Max Payne 3 (2012)

I like Max Payne 3. It has an excellent Single Player Campaign and story, solid gunplay and all the stuff that made the previous two games great.

In Max Payne 3, Max is a hired gun/security for a rich family that he needs to protect. After an assault of unknown paramilitaries, all goes downhill from there. Max needs to save the kidnapped members of the family, while uncovering a whole, grim operation that is behind the kidnappings. You blast your way through Brazil, wiping out half of the Brazilian Population, true Michael Bay style. Betrayal and plot twists are the second nature of this game and every time Max figured it out, the opposite appeared to be true.

Max Payne 3 still has story comic panels that made the first games great. It is presented in the same L.A. Noire style, although now in full 3D graphics.

Talking about graphics, this game looks amazing. The details are stunning, and the facial animations and emotions are a work of art. Sure, there is some clipping here and there, but overall, it is fantastic. The only problem is that this game does not seem to work very well with large wide monitors. Cutscenes and the menus are all cropped inside a little rectangular box in the center of my screen, leaving 70 percent in black borders. Not only am I watching the story unfold in a tiny stamp that is my screen, but it also locks the mouse there, making me unable to check my grinds in the menu for example, because my mouse “cannot reach”.

The sound is also amazing. The gunfire, explosions, voice overs, they are all perfect. There are not many games that I played that feature this quality of sound and music. Excellent job.

There are some issues with Max Payne 3 though. Like I mentioned, the cropped menus and cutscenes are kind of a bummer. Then you have the glitch that you are stuck in place and need to reload the checkpoint. Lastly, a special note must be made about the handling of Two-handed weapons. You pick up an assault rifle and the game go in a cutscene. Now you are holding a pistol. You want to switch back to the rifle, but the game registers that you are still holding it, so when selected, you drop the damn thing and need to pick it up again. This cost me many bullets in the face. Maybe it is just my donkey @ss, but I have not found a way to switch properly.

Then you have the slow-motion events in which you need to take out enemies before they kill an NPC or make you fail the mission. You shoot them all in the head and still fail the mission. Turns out, you must move or else the NPC gets killed by invisible enemies. Just great…

Another thing that needs to be addressed, is the added “haze” effect. In the story cutscenes, while popping pills or when you are getting close to your destination, a red and blue haze always slams the screen and your vision. Although this is part of the story telling charm, I figure this can be a serious hazard for people with Epilepsy.

Finally, a last note must be made about the bad compatibility with the Steam version. At first, the game refuses to launch. It turns out you MUST use the Rockstar Launcher, or else it won’t work. Even then, the game does not start. Turns out that you need to find the executable in the game folder and start it as administrator in order to launch.

The multiplayer felt a bit blunt, but that is mainly because I suck at it. I was just done after being blasted away five times in a row by a sawed-off shotgun in the face. The fact that this game is still played in Multiplayer, is impressive, however.

The best part of this game is by far the story. It is interesting, addictive and always makes me wonder what would happen next. The constant self-reflection of Max, being a wreck and his cynical look at the world felt very powerful throughout the game.

I would definitely recommend Max Payne 3.

This game was awesome!! The slow-mo dives never got old. And the narration was really nice.