Max Payne 3 has looked like a controversial game ever since the announcement. From the start, it had people who refused to believe in a game with Max without NYC and Remedy. It was clear that this franchise, that originally taught early 00s gamers the word “noir” (without explaining what it meant), was to become something else entirely. But change is never just bad or just good.
What’s important, is that the game still feels like Max Payne. It’s in a different setting, it’s a completely different approach to weapons, it has a cover system, but it’s still Max Payne. Especially, if you’re not like me and start playing on Normal, not on the highest difficulty which promises to be like the old games (and in reality is nothing like it). Rockstar Games have forgotten what works as good shooter design, as did most developers lately, but they’re trying their best and it shows. It’s weird that Max Payne 3, with its constant movement during shootouts is an oddity on the market flooded by games where you’re always locked in a small arena.
What happens between the shootouts is unfortunate, however, as the game is more happy to play itself than let you play it. The levels are minefields full of hidden triggers that will unexpectedly turn a cutscene on and put you in a new location with no way to backtrack at all. It’s really silly that all of the collectibles in this game are hard to get not because they’re well hidden, but because you’re constantly at risk of accidentally triggering progress when you’re trying to explore. It’s such an annoying thing that became more and more common in recent years, but in this game it makes it feel almost like an on-rails shooter. Additionally, Rockstar were either very proud of their cutscenes, or just didn’t optimize their loading well enough, but even with a powerful PC and an SSD, you cannot skip any cutscene at the moment. Maybe it’ll be fixed in the future, but right now replaying levels means sitting through really long cutscenes and even if they’re well made, it’s just not fun to do when the game forces them on you.
The cutscenes are really good, though. As is voice acting and the storytelling. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s simply well made and stylish. Listening to Max’ inner monologues is as enjoyable as ever, the “moving comic book” cutscenes are really awesome and I’ve not seen this done before, all of the post-effects are great. I mean, maybe some will actually hate those – I remember people getting sick while playing Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, while I loved it. So it might be a personal preferences.
But since I’m mentioning Kane & Lynch… While I did say that this game feels like Max Payne, I couldn’t help but constantly feel that with just a few tweaks and changes this would’ve been a fantastic entry in the Kane & Lynch series. Even music-wise, the fantastic soundtrack from the noise rock band HEALTH in this game reminded me of the very noisy experiments with sounds in the first K&L game scored by Jasper Kyd. It’s kinda weird, that seemingly accidentally, Max Payne managed to mix in itself the elements from two very different series.
I’d love to see how this game will change the public perception about what a third person shooter can be due to its popularity (at least I hope it’s popular enough) – just like the original title influenced the games back in the day. It’d be great to see other games bring back some of the best elements from the older shooter design and mix it with some awesome modern day details and mechanics. Though the on-rails nature of the game is a terrible example and I hope no one follows up on that, not in this genre at least. Oh and also I’d love to see ragdolls continuing looking cool, but with less macarena dancing. And the “last stand” concept was clearly not a substitute for the good old quicksaving, which should be a thing again. But hey, Max is back, changed and somewhat evolved. So, we’ll see where he goes next.