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RTTP: Max Payne 3

Fantastic game, gunplay is still the best in a TPS in my opinion. It was a missed oportunity not to include Mona Sax though.

I think it was a good call to not include Mona, because her absence is what pushes Max further into his downward spiral. It wouldn't be the same story if she were there.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
I actually really enjoyed the story. My only complaint is all the jumping back and forth kept the plot from moving forward. If they had gone more straightforward, telling everything in sequence, it might have been a more memorable ride.

I thought the shootouts were cool but I wouldn't put the gunplay up there with the FEARs and Killzones. They played it kinda by the numbers in terms of encounters and level design and it just didn't blow me away like it did for some people.
 

Burt

Member
Actually reinstalled this the other day after watching some Uncharted Collection stuff and getting the itch for something with some real gunplay. Still plays great, but going through this time with zero care for the story and trying to skip through as many cutscenes as possible, it becomes painfully apparent how short and closed off the shooting segments are, at least in the early part of the game. It feels like you can't work through more than 2-3 rooms without getting stopped for 30+ seconds of unskippable cutscene. Gets a bit tiresome when you just want to pop in and do some shooting.

And the game lies to you about loading to force you to watch entire cutscenes. Hate that.
 

Krappadizzle

Gold Member
Best TPS so far made. Terrible throwaway story. Good production values all around. Looks and play incredibly on PC. I wish they would have essentially taken the shooting from this and put it in GTAV. Hopefully not the last we see of Max. Of the trilogy it's easily the worst story and best playing. The franchise needs that Sam Lake writing. Or someone close.
 
Just started this. Was part of my backlog.

What a piece of crap it is. One of the most pointless and drab third person shooters around. The gameplay is embarassing. It's a hot mess in terms of maneuverability and suffers from an enormous amount of jank. It feels like playing a corridor shooter version of GTA 4.5.

The enemies pop out of nowhere. The story is poor. The cutscenes make absolutely no sense with those flashing lights and popping words. Everything feels artificial.

But again, the controls are so sluggish and cumbersome. Were reviewers hit by massive delusion for it to average 8.6 out of reviews or was it waddles of ad money?

There's no accounting for bad taste.
Yours.
 

SomTervo

Member
How's the modding scene on Max Payne 3 on the PC?

Just started this. Was part of my backlog.

What a piece of crap it is. One of the most pointless and drab third person shooters around. The gameplay is embarassing. It's a hot mess in terms of maneuverability and suffers from an enormous amount of jank. It feels like playing a corridor shooter version of GTA 4.5.

The enemies pop out of nowhere. The story is poor. The cutscenes make absolutely no sense with those flashing lights and popping words. Everything feels artificial.

But again, the controls are so sluggish and cumbersome. Were reviewers hit by massive delusion for it to average 8.6 out of reviews or was it waddles of ad money?

The controls are perfect - it's the animation system which makes it feel heavy and "cumbersome".

But that's the nature of playing an overweight middle-aged man.

I don't enjoy Max Payne 3 at all, though, even though Max Payne 2 is near the top of my GOAT list. Max Payne 3 and MGS4 are the two games which blew their own legs off by placing cutscenes at the end of every single room/area. It's just abysmal videogame pacing. The actual gunplay is so fucking good.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
I actually really enjoyed this. Never played any of the previous games and only really bought it because it was all I seen while waiting for news on GTA V.
 
Fantastic game, gunplay is still the best in a TPS in my opinion. It was a missed oportunity not to include Mona Sax though.
She's in the game
as a gravestone

With a 980 ti I can now play the game at 4K, 120 FPS. Game is a real show case for high framerates, and it's making my ninth playthrough of the game feel new again!
 
Really hope this gets out on the Xbox one back catalog . Loved it from start to finish and loved a lot of its old school design. Chasing med pills etc . Was a really hard game too which I loved , no aim assist etc
 

cabot

Member
Really good base game that was hampered by Rockstar design decisions. The production was incredible though, from the slick animation to the amazing soundtrack.

Also agree that while it was an overall admirable effort, they failed to capture the tone and quality of MP1/MP2's writing.

No one thought the first two games had superb stories. It was the world, the zanyness and the characters that people loved.

Oh and Dick Justice.
 
Really good base game that was hampered by Rockstar design decisions. The production was incredible though, from the slick animation to the amazing soundtrack.

Also agree that while it was an overall admirable effort, they failed to capture the tone and quality of MP1/MP2's writing.

No one thought the first two games had superb stories. It was the world, the zanyness and the characters that people loved.

Oh and Dick Justice.

Great game and great gameplay but barely a Max Payne game. The writing/feel is nothing compared to the previous two.

It's a good thing that they failed to capture the tone of MP1/MP2's writing, because that's not what they were aiming for at all.

MP3 is not a zany and playful Remedy production. It is a dark and gritty Rockstar production. They were never trying to emulate the previous games, and I would have been very disappointed in them if they tried to.
 
The game's gunplay is superb, but it honestly feels like Rockstar designed the game to give you as little uninterrupted control as possible. I can't think of any other game, apart from maybe David Cage style things, that take control away from the player as often as Max Payne 3 does. Cutscenes all the time. I normally have a perfectly fine sense of direction, but I actually found myself almost getting lost in this game because you're just never given the opportunity to explore a level by yourself; the game doesn't trust you to walk from one side of a room to another. Walk up to a door and the game takes over, and when it reluctantly returns control to you you're facing a different direction.

There's a sniping section in the middle where you're locked into the rifle's scope for the entire duration, and the game actually moves it around for you. It shows you the dudes it wants you to shoot, then lets you shoot them, then as soon as you've killed the last guy it takes control again. There's no visual indicator of when you're allowed to play the video game, you just have to sit there wiggling the mouse until it has an effect. Terrible.

All the cutscenes are unskippable, too. They say "Loading" when you try and skip them, but when you have the game installed on an SSD and you're waiting several minutes it's hard to think anything but Rockstar just wanted you to watch the latest round of their trademark Oscar-worthy storytelling where a gruff straight man encounters a procession of over-the-top side characters that he doesn't play off at all. The fact that you can load a checkpoint from the chapter select menu and not have to wait through a cutscene-length load time pretty much proves it; they're just straight up unskippable cutscenes.
 
Love this game. It's only real flaw for me is that you can't really skip the cutscenes. I was playing Metal Gear Online last week and its mediocrity caused me to wonder if anyone was still playing MP3's multi, which I thought was great.
 
It's a good thing that they failed to capture the tone of MP1/MP2's writing, because that's not what they were aiming for at all.

MP3 is not a zany and playful Remedy production. It is a dark and gritty Rockstar production. They were never trying to emulate the previous games, and I would have been very disappointed in them if they tried to.

Hence why I said it's barely a Max Payne game. Fans of Max Payne expected a continuation of Max Payne.

Instead we got Man on Fire, which is fine, but it's not Max Payne. Since this is a sequel to ya know...Max Payne 1 and 2.
 

Sh1ner

Member
Just started this. Was part of my backlog.
What a piece of crap it is. One of the most pointless and drab third person shooters around. The gameplay is embarassing. It's a hot mess in terms of maneuverability and suffers from an enormous amount of jank. It feels like playing a corridor shooter version of GTA 4.5.

The enemies pop out of nowhere. The story is poor. The cutscenes make absolutely no sense with those flashing lights and popping words. Everything feels artificial.

But again, the controls are so sluggish and cumbersome. Were reviewers hit by massive delusion for it to average 8.6 out of reviews or was it waddles of ad money?


Agreed, Euphoria in Max Payne 3 was good on Max in only some of the instances such as sliding down stairs in the Stadium or the bit between the escalators instead of walking down them. Shootouts in the office was a huge issue such as when dive to the side would fail as you slightly clipped a pole. Stunning you temporally as Euphoria got its shit together to put Max in a position to able to stand up from. The enemies however don't wait for Max to get his shit together which normally means Dying. Sometimes this can happen when trying to jump through windows too as Max doesn't have enough force to smash through so you bounce off and then get shot to pieces.

Euphoria on enemies is a mixed bag. Sometimes its great such as when enemies fall down stairs and get back up to shoot you in the back. Other times they look ridiculous or get stuck on terrain.

Other issues around gameplay is the numerous forced shootouts after cutscenes meaning strategy for engagements was replaced with on the fly tactics. MP1 and 2 was a much more even combination of both.

I hated MP3, the story was atrocious, I couldn't believe the script was considered "worthy" of a game. Lets make a character jaded and narcissistic as an evolution of his character who drinks all the time to make himself feel better and talks about how the entire world is fake.

Max from MP1/2 was humorous and loved dark comedy. He never really complained when the world repeatedly fucked him. He was philosophical when he spoke about his misery and his current situation with some amazing lines. All that got thrown out of the window for "gritty" and what Rockstar thinks is good dialogue.

I really enjoyed MP1, MP2 for me came out of nowhere and blew my socks off with rich characterization and great pacing. It is one of my favorite games even if it feels old by today's standards in some areas but far ahead in the areas I previously mentioned. MP3 failed to deliver on every front except on enemies body responses to gunshots and explosions.

Edit: cleaned up my post a bit.
 

laxu

Member
The game's gunplay is superb, but it honestly feels like Rockstar designed the game to give you as little uninterrupted control as possible. I can't think of any other game, apart from maybe David Cage style things, that take control away from the player as often as Max Payne 3 does. Cutscenes all the time. I normally have a perfectly fine sense of direction, but I actually found myself almost getting lost in this game because you're just never given the opportunity to explore a level by yourself; the game doesn't trust you to walk from one side of a room to another. Walk up to a door and the game takes over, and when it reluctantly returns control to you you're facing a different direction.

There's a sniping section in the middle where you're locked into the rifle's scope for the entire duration, and the game actually moves it around for you. It shows you the dudes it wants you to shoot, then lets you shoot them, then as soon as you've killed the last guy it takes control again. There's no visual indicator of when you're allowed to play the video game, you just have to sit there wiggling the mouse until it has an effect. Terrible.

All the cutscenes are unskippable, too. They say "Loading" when you try and skip them, but when you have the game installed on an SSD and you're waiting several minutes it's hard to think anything but Rockstar just wanted you to watch the latest round of their trademark Oscar-worthy storytelling where a gruff straight man encounters a procession of over-the-top side characters that he doesn't play off at all. The fact that you can load a checkpoint from the chapter select menu and not have to wait through a cutscene-length load time pretty much proves it; they're just straight up unskippable cutscenes.

I agree with everything you said. Really soured me on it as the little you get to play the game was actually fun. Completely kills any replay value the game had. Game developers that want to make movies are the worst.

I really hope that they would incorporate some of the ability to dive into the next GTA. That series really could use better control over the characters.
 
Hence why I said it's barely a Max Payne game. Fans of Max Payne expected a continuation of Max Payne.

Instead we got Man on Fire, which is fine, but it's not Max Payne. Since this is a sequel to ya know...Max Payne 1 and 2.

I'm a hardcore fan of Max Payne 1 & 2, and the third entry was a delight. It's a perfect continuation for the shattered existence we left Max in after the second game, IMO. Hell, the second game is even called "The Fall of Max Payne".

Max's wife and child are brutally murdered, and he just lost Mona Sax. Those events combined with years of pill popping and drinking leaves him in the state we find him in in the third game. He's broken, rundown, in a drugged up and drunken stupor, trying to stay relevant while the rest of the world passes him by.

Max just isn't the same person anymore as he was in the first two games. We are witnessing his decline and downward spiral firsthand.

Personally, I think it is a worthy sequel, and I hope Rockstar makes another in the same fashion.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
Hence why I said it's barely a Max Payne game. Fans of Max Payne expected a continuation of Max Payne.

Instead we got Man on Fire, which is fine, but it's not Max Payne. Since this is a sequel to ya know...Max Payne 1 and 2.

It's a revisionist take on Max Payne. For me, a humble but long term fan of the franchise that thinks Max Payne 2 is one of the Top 3 games ever made, it works brilliantly. It is neo-noir from top to bottom. In fact, I'd argue it hits the classic noir beats way more successfully than Max Payne 1, even with the mile wide plotholes. Coupled with possibly the finest implementation of TPS, I think it is the best possible non-Remedy sequel we could've hoped for.

If the Houser's had tried to match Lake's lynchian gothicism instead of doing their own thing, it would've been a colossal failure.

Now, where's my Mona Sax game, Rockstar?!
 

xevis

Banned
You do know that you're not playing the whole game as bald Max, right? I thought people realized that years ago.

The baldness is just a symptom for larger scale changes to the game I don't really like. I'm watching a Let's Play right now and while I'm finding it difficult to nail down exactly what is wrong I can say the game "feels off" to me. Here's a few things that spring to mind:

- Stylistically, the game is off. The old games were conspiracy-driven drug-fueled detective noir. This new chapter is straight-up generic action.

- The pacing is off. The old games were slow boils occasionally laced with dark humor. This new chapter plays everything straight-faced and it ratchets up the drama very quickly and to ridiculous extremes. I've been watching for about 30 minutes and Max is already having gun-fights while hanging off a helicopter.

- The writing is off. The most prominent thing wrong here is the narration. In the old games narration worked because Max was a loner and because the story was sparse and mostly delivered by way of comic panels. In this new chapter there is a large cast and a heap more story. Max is seldom alone and I feel his constant soliloquies don't mesh well with the constant dialogue. Max himself also seems out of character. I'm having trouble nailing this one down. The things I notice most prominently is that he's less introspective and more profane.

- The action is off. The 3rd person bullet-time shooting mechanics are here but the direction is all wrong. The game is violent, and while the old ones were definitely that, this new chapter is stylised and showy. It revels in the kills and blood splatter.


Hopefully I'm getting my point across. Max Payne 3 feels, to me, like showing up to see your favorite act and getting a cover band instead. They're playing all the right songs and they're mostly hitting the right notes but all of it is not quite right.
 

glow

Banned
Really hope this gets out on the Xbox one back catalog . Loved it from start to finish and loved a lot of its old school design. Chasing med pills etc . Was a really hard game too which I loved , no aim assist etc

I'm not sure if I turned it on in the options menu or if the game recognized I was playing with a controller rather than KB/M but this game had crazy accurate aim assist for me. Like, if I turned the camera in the direction of an enemy from behind cover, I'd pop out and without much in the way of aiming get a headshot or close to it. I'd say there was stronger aim assist in this than in most shooters I've ever played.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
- Stylistically, the game is off. The old games were conspiracy-driven drug-fueled detective noir. This new chapter is straight-up generic action.

It definitely goes for a different brand of noir than the rest of the series, but it is definitely noir. MP1 is more Blood Opera with hints of Chandler, MP2 is pretty much straight up classic Noir, and MP3 is very much a Neo-Noir. It hits more of the genre's beats than MP1, which has only the most cursory of nods.

The central plot does revolve around
a political
conspiracy. Granted, it's a more - for want of a better term - "grounded" conspiracy than the first's turn of the century, X-files babble and the seconds undermining of that, but I guess that comes with the revisionist approach. At the very least, it's a conspiracy that wouldn't be out of place in a proper Film Noir.

Let's also not forget that both the previous Max Payne games take as many cues from action cinema, particularly John Woo, as they do Noir. You spend 90%+ of your time murdering thousands of mooks. Don't recall that happening in Double Indemnity. :D

- The pacing is off. The old games were slow boils occasionally laced with dark humor. This new chapter plays everything straight-faced and it ratchets up the drama very quickly and to ridiculous extremes. I've been watching for about 30 minutes and Max is already having gun-fights while hanging off a helicopter.

Yeah, the arch writing has taken a backseat and most of the humour comes from Max's narration. As I've said elsewhere, the Houser's could never match Lake's unique, Lynchian stylings, so I'm glad they took the revisionist route that they did.

However, I think the pacing works fine and is actually a little toned down, at least in comparison to MP1. Let's compare!

By the end of the second level of Max Payne 1 - roughly equivalent to where MP3's helicopter scene is - you've shot up a subway full of mooks, used a train to smash through a wall, blown a vault door apart, foiled a bank robbery, watched your partner die, shot up a ghetto, dodged bombs left by a Russian gangster during a turf war, and chased a Leon-inspired expy across a city, including jumping on and off a train to chase him.

- The writing is off. The most prominent thing wrong here is the narration. In the old games narration worked because Max was a loner and because the story was sparse and mostly delivered by way of comic panels. In this new chapter there is a large cast and a heap more story. Max is seldom alone and I feel his constant soliloquies don't mesh well with the constant dialogue. Max himself also seems out of character. I'm having trouble nailing this one down. The things I notice most prominently is that he's less introspective and more profane.

I don't think the previous games' narration hinged on the fact Max was alone, especially considering he was partnered up with Mona for a significant portion of MP2. In every game Max is telling us his story after the fact and, even back then, his narration peppered any and all dialogue. The narration is a clear nod to a noir staple and a Max Payne without it is tough to imagine. There is certainly less purple prose in MP3 and some cracking lines, but on the whole it doesn't quite capture Lake's take.

Max is definitely different, but he is between each of the games, not just in physical appearance. MP1 Max is a cool, one-liner spewing, straight up avenging angel, action hero. Fun as he is, he's essentially a cartoon character and has very little depth. MP2 takes the character quite a bit more seriously, fleshes him out into a genuinely troubled arsehole. The Max of MP3 is a wreck who suffers from PTSD from murdering thousands of gangsters and who goes out of his way to try and ignore it. It's like the Houser's took both the previous games and asked themselves "What would a guy who has been through all this actually be like?" I think they were pretty successful.

- The action is off. The 3rd person bullet-time shooting mechanics are here but the direction is all wrong. The game is violent, and while the old ones were definitely that, this new chapter is stylised and showy. It revels in the kills and blood splatter.

I don't get this at all. Max Payne, as a series and in terms of gameplay, is all about stylishly dispatching mooks and revelling in the kills. They have had kill cams in every game that show you a sniper bullet going through an enemy's head or mooks riddled with your bullets and screaming as they die. During the latter, you can even keep shooting to "juggle" the bodies in place in slow motion. The gameplay has always allowed us to choreograph a one to one recreation of John Woo's Blood Opera films, the epitome of stylish murder cinema.

Don't get me wrong, MP3 isn't a patch on MP2, but a lot of your concerns here seem to come from nostalgia rather than any concrete criticism, if you catch my drift.
 

xevis

Banned
^^ Terrific post! I'll try to respond to a few points.

I don't think the previous games' narration hinged on the fact Max was alone, especially considering he was partnered up with Mona for a significant portion of MP2. In every game Max is telling us his story after the fact and, even back then, his narration peppered any and all dialogue. The narration is a clear nod to a noir staple and a Max Payne without it is tough to imagine. There is certainly less purple prose in MP3 and some cracking lines, but on the whole it doesn't quite capture Lake's take.

I agree the narration is trademark Payne but I felt the script was too... busy...? for that sort of story-telling device to work well. MP1 and MP2 are tense and often sombre affairs. The narration only adds to the atmosphere. MP3 by comparison is showy and loud and busy and profane and all the impact of that terrific voiceover work seems lost.

The Max of MP3 is a wreck who suffers from PTSD from murdering thousands of gangsters and who goes out of his way to try and ignore it. It's like the Houser's took both the previous games and asked themselves "What would a guy who has been through all this actually be like?" I think they were pretty successful.

These are good points and could well be true but even if read as intended I feel there's no depth to this characterisation of Max. He doesn't come across as troubled or haunted by what he's done and there's no attempt to develop this angle. He's presented as a self-hating alcoholic fixated on his dead wife and that's it. No personal arc, no growth nothing. Even this shtick doesn't really work because, despite his boozing, he's still apparently fit as a fiddle and a crack shot no matter the situation.


I don't get this at all. Max Payne, as a series and in terms of gameplay, is all about stylishly dispatching mooks and revelling in the kills. They have had kill cams in every game that show you a sniper bullet going through an enemy's head or mooks riddled with your bullets and screaming as they die.

The difference is in the presentation. The old Max Payne presented these end-of-fight cutscenes as stylish John Woo action sequences; the climax to a cool gun ballet. MP3 focuses much more prominently on the gore and blood splatter. Watching these scenes in MP3 I am reminded less of The Matrix and more of 300. It's seriously gory stuff. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaFsCjobFKQ
 

Roni

Gold Member
I have a lot of things to say about this game... But I'll just put it like this: It was a decent TPS but a mediocre Max Payne entry.

This seems to be the go-to statement for when a new entry in a series disappoints an old, hardcore fan.
 
I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was more difficult than I expected. I usually don't have trouble with such games on even their hardest difficulties, but this one was tough.

I beat it, and gave it a really high score. Looking back, maybe a bit too high, but it was quite good and had a really fun multiplayer mode -- even if it wasn't superb quality.
 

TheDanger

Banned
Max Payne 3 is the greatest third person shooter ever made, if I could skip the cutscenes I would probably play it every few months. I was hoping there would be a mod for it on PC sometime, but nope.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
^^ Terrific post! I'll try to respond to a few points.

I agree the narration is trademark Payne but I felt the script was too... busy...? for that sort of story-telling device to work well. MP1 and MP2 are tense and often sombre affairs. The narration only adds to the atmosphere. MP3 by comparison is showy and loud and busy and profane and all the impact of that terrific voiceover work seems lost.

Thank you! Nice to get to discuss one of my all-time favourite series so amicability and with someone so thoughtful. :)

I sort of see where you're coming from, but I'd argue Lake's work is very showy too, though perhaps not in quite the same way. He's a very dense writer and takes the Chandlerisms to a ludicrous, parodic degree (which is very much the point with MP1). I feel like the Houser's had more of a handle on a kind of grounded version of Chandler’s 'educated working class' characters (the kind that Marlowe embodied). There are some absolutely cracking lines in MP3. I'd go so far as to say some of the best in the series.

My main issue with the VO is that there is a reliance on Max describing what was going on outside over what was going on inside him (barring 2-3 chapters, particularly Chapter 11 which has some pretty cool insights that obliquely refer back to the previous games, both in the VO and visually). On the other hand, we are shown a lot of his pain rather than have it described to us and I think that ties in nicely with his penchant for ignoring/drowning his problems.

These are good points and could well be true but even if read as intended I feel there's no depth to this characterisation of Max. He doesn't come across as troubled or haunted by what he's done and there's no attempt to develop this angle. He's presented as a self-hating alcoholic fixated on his dead wife and that's it. No personal arc, no growth nothing. Even this shtick doesn't really work because, despite his boozing, he's still apparently fit as a fiddle and a crack shot no matter the situation.

Let me take that last point first: Max Payne can be beaten into a near coma by one of the Mafia’s foremost experts on beating people into near comas, shot to shit by 101 mooks and killer suits, get shot directly in the noggin' and fall down a 50+ foot pit, and still wake up fresh as a daisy, never missing a step. He’s a near invincible killing machine. These situations all occur in MP1 and MP2. So why is it a problem in MP3...?

There is a certain amount of his age and frailty transferred to the gameplay, although I think any more than what we had could've impeded on our enjoyment of the game itself (cardinal sin!). MP3 is the first one that gives Max's movement physicality and weight. I feel like I'm controlling a 40-50 year old fat man, even when I’m diving through the air! I felt it every time he cracked into a wall from a mistimed shoot-dodge. I felt every step as he slid backwards down the stairs. It's a pretty amazing achievement.

With regards to his character arc, he definitely grows and it's much in the same way (if not more satisfactorily) as he does in previous iterations. I think, even though MP2 is like my Top 3 favourite game, Max in MP3 is the closest to being a genuine human as he's ever been.

As the story progresses, he learns and comes to terms with exactly the kind of man he is (a fat bald dude with a bad temper :D). The opening monologue is a great summation of that personal discovery. He progresses from a constant victim of circumstance to a man taking action and responsibility. I think the some of the most interesting conflict in characters is how they view themselves versus how everyone else sees them. We get that here in (Sam) spades, along with a genuine resolution. Hell, that dichotomy between his and other's view of him is taken as a major plot point and feeds very nicely into the 'American Imperialism' subtext*.

*I say subtext but it's pretty blatant and not handled all that well in places.

The difference is in the presentation. The old Max Payne presented these end-of-fight cutscenes as stylish John Woo action sequences; the climax to a cool gun ballet. MP3 focuses much more prominently on the gore and blood splatter. Watching these scenes in MP3 I am reminded less of The Matrix and more of 300. It's seriously gory stuff. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaFsCjobFKQ

But the series reference point isn’t so much The Matrix, it’s John Woo i.e. Hard Boiled, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow Part 2 etc. which uses blood, gore and horrible deaths as part of its visual tapestry. Blood is part of Heroic Bloodshed films' visual texture, the contortions of fresh corpses are part of the dance. The genre is all about those kinds of morbid details. It's glorious!

As an aside, that is not to say The Matrix isn't referenced in the series, it's just the original game was being made at the same time as the film was, so it wasn't as direct an influence as John Woo was. It's telling that the majority of the Matrix references come in Max Payne 1's late game.
 

xevis

Banned
^^ Nice post, again! OK, let me dig in and try to respond to the most salient bits.

My main issue with the VO is that there is a reliance on Max describing what was going on outside over what was going on inside him

I got this as well. The interesting analysis and introspection stuff from the older games is mostly gone in MP3. When it does show up it's in the form of one-dimensional self-hate stuff. Things like (paraphrasing) "I failed again", "I need to drink again", "I'm such a loser" etc. Man, I miss Sam Lake :(


Let me take that last point first: Max Payne can be beaten into a near coma by one of the Mafia’s foremost experts on beating people into near comas, shot to shit by 101 mooks and killer suits, get shot directly in the noggin' and fall down a 50+ foot pit, and still wake up fresh as a daisy, never missing a step. He’s a near invincible killing machine. These situations all occur in MP1 and MP2. So why is it a problem in MP3...?

The difference, I feel, is the lack of internal consistency. Sure Max has always been an indestructible bullet sponge but previously he was always portrayed as hopped up on all kinds of interesting meds and it all made sense. In MP3 the painkillers are still there but now he's also drunk. And old. And probably unfit (he sure smokes a bunch!). But only in the cutscenes.

Ugh.

It bugs me, y'know?

MP3 is the first one that gives Max's movement physicality and weight. I feel like I'm controlling a 40-50 year old fat man, even when I’m diving through the air! I felt it every time he cracked into a wall from a mistimed shoot-dodge. I felt every step as he slid backwards down the stairs. It's a pretty amazing achievement.

Fair point. It's hard to get that from watching a video :)

He progresses from a constant victim of circumstance to a man taking action and responsibility.

Does he? He starts out a loner drunk in Brazil. He ends up a loner drinking in Mexico. He doesn't find any stability and there's no indication he's getting over his fixation with his dead wife. Also, it's pretty clear his self esteem is still rock bottom insofar as he still refers to himself as pathetic leading up to the final boss fight.

As an aside, I noticed at one point (iirc) the Max references Mona Sax along the lines of (paraphrasing) "she was a mistake". That one line effectively undoes all the progress he made in the previous game. Harrumph :-/

But the series reference point isn’t so much The Matrix, it’s John Woo i.e. Hard Boiled, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow Part 2 etc. which uses blood, gore and horrible deaths as part of its visual tapestry. Blood is part of Heroic Bloodshed films' visual texture, the contortions of fresh corpses are part of the dance. The genre is all about those kinds of morbid details. It's glorious!

I think these clips are entirely consistent with what I'm saying. They're violent but it's fun and action oriented. The camera stylises each kill; it slows down, pans and speeds back up to emphasise the impact of each shot and to highlight the fluidity and the grace of the shooter. It doesn't revel in the blood and guts. By comparison, in MP3 the camera lovingly pans around the body of a dying enemy, showing us the gaping hole in his head and the lavish amount of blood spraying out of the wound, all in oh-so-slow motion. I feel the game is fetishising the murder and that's unexpected and somewhat unsettling.
 

Raptomex

Member
The story is subjective of course. I liked it but I'm easy to please. The gameplay is by far the best in the series and that's all that really matters to me.
 

LordCiego

Member
Gameplay was nice bue writing was Rockstar level, they cant touch remedy level writing. And I hated the cutscenes with all that dramatic

Words
On
Screen.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
I got this as well. The interesting analysis and introspection stuff from the older games is mostly gone in MP3. When it does show up it's in the form of one-dimensional self-hate stuff. Things like (paraphrasing) "I failed again", "I need to drink again", "I'm such a loser" etc. Man, I miss Sam Lake :(

Yeah, definitely. The majority of the game is like that but there are moments, Chapter 13 (not 11!) particularly, where the Houser’s pull out some really good writing. I wrote a massive post about that Chapter on another site but can’t find it…

The difference, I feel, is the lack of internal consistency. Sure Max has always been an indestructible bullet sponge but previously he was always portrayed as hopped up on all kinds of interesting meds and it all made sense. In MP3 the painkillers are still there but now he's also drunk. And old. And probably unfit (he sure smokes a bunch!). But only in the cutscenes.

Ugh.

It bugs me, y'know?

The only thing you can tell about a broken down old man who does the type of work that Max does is that he’s a survivor. : )

I could be wrong, but I don’t think he was ever portrayed specifically as “hopped up on drugs”, it was something the community (rightly) inferred. There may have been a throwaway line in MP2 but I don’t recall it off-hand, it was more a game mechanic based around a clever pun. Max Payne 3 actually makes consistent and very direct references to his painkiller use as an addiction, which fits in with the revisionist take. Some of the excuses he makes about picking up the painkillers are classic.

Regardless, I don’t think it is all that inconsistent (or indeed really matters). He certainly has ‘Dad bod’ and there are more visual cutscene/gameplay references to his advancing age, but in terms of narrative the dude is still hopped up on painkillers and a complete monster when he loses his temper.

At the end of the day though, gameplay is king and story considerations that don’t improve the gameplay in some way or make it more interesting shouldn’t have an effect on it, in my opinion.


Also: Old badasses are the best badasses.

Does he? He starts out a loner drunk in Brazil. He ends up a loner drinking in Mexico. He doesn't find any stability and there's no indication he's getting over his fixation with his dead wife. Also, it's pretty clear his self esteem is still rock bottom insofar as he still refers to himself as pathetic leading up to the final boss fight.

Yeah, absolutely… but he’s never going to like himself and he is never going to get over the deaths of Michelle and Rose. Not ever. It may become easier for him to deal with, but he is the sort of person who will always fall back down that black hole. PTSD and addiction aren’t things you can simply kill your way out of.

The character growth in MP3 comes from the fact that he a) comes to realise exactly the kind of person he is, and b) he takes responsibility for his actions and tries to take control of the situation. It’s definitely there and pretty hard to miss.

As an aside, I noticed at one point (iirc) the Max references Mona Sax along the lines of (paraphrasing) "she was a mistake". That one line effectively undoes all the progress he made in the previous game. Harrumph :-/
The work in MP1 is undone by MP2 as the work in MP2 is undone by MP3. He gets a brief respite at the end of each game (including MP3), but he will always be hard on himself and he will always need 1000 dead mook therapy.

But yeah, that was bollocks. Mona Sax is my favourite video game character and I took personal offense at the way they dismissed her… till I got to play as her in the multiplayer. : )

I think these clips are entirely consistent with what I'm saying. They're violent but it's fun and action oriented. The camera stylises each kill; it slows down, pans and speeds back up to emphasise the impact of each shot and to highlight the fluidity and the grace of the shooter. It doesn't revel in the blood and guts. By comparison, in MP3 the camera lovingly pans around the body of a dying enemy, showing us the gaping hole in his head and the lavish amount of blood spraying out of the wound, all in oh-so-slow motion. I feel the game is fetishising the murder and that's unexpected and somewhat unsettling.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this. Mooks in John Woo are riddled with bullets in slow motion, heroes are drenched in their enemy’s blood, and civilians are shot indiscriminately by despicable killers…

I think Max Payne does exactly what you described in the bolded, it just happens to also show the damage you wrought (which is, barring where they come in, the only real difference between this and the older games’ kill-cams) I don’t see the emphasis being on the damage you inflict. You are certainly not rewarded in the game based on that, unless you consider the kill-cams a reward in and of themselves and even then I think that's a difficult argument to make either way. I don’t think it fetishizes death any more than a typical John Woo film either. There is a guy in the Teahouse scene on the staircase who gets positively riddled with bullets that reminds me of the MP3 Kill Cams.

This isn’t Sniper Elite where each shot is lovingly crafted gore porn where the damage is shown in the minutest detail, where you are rewarded based on how much devastation you can cause with a single piece of flying lead. The wounds and blood in MP3 are part of the visual tapestry, part of the ballet.

At least, I think so.
 

Bandit1

Member
Hey can I get in on this? :p

Yeah, definitely. The majority of the game is like that but there are moments, Chapter 13 (not 11!) particularly, where the Houser’s pull out some really good writing. I wrote a massive post about that Chapter on another site but can’t find it…

The writing is hit and miss to me, as far as the narration is concerned. (And the plot too) For one thing Max swears constantly in the narration of 3, which just hardly happens in the first two games, and it's quite jarring. He also throws out terms such as "fat gringo" and getting paid to "bang waitresses" when he and Passos worked their first security job, which is something I can't imagine Lake's Max saying, and in some ways Max feels like a different person entirely. I understand what you were saying about the revisionist take, and making the character more real, but it's almost like MP3 Max has different morals than MP1&2 Max.

That being said, there is some good writing here and there, one line that stuck out to me as I advanced through the compound looking for Fabiana and killing goons, was Max's line: "I kept moving toward the signs of life, rubbing them out as I went along." - A fanstastic line in my opinion, it sounds like something Lake could have written.

There's some clever word play peppered here and there. During the office attack Max comments that the attackers must have figured that, "The Bronco security team consisted of more than a dame, a dork, and a drunk." (Nice alliteration) and a few moments later he states: "Rodrigo's office overlooked the atrium. I could check in and make sure he hadn't checked out." The word play reminded me of the line near the end of MP1 when he says he "Parked the stolen wheels, got out, got in, got cracking."


Yeah, absolutely… but he’s never going to like himself and he is never going to get over the deaths of Michelle and Rose. Not ever. It may become easier for him to deal with, but he is the sort of person who will always fall back down that black hole. PTSD and addiction aren’t things you can simply kill your way out of.

The character growth in MP3 comes from the fact that he a) comes to realise exactly the kind of person he is, and b) he takes responsibility for his actions and tries to take control of the situation. It’s definitely there and pretty hard to miss.


The work in MP1 is undone by MP2 as the work in MP2 is undone by MP3. He gets a brief respite at the end of each game (including MP3), but he will always be hard on himself and he will always need 1000 dead mook therapy.

I think you're spot on here, a man that has lost his wife and baby, and killed a couple thousand people would never be "normal" probably my favorite character arc in MP3 is where Max comes to grips with the fact that he can't save everyone, but he can kill all the bad guys. And through the last few levels of the game he goes head-on into the Imperial Palace Hotel, the precinct, and the airport with little purpose other than kill everyone, and get a few answers.


But yeah, that was bollocks. Mona Sax is my favourite video game character and I took personal offense at the way they dismissed her… till I got to play as her in the multiplayer. : )

I think when Max is at the cemetary he simply says, "I still hadn't forgiven myself for the Mona business, but I knew that was just grief." My theory on Max's internal conflict about Mona has to do with the scene in MP2 where he says, "The things I want by Max Payne." And he goes on to mention that he wants his wife and baby girl back, but - "Right then, more than anything, I wanted her." (Mona) Basically in that moment he would rather be with Mona than his wife and that's a big part of why he hasn't forgiven himself "for the Mona business."

Also I'm not sure what could have been done with Mona in MP3 considering the ending/alternate ending of MP2.
 
I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was more difficult than I expected. I usually don't have trouble with such games on even their hardest difficulties, but this one was tough.

I beat it, and gave it a really high score. Looking back, maybe a bit too high, but it was quite good and had a really fun multiplayer mode -- even if it wasn't superb quality.

When choosing a level, always choose checkpoint 2 which almost always goes straight to gameplay. Either that or Arcade mode.
 
EFFIN AWESOME game tainted by a meh story. If it had had a better story and the noir elements that made the previous games so special it would've been thr GOAT.

Also it ran super-smooth on Pc, the optimisation was splendid, takin into account that GTA IV was hot garbage.

It's worth checking out plus it's super cheap nowadays.
 

xevis

Banned
I could be wrong, but I don’t think he was ever portrayed specifically as “hopped up on drugs”, it was something the community (rightly) inferred. There may have been a throwaway line in MP2 but I don’t recall it off-hand, it was more a game mechanic based around a clever pun.

There's a few explicit points, in both the original game and its sequel, where Max makes reference to taking painkillers to block out physical and emotional pain. But the script is not so important; the charaterisation of Max by way of his in-game actions is enough to drive home the point that he's suffering from substance addiction. It makes sense in the context of the game world too; the original is filled with junkies trying to escape the pain of the real world. Max suffers from the same problem; he's just a bit more lucid than the rest.

At the end of the day though, gameplay is king and story considerations that don’t improve the gameplay in some way or make it more interesting shouldn’t have an effect on it, in my opinion.

I don't really agree with this. I feel the narrative is trying to tell one story and the game, through its mechanics, tells another. I feel the dissonance drags the game down. Incidentally, I was browsing Grantland earlier today and I stumbled on this highly topical article from Tom Bissel. He makes some familiar criticisms, albeit more than three years ago(!):

Tom Bissel said:
It could be that Max Payne 3‘s designers thought deeply about the game’s ludonarrative dissonance and judged the problem it presented as insoluble — and, from a commercial perspective, maybe it is. Whatever the case, the result is a game that appears to be trying to say something about regret and death and slaughter and addiction, but, of course, can’t. Max Payne 3 is an exuberantly stylish, utterly empty game — a kind of Higher Trash, you might say.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this. Mooks in John Woo are riddled with bullets in slow motion, heroes are drenched in their enemy’s blood, and civilians are shot indiscriminately by despicable killers…

I feel you're missing my point. John Woo's films are violent, no question. There's blood and there's people being riddled with bullets. What Max Payne 3 has, which is missing from these John Woo films is an obsession with the moment in which the kill happens. Anyway, I don't want to repeat myself. Here's Tom Bissel instead:

Tom Bissel said:
Bullet time has, however, been given a singularly gruesome augmentation. In certain situations, Max’s fatal shot will be tracked from his gun’s barrel to his target’s eye socket or groin or forehead. Plenty of games have harnessed a similar snuff-film frisson, of course, but Max Payne 3 allows for an additional measure of kill-cam interactivity. Now you can keep firing after the fatal shot and see the animation respond in real time. The first time I did this, in the tutorial, I watched an anonymous Brazilian dude’s nose get blown off, and, with each successive trigger pull, his right eye disappear in a puff of red mist, his chin burst open, and the back of his head explode in a floriform bloom of dangling gore.
 

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
Hey can I get in on this? :p

The more the merrier!

The writing is hit and miss to me, as far as the narration is concerned. (And the plot too) For one thing Max swears constantly in the narration of 3, which just hardly happens in the first two games, and it's quite jarring. He also throws out terms such as "fat gringo" and getting paid to "bang waitresses" when he and Passos worked their first security job, which is something I can't imagine Lake's Max saying, and in some ways Max feels like a different person entirely. I understand what you were saying about the revisionist take, and making the character more real, but it's almost like MP3 Max has different morals than MP1&2 Max.

Max is different, but I think he's different in every game. You only have to compare the character in the first two games to see that, I think.

That aside, I think there are good narrative reasons (in my head canon, at least) that explain why he's fallen so much further. The main one being Max used to have police work to occupy him and keep him on the straight and narrow:

"With no way to deal with the past, I kept my eyes on the road, off the rear-view mirror and the road-kill behind me. I chased lesser mysteries, other people's crimes."

I think it's fair to argue that Police work kept him on the straight and narrow. Although it has to be said, I don't think casual sex contradicts anything from the previous games or undermines Max's morality all that much. By MP3 he's consuming all but everything and anything he can get his hands on to aid his epic quest to forget the past.

That being said, there is some good writing here and there, one line that stuck out to me as I advanced through the compound looking for Fabiana and killing goons, was Max's line: "I kept moving toward the signs of life, rubbing them out as I went along." - A fanstastic line in my opinion, it sounds like something Lake could have written.

There's some clever word play peppered here and there. During the office attack Max comments that the attackers must have figured that, "The Bronco security team consisted of more than a dame, a dork, and a drunk." (Nice alliteration) and a few moments later he states: "Rodrigo's office overlooked the atrium. I could check in and make sure he hadn't checked out." The word play reminded me of the line near the end of MP1 when he says he "Parked the stolen wheels, got out, got in, got cracking."

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Great examples to!

I think you're spot on here, a man that has lost his wife and baby, and killed a couple thousand people would never be "normal" probably my favorite character arc in MP3 is where Max comes to grips with the fact that he can't save everyone, but he can kill all the bad guys. And through the last few levels of the game he goes head-on into the Imperial Palace Hotel, the precinct, and the airport with little purpose other than kill everyone, and get a few answers.

Exactly!

There's another blink or you'll miss it reason (of sorts) given in Chapter 13 that goes someway to confirming what you said:

"Another pile of bodies and still nothing to show for it. It felt like I was detaching; that maybe this was revenge for something else; something deep in the past."

He basically regresses and starts projecting all the rage he had over Michelle and Rose's death on to his current situation. There are a few quotes like that in Chapter 13 that give subtle but meaningful insights into his thinking, while referencing the other games, that are often missing from the rest of the VO. If I recall correctly, one of the quotes bares a striking similarity to one of the MP2 dream sequences.

I think when Max is at the cemetary he simply says, "I still hadn't forgiven myself for the Mona business, but I knew that was just grief." My theory on Max's internal conflict about Mona has to do with the scene in MP2 where he says, "The things I want by Max Payne." And he goes on to mention that he wants his wife and baby girl back, but - "Right then, more than anything, I wanted her." (Mona) Basically in that moment he would rather be with Mona than his wife and that's a big part of why he hasn't forgiven himself "for the Mona business."

That's a great explanation. I hadn't quite seen it like that.

Also I'm not sure what could have been done with Mona in MP3 considering the ending/alternate ending of MP2.

No grave in the cemetery. As far as I'm concerned the DOA ending is canon. ;)

She needs her own game. Did you ever play the Mona the Assassin mod for MP2? It was a lot of fun, particularly the last level.

There's a few explicit points, in both the original game and its sequel, where Max makes reference to taking painkillers to block out physical and emotional pain. But the script is not so important; the charaterisation of Max by way of his in-game actions is enough to drive home the point that he's suffering from substance addiction. It makes sense in the context of the game world too; the original is filled with junkies trying to escape the pain of the real world. Max suffers from the same problem; he's just a bit more lucid than the rest.

If you get a moment could you pull the quotes...? I don't have the time to read through both game scripts even if I wanted to! XD

I don't really agree with this. I feel the narrative is trying to tell one story and the game, through its mechanics, tells another. I feel the dissonance drags the game down. Incidentally, I was browsing Grantland earlier today and I stumbled on this highly topical article from Tom Bissel. He makes some familiar criticisms, albeit more than three years ago(!):

He's not really referring to what we were talking about, that Max is old and fat yet still able to pull off moves that Chow Yun Fat's stunt double would be proud of. Unless there is an interesting way that adds to it, I do not want it to affect the gameplay.

Irrespective of that, I don't really agree with Tom's assessment. What is the game trying to say about those subjects...? Max's "hair trigger temper" (pun intended) is integrated into both his character, the narrative, and the gameplay. It is acknowledged and even discussed. Max, by his own admission, is only at his best when things are at their worst, other times he's a lonely, self loathing junky (or in MP2, a lonely self loathing cop). I don't think the stylised combat undermines any meaning the game attempts to make unless the same can be said of the previous games. These games are firmly rooted in the Pulp genre, after all.

It's not a dissimilar argument to the one made about Niko in GTA IV, that he says one thing during cutscenes but does another during gameplay. Ignoring the incidental dialogue he says during gameplay that goes some way to explaining the disparity, people in real life (from my limited experience) do exactly that: they say one thing and do another. It feeds directly into what I said earlier; some of the great character conflicts are in how the character perceives themselves versus how others do.

I feel you're missing my point. John Woo's films are violent, no question. There's blood and there's people being riddled with bullets. What Max Payne 3 has, which is missing from these John Woo films is an obsession with the moment in which the kill happens. Anyway, I don't want to repeat myself. Here's Tom Bissel instead:

Okay. I don't want to discuss this with Tom. I wanna discuss it with you! Especially since the "additional measure" of interactivity is a hang over from the previous games which, for me, puts a chip in his credibility. He either didn't play the games originally, didn't do the research, or forgot that detail. He writes pretty though :D

I do understand what you are saying and I'm not saying you're wrong, I just do not interpret what we're seeing in the same way. I think a body being riddled with bullets is lingering on "the moment the kill happens". I think watching someone put a sword through another guy's head is focusing on the kill. I don't see this so much as a fetishisation of death or murder (no more than the previous games), but a necessary part. It is shown as a resolution/consequence to each sequence in the Heroic Bloodshed dance. The blood is visual texture, a grim aesthetic. They highlight Max's brutality with brief stylisations, but I don't see them as unnecessary titilation. They very much suit the pulpy nature of the series.

Perhaps this is why Max suffers from PTSD? Are these his "moments of clarity" when he realises what he actually does to people? XD
 
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