Manages to live up to the greatness of it's predecessors.
Is it perfect? No, but it is pretty good and despite the changes to the locale and how the story is told I think as a whole it works very well. I was worried when R* said they were changing the comic panel type narrative. I actually liked the comic book style narrative of the originals, which have been replaced by a different style of inner monologue in Max Payne 3. But they manage to make it work as a story-telling device so I'm not going to complain.
The gunplay feels solid, the bullet time mechanics feels just like it used to, and the new cover mechanic makes things a bit more difficult. You can't just stand around and shot dodge repeatedly like in the previous games. You need to dodge in and out of cover and play smartly or you will get rolled... repeatedly. I played through on Hard the first time and it was genuinely tough. You need to get the most out of bullet-time and shot dodge to be effective and play smartly.
Pro:
- Voice acting is great for the most part. Especially James McCaffrey (Max Payne).
- Despite the new location, it still feels like a Max Payne game. You make a couple trips to NJ and it brings back fond memories. Shows that you can do a "noir" style setting that isn't dark, raining, and cold.
- Story is pretty good and very much in the style of the first two games. It occasionally references major themes from the previous two games. And it doesn't insult the intelligence of it's audience.
- Graphics are top notch. I was worried that this would be a lazy console port, but the DX11 effects, high-res textures, and good optimization make the game looks very good.
- Gameplay is much improved from the previous installments.
- Good selection of weapons to chose from. You can usually find something to your liking.
- Set-piece battles are great for the most part. My favorite was a boat chase down a river.
- Scripted events are pretty cool as well. These typically involve, sliding/dangling/falling in which bullet-time is active through the whole event and you must pick off a certain group or number of enemies to survive.
-Collecting pieces for golden guns rewards you for being observant. These give slight bonuses to a certain weapon whenever you pick it up.
-Stability is good for the most part. I only had two crashes throughout the entire single player campaign. Both in the same area so it could have been a corrupted file.
Cons:
- Voice acting for one of the major characters Passos isn't very good. Felt like the accent and speech style did not fit the character's background.
- Story can be a little confusing/too fast paced at times.
- I really disliked the heavy use of chromatic effects in cutscenes. They were distracting and jarring. And they are used very frequently.
- Difficulty is uneven in some areas. On Hard I could at some points take down multiple enemies from cover without using shot-dodge. Other times I would have to replay it 10+ times because I was getting one-shotted from 30+ meters away. Enemies can sometimes shoot you when you cannot see anything but a small portion of their model. They also seem to know exactly when you will pop out of cover and can one-shot you.
- Similar to the above, the final boss battle is really tricky. You are limited to the area you can move (you will get one-shotted if you go outside) and the attacks seem to be random and very difficult to dodge/shoot down unless you are watching for them the whole time.
- Any weapon with a laser pointer is garbage. They are nearly impossible to aim properly.
- Some of the enemies in the last hour or so of the game can take multiple headshots to take down even after you have knocked off their helmets. Throughout the rest of the game a head-shot would put down ANYTHING. It makes clearing big groups annoying/unpredictable because you will think you have put an enemy down and they will stand up and shot you when you aren't expecting it.
Conclusion:
Despite the flaws I think this is a very solid game overall. I am a big fan of the original two games and was not disappointed with Max Payne 3. I would highly recommend it if you enjoy story-driven shooters. Hopefully there will be a 4th installment and R* will fix the issues I noted above. None of them are "game-breaking" but a couple are pretty annoying. I have not played the multiplayer component (and probably wont) so I cannot comment on that. But I would still rate this as a buy.