More depressed, more angry and more lethal than ever before. But he's still the old Max we used to love.
"Time to move on, get on with my life, yes, absolutely. Maybe I'd lost my self respect, but it's back... I'm excited, really. I really needed a new start."
The intro is one of the most emotionally touching I have seen in a video game. It literally makes you feel Max's suffering and understand the severe depression he's sank into. James McCaffrey once again delivers an outstanding performance as the voice actor for Max Payne's character.
I won't spoil any key plot elements. The story itself is not amazing, even though it's quite difficult to see the twist coming, and that's something that most movies and games fail to achieve. But it's good enough to give you reasons for shooting bad guys and to make Max showcase his poetic monologues.
"I'd been sitting at the bar for about 3 hours, or about 5 years depending on how you looked at things. I tried not to look at things."
He has reached an age that allowed him to see a lot of things, mostly bad, since wherever he was, whatever he did, trouble kept finding him. He is a thoroughly developed character, and even though he does not deliver lines as deep as the ones in the original game, he certainly shows his wisdom and his acid humor that we were used to. The story explains the reasons behind Max's decision to leave New Jersey for Brasil and also brings us back down memory lane, with two chapters being set in a cold and dark winter night in New Jersey.
The gameplay is pure fun. Max's movements are smooth and you can feel his weight while turning, falling or getting up. It's not just a gimmick the developers tried to sell us, it's actually noticeable. The guns feel powerful and realistic and they're very fun to shoot with, especially while in Bullettime (the slow-motion Max Payne trademark gameplay feature, which is the core of the series). And there are plenty of guns to have fun with, ranging from the M1911, Desert Eagle and .38 Revolver to SMGs, shotguns (Sawed-off, Spas and a few others) rifles (AK47, M4) and sniper rifles.
Keeping the old-school non-regenerating health system that requires painkillers in order to heal was a great choice, making the game a bit more challenging and also staying true to its roots.
While the static comic-book style panels are gone, the storytelling is top-notch. The cutscenes are rendered in-game and they hide the level loading, so everything flows seamlessly, without interruption. The visual style is unique and while tiring to some people, I consider it to be a good choice.
Graphically, on consoles it's great, but the PC version truly shines. Running in DX11, the environments, the facial expressions, the animations, the textures, everything is detailed and well polished. Also, Rockstar did a fantastic job at optimizing the engine, so it runs on fairly old hardware as well.
The sound design is also impressive, with solid overall voice acting (James McCaffrey stands out), and a great soundtrack that sets the right atmosphere in each level.
The story mode lasted about 8 hours while played on medium difficulty, but it has a good replay value, especially in the Arcade and New York Minute modes, that let you play any chapter you want and rank up the leaderboards by setting highscores. It's a good reason to revisit the levels, simply because the gameplay is fun and it's not just an average story-based shooter that once completed has to be thrown away.
There's also a multiplayer mode, which while seeming not fit in a singleplayer game, is actually fun and long lasting. Unless people stop playing it, but they don't have any reason to, because it offers some unique moments (due to Bullettime and the innovative game modes) that no other game on the market delivers at this time.
While the setting might turn off hardcore fans of the series, you should not judge before you give it a chance, and if you do, I'm pretty sure you are going to love it. As a standalone game it's a fun and solid shooter, as a sequel it's the old Max Payne in a new setting, that works surprisingly well. To me, it deserves the Game of the Year award, but maybe I'm speaking out of appreciation for this legendary character.
"There were only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you."