the gunplay is rather immaculate though and definitely captures a certain feel more reminiscent of movies like 'way of the gun' rather than the john woo styled gunfights of mp1/2- both are good, but drastically different.
MP3 is much more of a John Woo (HK era) shooter than the previous games. Watch any Woo action flick and you'll see the protagonists diving into scenery or tumbling all over the place just to avoid getting shot. Emphasis is placed on the keeping the sense of danger intact. Woo's protagonists are almost never safe during a shootout; they show fear, they take cover, they're constantly alert. Anything badass they do is done out of desperation to avoid getting shot, or in order to kill an enemy.
MP2, Stranglehold and WET are more about being out in the open and looking cool while shooting with little moment-to-moment fear of getting killed, either because of ridiculously long health bars (Stranglehold, WET) or an abundance of easily acquired bullet time (MP2, Stranglehold). Stranglehold gives you power moves that make you invincible, letting you stand straight up in the open and easily kill enemies. MP2's bullet time regenerates on its own and lets you glide through levels faster the more headshots you get. WET has a slide-anywhere move, gymnast-type environment interaction and a melee weapon. All this is in effort to spice up the core combat; you're not
A lot of shots in Woo's movies focus on (relatively) subtle actions by the protagonists — in Hard Boiled, there's a scene in the hospital where tequila rounds a corner, sees a guy about to take a shot at him, and he then dives out of the way of the shot into the wall. He bounces off and during the rebound, shoots the guy before landing on the floor himself. Something like this would never be notable in MP2, SH, WET or most other TPSs of this type because you're busy moving three times as fast as everyone else because of MP2's bullet time or you're doing an uneven bars routine in WET.
These games feel more like parodies of John Woo movies (especially Stranglehold, sadly enough, where you're dodging bullets while standing in one place like an Agent from the Matrix) than legitimate John Woo-style shooters. Stranglehold is like The Replacement Killers (and that "tequila bomb" move was actually used in the final shootout of that movie), so we can say it's an Antoine Fuqua-flick game considering how it plays.
MP3 captures the physicality of Woo action films far more appropriately than any other TPS because it
plays like a Woo movie. Tonally, the game might seem more like Man on Fire or Way of the Gun as far as story/setting goes, but the parts that matter most are straight out of Hard Boiled or The Killer (maybe a bit messier than those, like A Better Tomorrow). The scene where Mark Gor steals evidence from the counterfeit operation in A Better Tomorrow, he tumbles over garbage bins during his escape and falls. The messiness illustrates the desperation (Mark's still got a bum leg, he's in the enemy's lair) and the scene is all the more intense because of it.
Max Payne 2 lets the player avoid repercussions for movement decisions/diving (with its goofy, hip-swishing run animation for Max); you slide off the scenery and flip upright in an instant. Diving straight into a wall would make you bounce back in a John Woo movie (like I mentioned what happens in Hard Boiled), yet here, diving has little risk to it, only reward. There's more focus on looking cool than having exciting back and forth where the player can feel like the odds are against them. Even though the design is a bit dated, I credit the first Max Payne for providing intense, albeit janky, grenade throwing moments that had you desperately trying to figure out where the grenade was exactly, then dive anywhere just to avoid getting blown up.
The first two Max Payne titles' gameplay gets called John Woo-ish — just because it involves a guy dual wielding in slow motion — to the point it's just widely accepted as fact, a given. They're more like the Matrix (which itself emulated John Woo, a bit) in which their protagonists are generally perfect at what they're doing; only in special circumstances are you worried about their survival. Whether it's the type of action you like or it's a type you hate, MP3 is the closest we have to John Woo gameplay, even closer than the "John Woo presents" video game. There are glaring was with the game overall, but the core shooting gameplay is spot on for what it attempts to be.
