Once again the votes have been cast, and this time they came out in favour of May’s big hitter, Max Payne 3. Whilst Payne’s earlier adventures always held interest for me, the third entry in the series didn’t really grab hold of me. Perhaps it was the focus on Max’s Hawaiian shirt and lack of hair in the game’s advertising that did it; the man needs a trench coat. On a more realistic level it seemed in some ways that Max Payne’s time had past, that the industry had moved on.
However, I’m happy to admit that it seems my assumptions about the game were wrong, with Alex enjoying the game in our review. Although it may seem a little depressing, it’s good to know that Max’s problems haven’t resolved themselves in the years since Max Payne 2, he’s always been a character packed full of personal issues.
In fact Alex was pleased with the amount that the game has retained and the ways it builds on the classic elements of Max Payne, like the series’ distinctive visuals. It’s not just bullet time that has been fleshed out either, he praised the “flickering colour separations, glitchy recording techniques and age-old cutaways and multiple shots” caused by the drugs and alcohol that are obvious hallmarks of any Max Payne game.
Of course the addition of multiplayer was perhaps the most contentious decision in Max Payne 3’s development, but again Alex found it worthy of praise. He was, obviously, pleased that it didn’t interfere with the game’s single player, and also happy that it wasn’t just a tacked on mode to draw extra sales. In fact it was the opposite, with the depth of the multiplayer and the way it drew from elements of the game’s single player earning additional praise.
Ultimately Alex rated the game at 9/10, noting that whilst it might not be the best game ever “it does do enough, every ten minutes or so, to make you forget everything else out there and just run riot with a massive grin on your face.” When he was summing up his thoughts on the game he had this to say:
Bleak, sometimes frightening, always powerful and quite often shocking, Max Payne 3 takes the third person genre about as far as it can go, and most likely does the same this with this generation’s now ageing console hardware. Polished to near perfection, with just a few minor sticking points that dent – ever so slightly – what is overall a wonderful slice of gaming. Enjoy.
So the question of the hour is whether or not you agree with Alex’s assessment of the game. Did you enjoy it as much as him, or did you fall at the other end of the spectrum and find it lacking? Did you feel the game was true to the earlier Max Payne games, or did it take a turn you didn’t like? Or was Max Payne 3 your first time with the series?
Whatever your feelings about the game are, you can share them by dropping a comment below. All we ask is that you attach a rating to the game, using the Buy It, Bargain Bin It, Rent It, Avoid It scale, and get your thoughts in by Sunday afternoon.
baggyg
Buy It
Although it is not quite the Max Payne I remember from my youth, Rockstar have added enough of their own flair to make the story memorable, cinematic and enjoyable.
Talking solely about the the PC version, I have to commend how much effort they put into customisations (rather than doing a port). As well as having excellent support for 3D vision and Direct X 11, the effects could be scaled very cleverly with each setting showing as a amount of your graphics cards memory.
LTG Davey
The multiplayer is pretty unbalanced but the single player is one of the best in the genre. Great narrative, solid voice acting and enjoyable gameplay. Essential purchase for third person shooter fans. BUY
Forrest_01
If you don’t mind me asking, why do you say the mp is unbalanced?
I only ask, as i can’t say i have experienced that myself.
theberzerka
How can you say that Forrest lol. We are constantly getting hammered by players that have unlocked superior weapons and perks. Whilst I love the multiplayer I would have to agree that it is rather unbalanced. :) oh and buy it.
Forrest_01
Yeah, i agree, but its the same with any multiplayer with a tiered unlock system. Maybe i am just used to it now!
Either way, i never get the feeling of “these players are clearly glitching/cheating/using things they shouldn’t” (well, apart from maybe that one player last week!), as i know that at some stage, the same equipment will be available to myself to use if i so wish.
It may take some time to get there, but it’s certainly achievable. It it wasn’t, i would say it was unbalanced, but i can’t really criticise people for putting the time into it, or Rockstar for making them want to! :)
theberzerka
I get what you’re saying. I always hope that matchmaking actually works though. As you say though it’s not specific to this game, it happens in near enough every multiplayer game I’ve played.
LTG Davey
@Forrest_01
As berzerka said, its common to get mowed down with high powered weapons which are only obtained as you rise through the ranks. As you say though, thats common with a lot of MP games.
Last time I played it however, the akimbo weapons in particular were majorly overpowered to the point that nobody was really using anything else! This may have been patched since but I remember buying the game day one, putting about 10hours into the multiplayer and then stopping because of how annoying it was getting.
Shame really as the modes were well thought out, the grinds were addictive and the game could be a lot of fun providing you got into a decent lobby :)
JohnnyBoy
Never played any of the original Max Paynes so went in with no expectations apart from it being a Rockstar game.
The story was well told but to be honest I didn’t really care about the characters – my main criteria for a game is the action and it definitely didn’t disappoint.
The only thing that could possibly be considered a negative is that it seemed like one huge Gang Hideout mission from Red Dead Redemption – clear a room, walk on, clear another room, repeat… But considering RDR is one of my favourite games and the Gang Hideouts were great, I’m nitpicking.
Buy it
tonycawley
The single player component is great, good story, good gameplay, great narration throughout.
The multiplayer doesn’t work, some good ideas but too many disconnects and system freezes make the multiplayer experience more frustrating than anything.
Bargain bin it, get it preowned, play the single player, avoid the multiplayer.
Forrest_01
Multiplayer has been largely fixed (somewhat of a ninja fix it seems). Just the one freeze for zerka last night, which is the only issue in about 3 weeks.
Forrest_01
It was very broken when Tony was playing it though, to be fair.
MadBoJangles
Loved it.
Visceral, thrilling….was truly surprised by how much I enjoyed it when I played it.
Really regret trading it in when I did.
BUY IT.
freezebug2
Great single player campaign, but unbearably frustrating on a second playthrough as you couldn’t skip the cutscenes (loading time cloaks). MultiPlayer was warped when I tried to get online with the game so gave up on that as well. I’d say RENT it for a single player campaign playthrough, and don’t risk the frustration of (not being able to ) play online…..although people are reporting that online is now fixed.
Too frustrating for me….Rent it!
Crazy_Del
Well Max Payne campaign is fantastic great fun action game with lots of bullet dodge/bullet time. Great combat. The story is really good. The only thing I hate the most of the campaign are the cut-scenes which seems to be like Kane and Lynch/Domino (Film) style, very distortion at certain times. Did not like that!
The difficulty are locked and can be unlocked after completing. But some of these difficulty are really hard especially in certain levels/missions that will struggle.
Multiplayer I thought was a bad idea….. I went for it to see it for myself. I got completely hooked into multiplayer. Of course it did have some problems that Tony has mentioned – disconnections lobby freeze etc….. but I ignored them and continued to try and enjoy multiplayer. Forrest is also right it was buggy but now it seems to be slightly better (I cannot say fixed as there wasn’t an update it just stopped having problems. Weird like Forrest said Ninja Fix ^^ )
Multiplayer has some great perks and there are alot of perks to try it and you can change it so that it is still fresh and not boring. Best Multiplayer mode is Gang Wars!
I was loving the campaign (except the style of cut-scenes) and also enjoyed Multiplayer and got the highest level – 50)
I’d say…… RENT IT for mainly the campaign to enjoy it once. BARGAIN BIN IT (Should be cheap by now) For Campaign and Multiplayer. Also it does have a replay value to it with higher difficulty AND Time Attack aswell – New York Minute.
freezebug2
Great write up Del, and as you say the cut scenes were brilliant as part of the storyline on the first playthrough and were engrossing, but normally these can be skipped on a second playthrough in most games, but this game was unable to do that as they were left running to hide the atrocious level loading times.
Forrest_01
Max Payne 3 – Guns, Alcohol & Pills. What more could you ask from a videogame? Well, how about a little bit of Bullet Time just to sweeten the deal? I thought that might get your attention!
Many were concerned up to & including the games launch that Max had lost his way, being all bald, wearing a wife beater & residing in sunny climes, it was clearly nothing more than “just another third person shooter”, but I can confirm this is actually not the case. This game retains the same gritty noir undertones that the previous two games had (a sunny locale does not change this!) & Max’s decline into a bald headed, wife beater wearing dude is well documented through the game (you do even play as trenchcoat wearing Max in NY for parts of the game to help the story along). As with many things in life, there is a reason for everything that you see before you & you cannot take everything at face value.
As well as the retained noir feel to the game (& as I touched upon above), many Max Payne staples return in the frequent, over the top gunplay, popping pills to regain health (& to ‘scratch the itch’ of course) & the main series staple of Bullet Time also returns with a blast. As well as the standard Shootdodge & Bullet Time, you will also find set pieces entirely dedicated to these practices – Such as diving out of a window & taking out all enemies in the room in slow-mo. A personal highlight of mine thus far.
So the singleplayer is pretty much still everything you would expect from a Max Payne game (& dare I say a bit more!).
The surprise highlight for me was actually the multiplayer though. I was expecting a tacked on mode that would be nothing more than your standard third person shooter deathmatch affair that they could sell additional content for. What I got was a solid third person shooter multiplayer that many of the gameplay elements from the singleplayer were carried across into (the line-of-sight Bullet Time is awesome), plus adding many perks & weapons & having some decidedly brilliant multiplayer modes. As Del mentioned, Gang Wars is probably the favourite, as it has a full narrative on why the two teams are fighting & different objective based gameplay over about 5 rounds. It a switches things up all the time & thus is a joy to play for a couple of hours. Payne Killer is another favourite of mine, as you begin the match & the first killer becomes Max Payne himself & has to survive everyone trying to kill him to become Max themselves. Fortunately, Max has come equipped with Painkillers & more hardcore weapons, so although you are the target for everyone else on the map, you still stand a fair chance.
The Multiplayer left a lot to be desired at first, because as has been touched upon already, it was pretty much a broken mess when the game launched. An enjoyable broken mess, but a broken mess all the same… & that was where the annoyance set in. It was a ridiculous amount of fun in the short bursts that you actually got to play in, but disconnects & system freezes were frequent, making it a payneful experience for many, including myself. Some sold it & some just plain did not pick up the game due to these issues, which was a shame.
However, I can confirm that it has been working a LOT better over the past month or two & without an update to the game as well, so I can only assume that they made a ninja fix to their servers at their end. I will claim a personal victory on that one, as I actually contacted them to enquire when a fix was coming, so I obviously brought the issue to their attention!! :P
So it’s a BUY IT from me. BUY IT & come & join us in the multiplayer of a Monday evening. It’s a stupid amount of fun.
LTG Davey
Daaaamn, thats quite an overview :D Has left me wanting to play through the campaign again now lol. Might finally man up and tackle the new york minute
Forrest_01
Lol – Believe it or not, that’s the cut-down version! :S
I haven’t spent as much time on the singleplayer as everyone else (enough to know what i am talking about though), but i did want to go through the multiplayer in a bit more detail, as it was an area that raised a lot of concerns at first.
Trouble is, for most that’ll still be a bit ‘tl:dr’. :(
freezebug2
It does sound like the MP has been fixed from your experiences, and you certainly have more patience than me to have stuck with the game whils’t it was broken online, not knowing whether there was a fix on the horizon.
I’m just happy that I completed the single player campaign, but with no MP to speak of at the time, and no way I wanted to complete a second playthrough with the unskippable cut scenes that were enjoyed the first time around….but not on a second playthrough , I had to vote Rent it.
Forrest_01
I’d say that was fair enough – At the end of the day, we can only base it upon our own experiences & in the beginning, the multiplayer wasn’t exactly impressive in terms of connectivity.
In terms of sticking with it though, it was made easier by the fact that i am only playing it for a couple of hours each week. If i was playing it a bit more often, i might have found that i gave up on it due to the issues occurring more frequently.
Either way though, i am just glad it works properly (or as close to as possible) now, as it is some damn good fun of a monday evening! :)
Can’t say i enjoy unskippable cut scenes though (especially not on a second playthrough), so that’s something to bear in mind for likely purchasers/bargain binners/renters. The game does do a fair bit of loading (covered by the cut scenes of course) considering it also has a 4.5GB install!
LTG Davey
“The game does do a fair bit of loading (covered by the cut scenes of course) considering it also has a 4.5GB install!”
Agreed! I have the game on 360. Installed both disks to HDD (all ~14GB of it) and the load times were still insanely long, lol. I suppose I’ve just been spoiled by the Uncharted games where you press “skip” and it immediately does it lol
Severn2j
The Max Payne games are amongst my all time favourites, and number 3 is no exception, in fact I actually bought it twice. I originally bought it on 360 for the MP aspect, and while it was good, I didnt really get on with the aiming system (soft lock was too easy and free aim, too hard), although it was fine in SP. And SP is where the game really shines. I’ve played through the SP game twice on 360, and am most of the way through it again on PC. I picked it up again on PC as I prefer the mouse/keyboard control when it comes to shooters and the extra graphic power comes through really well here.
Definitely BUY IT! (although not necessarily twice)