enemies take cover and this opens up opportunities. With some weapons, such as the Ingram or shotguns, this is a viable strategy. You can even kill enemies with blind-fire but it is very inaccurate and works best with a few weapons, such as shotguns.

During my first playthrough, I felt forced to play it like a cover shooter. There was not enough bullet time to run and gun. In Max Payne 2, your bullet time meter would recharge slowly and this empowered you to use it. Also, the more enemies you killed during bullet time, the faster you would move. Max Payne 2 encouraged the use of bullet time. Here, I feel like I’m restricted from moving from cover to cover, picking off enemies slowly.

During my subsequent playthrough, I used shoot-dodge for everything. Turns out, I was using it all wrong. Shoot-dodge is not restricted by bullet time and this is what replaces the abundant bullet time in Max Payne 2. Rather than toggling on bullet time to clear a room, you run to the next cover and shoot-dodge into it. This ends your shoot-dodge in a better position. It was way more fun and made the game easier.

Difficulty

I played the game on Hard and it was quite easy. The difficulty setting changes how much damage you take, how much damage the enemies take, and prevalence of ammo and painkillers.

There are sections of the game that are very difficult, regardless of difficulty. It’s usually because there are 15 enemies and they flank you from all directions. In all honesty, Max would definitely be shredded cheese in these sequences. How the shit do you survive 300 rifle rounds being fired in your direction, by trained military, with body armour? Max has a goddamn 9mm pistol and Hawaiian shirt, how much luck skill did he invest in to roll triple 6’s?

Achievements

This game has achievements. It was a fun thing to chase, after completing the main story. They forced me to play the game in different playstyles.

I played with dual-wielding, which is a blast but not optimal. Sometimes constraints can actually be liberating.

There’s an achievement for melee, which is wholly impractical in this game. But they spent so much time on the sweet animation behind it!

Another achievement is shooting explosives out of the air. Don’t do this in the real game, it’s high-risk, zero-reward. Through this achievement I found out that shooting grenade launcher rounds is like skeet shooting.

Guns

In the first game, there was only 1 or 2 guns in each category. For the most part, the choice of gun was linearly tiered, and ammo availability dictated which gun you would use.

In the second game, it felt like there was more choice. You kinda gravitated towards a style and picked a gun that suited that playstyle.

This tradition continues. You generally have the choice of using:

• handguns, which are accurate for placing headshots and are plentiful
• submachine guns, which are faster firing and good for use behind cover
• shotguns, which are good for use behind cover and high damage
• rifles, which penetrate armour

If you use two-handed weapons, it’s possible to lose these weapons at certain checkpoints. So you should still maintain a good secondary. Also, many sequences automatically revert you to holding the one-handed weapon. THey seem to force this a lot but it’s an action-movie trope, the good guy with the Beretta from god himself.

In this game, you can only hold a few weapons, a realistic amount. You can see all your weapons on the player model, in the holsters that Max is wearing.

Armoured Enemies

This game introduces armoured enemies. If you shoot them in the armoured sections, they take so many bullets. Like so many bullets. Like action-movie bad guy levels of bullets. Dual-wield berettas and 16 rounds into the chest.

If you use the rifle, it doesn’t matter as much where you shoot but rifles are not as useful behind cover. They take too long to aim and it feels like you expose yourself more when using them.

Handguns are great for bullet time because Max can spin the gun around quickly. Shotguns and rifles take longer, if you’re not already pointing in the general direction.

Body Part Damage

Enemies take damage from different body parts. This introduces a gameplay element of shooting enemies in the legs, which would take them down. I really like the introduction of this gameplay element, it added a meaningful strategy to the game. I found that I would often shoot armoured enemies in the legs or groin, which was unprotected. They would fall down and this temporarily took them out of fight, reducing the number of enemies engaging me simultaneously.

Later in the game, enemies begin wearing helmets. It takes a shot to remove the helmet. This makes dual-wielding a great option as the two bullets count as two-hits, allowing for instant kill on these types of enemies.

Conclusion

Is Max Payne 3 a worthy addition to the trilogy? I wholeheartedly think so. While it’s missing many elements of the original game, it captures the spirit and has homages to cover their ground.

I had a blast, finishing the main story in 15 hours. Then I collected all the achievements in another 12 hours, which involved another playthrough the story.

If I had to rank the games, I would definitely rank Max Payne 2 as #1 for story and gameplay. Max Payne 1 would be for story. And Max Payne 3 is all about that gameplay. In summation, play all three of them.