R.I.P., Max Payne. Brokestar and its console fan base killed one of the most iconic characters in video game history.
I really wonder whose bright idea at Rockstar it was to make Max Payne bald and place him in Brazil. When I first saw the screenshots back a couple of years ago I actually, in all honesty, thought it was a joke. I thought that Rockstar was just fooling around with some pre-production ideas.
Let's start off with a little history lesson.
The first game introduced the bullet time feature. This feature revolutionized third person shooters. Since then, many games copied the mechanics. Dead to Rights, F.E.A.R., Call of Juarez, Strangehold, Red Dead Redemption, Sniper Elite, Vanquish, Wanted. What started off as a style mechanic slowly evolved into assist mechanic, aim assist that is. The first and second games did not rely on protracted gun fights with cover; it was mostly about short encounters with a handful of enemies, so the gun fights were all about your reflexes. Take that for what its worth.
Gone is the dark NY noire. Gone are the days when Max Payne 1,2 came out on PC FIRST and was rated higher than the console counter-parts. Gone are the characters from the first two games. Gone are the derelict New York city alleys, gone is the comic-book narrative. In fact, the feeling you got from playing the first two games was that there WAS no world outside of New York at all. Here you get about 40 minutes of gameplay in New Jersey with the snow and the mobsters, (flashback to the good old days), but that's as close to NY as you will get in the game. I mean why couldn't they continue with the NY/NJ timeline? The mafia boss could be the villain and Max could easily continue running around NY and NJ. Ironically, the flashbacks were the best part of the game for me.
Now it is time to make way for the dance clubs, mini-skirts, Hawaii shirts, annoying unremarkable uninteresting characters (Rockstar has a hard-on for those), crazy blinding lights (people with epilepsy, BEWARE), the rural slums, sunny outdoors, frequent cut scenes that can't be skipped because the console is loading the new level, Portuguese speaking enemies (no English subtitles by the way), the lack of suspense, and don't forget the multiplayer....yeah, the Max Payne franchise desperately needed that one.
Imagine a heavily scripted and narrative-driven GTA 4 plus a little bit of Red Dead Redemption touch. Congrats, you have just imagined Max Payne 3. Same engine was used in GTA 4 and RDR. This means no anti-aliasing, jaggy and jumpy shadows, static hair on characters, near-lifeless character faces, halos around some objects, messed up weak lightning, lack of sharp edges around objects, sluggish control of the character when running or when attempting to make exact sharp turns. There is this half a second heavy and cumbersome delay every time you move your character about, just like in GTA and RDR. I remember how flawlessly I was able to move the character in the first two games.
And don't even get me started on the cut scenes, there are so many of them. At times, there is a cut scene every 1.5 minutes. Half the time you cannot skip them because that is when the game is apparently still loading. Every, and I repeat, EVERY cut scene is messed up. What I mean by that is that every cut scene has "effects" added to it. These include: blurry/static screen, double vision, various color and hue variations, sepia hue, frequent change of camera angle, blinding flashes, etc. It's frigging nauseating! Rockstar thought that adding too much "style" to these cut scenes would make them look more "cool" I guess. I also like how random dialogue words just pop up on the screen during cut scenes. Useless.
I also like how as you progress through the game you get these achievements, like "250 enemies killed" or "you shot 50 enemies in their hands" or "100 enemies killed with pistols", etc. WTH! When did Max Payne turn into a arcade shoot filled with rewards? Seriously, you can't even turn that infantile thing off!
By the way, I didn't know Max could now shoot RPG ROCKETS in mid-air and make them explode with no blast effect whatsoever on the helicopter. I mean seriously? Shooting RPG rockets with a hand gun? Talk about aim assist.
So Rockstar decided to go with cover, since they are using their RAGE engine again, fine! But you cannot move left or right while shooting when in cover, which makes it even more infuriating when trying to aim with the two sticks (i.e. you cannot use the left analog stick to help you aim, like Gears for instance).
Oh yeah, about that aim assist. There is hard/soft aim assists and free aim (good luck with that one). The hard aim assist will target enemies for you through walls. The soft one will be kinda weaker. The free aim will make you waste your bullets in numerous attempts to kill enemies before you hit the ground in that slow motion. I tried playing without the aim assist but after 20 minutes I said Fck it and got myself hard aim. I'm just not gonna bother going through the extra trouble of getting aggravated over having to aim with one analog stick. This is why these games should be played with a mouse.
About that slow motion, there are sometimes lag spikes during firefights and even during cut scenes. It's unbelievable. I guess the game sometimes goes from 30FPS to 25FPS. I hope the same problem is not persistent on the PC, but then again, when did Rockstar ever give a damn about PC? GTA 4 is still one of the most unoptimized games in the PC library.
There are improvements though: Melee attack, the ability to carry only 3 weapons (more realistic than carrying 10), the ability to examine some objects closely (with narration), detailed environments, the physics is worked out, the game is quite hard, the AI is quite decent (they take cover, throw grenades, flank you and charge you), and the absence of regenerating health is always welcome; also, captain baseball bat boy is back and there are some references to Max's previous achievements.
The firefights are good, there is sufficient destruction and satisfaction of each kill. The bullet time replenishes extremely fast though.
Also when you run, you have the ability to roll and pick up ammo, like in Uncharted.
As you keep playing the story will get more confusing and convoluted. You will easily forget the main characters names. I started skipping cut scenes about 30 minutes after I started playing, just didn't care for them. Looks like Rockstar went in all different directions here, they really could have kept it simple here. Flashes, flamboyancy, obnoxious characters, typical cliches and tons of varied locations make it look like a linear GTA game.
If you are an old school PC purist, you may not enjoy this game too much. In the first Max Payne it was you against the world: the cops were after you, so was the mafia and the pharmaceutical corporation during the worst storm in history. The third game is a train wreck where you have to save a rich girl... who cares seriously? Moments ago Max was talking about how much he despised the vanity filled rich people. Yet he jumps into the pool with both feet (literally) instantly and keeps risking his own life for them. The Max Payne franchise spiritually ended back in 2003.
Let's see if Dx11, anti-aliasing support, enhanced graphics and more than 30 FPS can redeem game on PC. Time to sell this monstrosity on e-bay...
First it was Sam Fisher, now it's Max Payne. Agent 47, you are next on the list....