Max Payne 3 is a continuation of the dark, gritty crime story saga. Max Payne has changed quite a bit and is now an aging former New York City cop moving to São Paulo, Brazil to protect the wealthy Branco family looking to move up in the political world. Max's private sector job takes you through the riches and corruption of Brazil while in other parts of the country you see poverty and crime. Therefore, you will witness the vast divisions between the rich and poor. This game has absolutely spectacular graphics, abandoning the comic book format used in previous Max Payne games in favor of moving cut scene panels.
Max narrates the story from start to finish and makes you genuinely feel like a man who has a hot temper, an alcoholic, a smoker, and always in danger. The storytelling is excellent as a result of the brilliant script, as it is better than your average video game crime story. The narrative does a wonderful job revealing the other characters, who are probably darker than other characters in the Max Payne series. There is a feeling that every character has something to hide even if they seem trustworthy.
Max Payne 3 is a heavily cinematic game that gives you as many details as possible about the situation and the characters involved. The story gives you the impression that Max needs to be more careful about shootouts than ever before. This is where the ability to take cover is introduced into the game. Taking cover is now vital to Max's survival since his enemies also now how to take cover and will move slowly in an attempt to flank you. The details of the locations are amazing as you will shoot it out in vibrant nightclubs, favelas (Portuguese word for slums) showing kids playing soccer, the Panama Canal in flashback scenes, and decrepit hotels that once looked luxurious. While in Brazil you will have flashbacks to Max's old days in Hoboken, New Jersey as he shoots it out with vengeful mobsters in a dark, snowy atmosphere.
The shootouts are at least as fun as in previous Max Payne games. The famous bullet time ability is important in shootouts and there are scripted events that put you to shoot in slow motion at multiple enemies while hanging on to a rope or chain. I love the scene in Panama where he grabs a bad guy while sliding down a rope to cross the canal and shooting at a bunch of bad guys in bullet time and the bad guys kill the guy Max is essentially using as his shield. Another fun, scripted event occurs while hanging from a helicopter in bullet time and shooting at enemies firing from the helipad, including a rocket launcher that can only be killed if you shoot down the rocket. The shootdodge move is useful but it suffers a little bit because the end of the shootdodge technique leaves Max vulnerable while on the ground. This is why the new cover feature is important and must be used not only for protection against gunfire, but to build bullet time when the enemies are firing. The bullet time builds more quickly when enemies are using automatic weapons since more bullets fired at once means more bullet time built up. The slow motion kills are very detailed as you can see in slow motion where the bullets strike your enemies and it is greatly detailed when you kill the final enemy in your environment. It feels like it is quite easy to get killed since one bullet to the head can kill Max Payne and his death animations are so accurate it is gross and the death animations for the enemies are also highly realistic. Many times I was about to get killed when the bullet time pointed out to me who was going to kill me and I fired one shot to save my life. Then I see Max Payne on the ground after diving to survive while there are other enemies desperate to kill me. Other times I cannot fire that lifesaving shot because I have out of ammo so I end up having to watch Max Payne's detailed death animation. Those are some really suspenseful moments. Thus, there is never a dull moment during the many shooting sequences of the game.
There are a diverse number of weapons in Max Payne 3, including pistols, machine guns, shotguns, submachine guns, a grenade launcher, and a rocket launcher. It is fun to fire any one of your guns directly at a rocket fired by a rocket launcher and killing him in the process due to the explosion radius of the rocket. The shootouts lead to spectacularly destructive environments, as you see windows shattering and wood being torn off by the shots fired.
The single-player campaign is fairly short since it takes about 12-15 hours to complete. But the fun is always there since there suspense is never taken away due to the strong storytelling and the shooting sequences. There are multiplayer modes such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, Payne Killer, and Gang Wars. Even if you don't dedicate your time to multiplayer, the single-player campaign is well worth playing.