I actually preordered the game after some convincing by my friends (plus there was a Steam deal that cemented my decision). Having finished the game recently, I'm glad that I bought the game and don't regret paying full price for it either.

I've seen some of the more asinine comments here, and I think that there are very few action games that manage to combine excellent storytelling with interesting/unique combat like Max Payne 3 manages to do. I've played numerous shooters, including BF3 and the various CoD games (including MW, MW2 & Black Ops), and for the most part, those games have extremely cliched plots that recycle elements you might see on a show like 24. Most of them lack interesting protagonists and stories that are actually creative.

Max Payne 3, on the other hand, actually has a coherent and compelling (as far as I was concerned) story about a man who's hit bottom and is battling his own demons while stuck in a place far, far away from home. Needless to say, I disagree with those who say the story didn't make sense and/or was boring. It took me twelve hours to finish one run on normal, and I thought it was the perfect length with everything that took place being in service of the story. Would I have liked more time with Max? Yeah, especially because James McCaffrey gave an amazing performance as Max. However, pointlessly stuffing the game with filler would have detracted from the story in this case.

It was definitely a cinematic experience, which may be good or bad depending on what you're looking for in a game. Personally, I thought the pacing was good overall (with some minor quibbles here & there). The game also has some of the most amazing graphics I've seen. I'm difficult to impress when it comes to graphics, but MP3 pretty much blew me away with its visuals. Nothing's wowed me since Batman: Arkham City, but I actually had a bit of a hallelujah moment right at the start of MP3 because of the crisp, detailed textures and how life-like everything was. The soundtrack and the sound in general were great too - love listening to the in-game music while playing, and I thought each piece fit perfectly.

One of my friends (a big Max Payne fan) was a bit dubious about the game because of concerns regarding its length and because Remedy wasn't the developer. I ended up buying the game for him as a graduation present - and he really enjoyed it too. If you're one of those people fixated on game length as a measure of a game's worth, well, I'm sure there's some crappy game out there that's long with a banal story/plot that might interest you.

I had Borderlands GotY, and while it was fun collecting guns at first, it rapidly became dull and repetitive. At a certain point, I just wanted to get it over with and wasn't really even enjoying it by the end. I would have traded a considerable amount of the time that I spent playing Borderlands for a better story with a good ending and just one character that I actually cared about/had some level of interest in. At least with MP3 I was invested in the protagonist and the story for the twelve hours that I spent on my initial run through the single-player campaign (and I'm still playing it too whenever I get the chance).