For me, Max Payne 3 does not deliver. Good points are that it's gorgeous and 'Hey, it's Max again!' as the character was brilliant. The combat sounds are amazing from the thud as you shotgun the vested midsection of a rent-a-gun (whom Max despises for some unknown reason) to the squish of a Desert Eagle making a hole in someone large enough to walk through. Even better, environmental damage hasn't been done more realistically and evenly by any other game I have ever played.
Alas there are a few problems which for me almost ruin the game. Whilst the combat looks and sounds good, it feels horrible. Gone are the days of snapping your wrist trying to spin the mouse to anihilate a room full of bent cops or thugs as you shootdodge through the centre of a room. With cover being such a mainstay in combat one would imagine that it would be a key thing to get right, no? Rockstar disagrees. There is no fluid movement into cover as you must stand right next to it and then press a button as opposed to, say Gears of War where Marcus would dive into cover from 5-6 feet away. Also when in said cover there is no control to move onto an adjacant piece which is (for me) frustrating to say the least. In Max Payne 3, painkillers are used like the medkits of old to regenerate health and for some reason Max decides that he'll pop them on losing the last bit of health, whether you want him to or not, whilst he survives (for now) Max is now lying prone at the feet of an assailiant (and possibly his friends) that hasn't registered you put a bullet through his skull in slo-mo, which can lead to more problems than just reloading from checkpoint. Then there is the man himself Mr Payne.
The writing for Max doesn't do it for me he's still moody and dark with that dry wit which kills me every time, but to me the supposed depth of character feels very forced this time around and him feeling sorry for himself over the inevitable failures isn't anything inventive as far as characters go. At the moment I'm in a graveyard with my newfound trusty sidekick taking on 1920's dress-style gangsters, (it feels a little...corny), and by this point I'm kind of hoping Max doesn't make it through to the final credits, which I'm shocked at myself for thinking as I rate(d) Max as my all time favorite videogame character. I'm hoping for a cover fluidity patch and replacing the faux comicbook style mess (you will know what I mean if you play it) with actual comic book style like in the originals.
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