Max Payne 3 Review (Dirk Dickbutt)
I play this game once a year, I had to pull out the physical and install it before and then wait for the updates to finish. Its like 4 or 5 DVDs big, the GTAV physical is 9.
Max Payne 3 is the last game in the Max Payne series. Max is back, and this time more dysfunctional than ever. Having escaped from a series of messed up events in New Jersey, Max joins his pal Raul Passos in Brazil, working for the Bronco family as security and trying to protect them from forces working against them.
Max is very bad at his job.
Now, with blood that may as well be oil, a diet consisting entirely of scotch and painkillers, and the ability to still somehow go bullet time and shoot idiots in the face. Max embarks on a journey to save Fabiana Bronco, the wife of his boss Rodrigo Bronco, after a bunch of Favela gangsters kidnapped her.
Then more bad things happen.
Its a big departure from the rest of the series, there’s a bunch of plot conveniences and other things that sort of irk me, but I don’t think its a bad story. Its mostly about exploitation and corruption, lots of dudes being dinked around and treated like expendable garbage.
Max is a bit more emotional this time around, but I feel like the guy has earned it at this point. He’s a lot more emotive and his voice gets higher than a few decibels more often than before. He’s once again voiced by the late and great James McCaffrey, who I actually didn’t notice it was him the first hour I played back in 2012.
It sounded like him, yeah, but it was 9 years since Max Payne 2 at that point so it makes sense that he just sort of sounded different.
Max Payne 3’s story fumbles in places, yeah, sure, but how’s the game itself?
I don’t know if they still do it, but Rockstar used to do this thing where they would present their new games like they were trying to sell me some kind of business software, or, like, a boat or something.
They started it with Red Dead Redemption and they continued it until GTAV I think, I don’t know if RDR2 had a trailer like that.
You can still find the video I’m talking about on Youtube, where they go into detail talking about how the game’s engine makes man murder super cool. How movement works, how bullets are all their own physical objects, and also how Euphoria was this cool as hell physics engine that make shooting dudes feel good.
Feel good in the sense of gameplay, not feel good in the sense of the voices in your head releasing the dopamine whenever you do it.
Each weapon feels completely different to use just by the big boom it makes and also how the guy you just shot flails like someone getting wasted in an old action movie. Each bullet takes caliber and force of impact/where it hit into effect, making every kill unique.
Guys can fall over furniture, bleed out, drop like a sack of potatoes if you dome them, try to waddle away after I turned their testicles into a popped balloon.
Despite abusing alcohol and painkillers like a teenage girl, Max can still use bullet time and diving, which probably isn’t good for his poor old man bones. Because of the whole “Bullets are objects in the world” thing, you can actually see them coming in slow mo and just, you know, get out of the way, like Max has precognition or took a shit ton of spice beforehand or something.
The entire game is just about gun fight set pieces with very, VERY brief moments of silence in between. The name of the game is to keep moving and use your slow mo strategically while also trying to set up the bad guys for cool looking kills.
There’s no point system or anything, its just fun to do.
Max also left his infinity pocket back in Jersey, so now you can’t carry every gun ever made by mankind. Instead, you have 2 holsters for pistols and Max’s off hand for your assault rifle. It basically just means you can whip out a pistol after mag dumping someone with an AK, or just drop it to dual wield pistols.
Max Payne 3 is a game I actually do play once a year, I might switch it up and play a different Max Payne game next time, but I feel like its the last game of that period where Rockstar would just release in-between games from GTA to GTA.
Remember The Warriors?
The story fumbles, sure, but its still a good time. I’d like to be able to skip cutscenes a bit easier on more playthroughs but other than that, yeah Max Payne 3 is a great time.
Its more Vice than Noir, so its a breath of fresh air there, but I feel like It would go from an 8.5 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10 for me if we went back to New York.
Sam Lake modelled the MP1 villain after his mom.
The Curator join button stood in front of me like a lighthouse in the dark sea…