MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
After slowly picking my way through this series the past year, I finally finished Max Payne 3 today.
Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back. I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I had passed it.
Max Payne, playing it more then a decade after it came out, is a game I would warrant to say is a classic. The noir style and writing, the cutscene delivery, the gameplay and technological aspects, BULLET TIME, Sam Lake's face, all of this melds together into a game I think is rather unique and that the two sequels try to emulate but never quite reach.
The story of Max Payne is one heavily inspired by Noir stories, a cop with a dead wife and kid and nothing to lose. While the story is good, the writing itself is great. Max's dialogue is some of the best I've seen in a game, my favorite being the 4th wall break during a hallucination where he finds out he's in a comic book, then a video game.
The only real complaints I can come up with are the God awful dream sections. While novel and good from a story and atmosphere perspective, they are complete dogshit to actually play. It's also a very difficult game, but I found the entire series above the average scale of difficulty without going into the harder difficulties unlocked after beating the game.
"The things that I want", by Max Payne. A smoke. A whiskey. For the sun to shine. I want to sleep to forget. To change the past. My wife and baby girl back. Unlimited ammo and a license to kill. Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is a game I feel like I remember very little of. It seemed like more of a Noir Romance then a Noir Crime story (thus a Film Noir love story, I guess) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This game seemed to try and paint Max and Mona as more human characters, and I think the far better dream sections kind of say that for itself (they were better because they didn't make me walk on bloodstains with an unclear direction on where to go). After seeing the ending of this game, I wondered why a Max Payne 3 was even made. I thought the ending was perfect. It's also way shorter then the first game, it felt like.
I kind of feel like I should replay this game, as I think there is a gap in my memory in between 1 and 3. I seriously forget a lot about 2.
It was Monday afternoon and Id already been thrown out of a party, been to a strip club and got into a bar fight. This latest mid-life crisis was certainly ticking all the boxes.
Man on Fire Max Payne 3 is a game I have a lot to say about, probably because I just finished it. First off, holy shit the animations in this game are amazing. I would say it probably has the best animations I've ever seen in a game.
The gameplay is also extremely good and solid, probably the best TPS gameplay I've played since Vanquish. However, it is criminally marred by one of the most annoying things in the entire world. Constant, unskippable cutscenes. After nearly every gunfight, no matter how long, like clockwork. The fact that they are unskippable (well you can skip them after they are 90% over) means I probably will not replay this game despite enjoying the gameplay so much.
There's also many other annoyances. The game constantly switches your weapon to the weapon on the right of your inventory (gone are the days of holding every weapon you can pick up, but it didn't bother me too much in this game) and even worse sometimes drops your 2 handed weapon.
The last stand system can be incredibly annoying in wide open spaces when you are shot in the back by a person you can not see or who immediately goes into cover, leaving you dead in slow motion. I wished you could just kill anyone to regain your footing and not the guy who did you in.
The cover system I found to be an unnecessary addition to the series, as it seemed to encourage you to turtle instead of be aggressive. Of course in the first two games you would end up behind boxes or a wall in a pinch, but I hardly felt like that would ever save you.
The story in Max Payne 3 is what you would expect for a series that was over. Max gets dragged into a bodyguard business for a rich man and his family, and shit goes really, really bad. The game takes place mostly in Brazil, with some flashback levels in New York, but for the most part a lot (maybe half) of the dialogue is in complete, untranslated Portuguese. I actually like this decision, because it makes you feel like you have no idea whats going on, fitting in with Max. However I'm also torn because I always felt like I was missing some jokey henchman banter.
The series trademark is Max's incredible never ending list of similes and metaphors. This is of course in Max Payne 3, and I liked a lot of the lines, but it somehow didn't feel like it matched the style of the first game (you can say that for a lot of Max Payne 3).
About Max's characterization, I feel as if he went from "down on his luck" to just straight bitching all the time. But maybe the years of alcohol and painkillers addiction made him like that. Not something I hated, but it was another thing that made me think it was different from the other two. I was also kind of waiting for a dream sequence the whole time, and unless you count the New York parts as that then there wasn't one.
Another series trademark is the comic book style cutscenes, and instead they replaced that with in game cutscenes with a ton of visual effects and bolded words popping out at you. I didn't mind it too much, but there were a few times when I thought they were going way overboard with the drunko vision.
Overall I would say Max Payne 3 is a hard game to categorize. It feels like it's wearing the skin of the previous two, but underneath that is just Rockstar. I certainly feel that it's a genuine Max Payne game, but that it's missing some credentials. I'm having difficulties putting my thoughts to words here.
I don't care about the multiplayer and I probably never will.
One thing I have to mention is the final level was great. Or at least the section with this was.
Would I like to see this series continue? Yes and No.
Yes, I would like to see a spiritual successor very much (Quantum Break maybe?) that builds upon the style and gameplay of the three games.
No, I don't want to see Max again. Let him rest, he's done.
Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back. I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I had passed it.
Max Payne, playing it more then a decade after it came out, is a game I would warrant to say is a classic. The noir style and writing, the cutscene delivery, the gameplay and technological aspects, BULLET TIME, Sam Lake's face, all of this melds together into a game I think is rather unique and that the two sequels try to emulate but never quite reach.
The story of Max Payne is one heavily inspired by Noir stories, a cop with a dead wife and kid and nothing to lose. While the story is good, the writing itself is great. Max's dialogue is some of the best I've seen in a game, my favorite being the 4th wall break during a hallucination where he finds out he's in a comic book, then a video game.
The only real complaints I can come up with are the God awful dream sections. While novel and good from a story and atmosphere perspective, they are complete dogshit to actually play. It's also a very difficult game, but I found the entire series above the average scale of difficulty without going into the harder difficulties unlocked after beating the game.
"The things that I want", by Max Payne. A smoke. A whiskey. For the sun to shine. I want to sleep to forget. To change the past. My wife and baby girl back. Unlimited ammo and a license to kill. Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is a game I feel like I remember very little of. It seemed like more of a Noir Romance then a Noir Crime story (thus a Film Noir love story, I guess) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This game seemed to try and paint Max and Mona as more human characters, and I think the far better dream sections kind of say that for itself (they were better because they didn't make me walk on bloodstains with an unclear direction on where to go). After seeing the ending of this game, I wondered why a Max Payne 3 was even made. I thought the ending was perfect. It's also way shorter then the first game, it felt like.
I kind of feel like I should replay this game, as I think there is a gap in my memory in between 1 and 3. I seriously forget a lot about 2.
It was Monday afternoon and Id already been thrown out of a party, been to a strip club and got into a bar fight. This latest mid-life crisis was certainly ticking all the boxes.
The gameplay is also extremely good and solid, probably the best TPS gameplay I've played since Vanquish. However, it is criminally marred by one of the most annoying things in the entire world. Constant, unskippable cutscenes. After nearly every gunfight, no matter how long, like clockwork. The fact that they are unskippable (well you can skip them after they are 90% over) means I probably will not replay this game despite enjoying the gameplay so much.
There's also many other annoyances. The game constantly switches your weapon to the weapon on the right of your inventory (gone are the days of holding every weapon you can pick up, but it didn't bother me too much in this game) and even worse sometimes drops your 2 handed weapon.
The last stand system can be incredibly annoying in wide open spaces when you are shot in the back by a person you can not see or who immediately goes into cover, leaving you dead in slow motion. I wished you could just kill anyone to regain your footing and not the guy who did you in.
The cover system I found to be an unnecessary addition to the series, as it seemed to encourage you to turtle instead of be aggressive. Of course in the first two games you would end up behind boxes or a wall in a pinch, but I hardly felt like that would ever save you.
The story in Max Payne 3 is what you would expect for a series that was over. Max gets dragged into a bodyguard business for a rich man and his family, and shit goes really, really bad. The game takes place mostly in Brazil, with some flashback levels in New York, but for the most part a lot (maybe half) of the dialogue is in complete, untranslated Portuguese. I actually like this decision, because it makes you feel like you have no idea whats going on, fitting in with Max. However I'm also torn because I always felt like I was missing some jokey henchman banter.
The series trademark is Max's incredible never ending list of similes and metaphors. This is of course in Max Payne 3, and I liked a lot of the lines, but it somehow didn't feel like it matched the style of the first game (you can say that for a lot of Max Payne 3).
About Max's characterization, I feel as if he went from "down on his luck" to just straight bitching all the time. But maybe the years of alcohol and painkillers addiction made him like that. Not something I hated, but it was another thing that made me think it was different from the other two. I was also kind of waiting for a dream sequence the whole time, and unless you count the New York parts as that then there wasn't one.
Another series trademark is the comic book style cutscenes, and instead they replaced that with in game cutscenes with a ton of visual effects and bolded words popping out at you. I didn't mind it too much, but there were a few times when I thought they were going way overboard with the drunko vision.
Overall I would say Max Payne 3 is a hard game to categorize. It feels like it's wearing the skin of the previous two, but underneath that is just Rockstar. I certainly feel that it's a genuine Max Payne game, but that it's missing some credentials. I'm having difficulties putting my thoughts to words here.
I don't care about the multiplayer and I probably never will.
One thing I have to mention is the final level was great. Or at least the section with this was.
Would I like to see this series continue? Yes and No.
Yes, I would like to see a spiritual successor very much (Quantum Break maybe?) that builds upon the style and gameplay of the three games.
No, I don't want to see Max again. Let him rest, he's done.
