Max Payne 3 - Review

Due to the success of games such as Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire, many have come to expect the Rockstar Games label to exclusively deliver free-roaming, immersive world experiences. It was for this reason that I was hesitant to pick up Max Payne 3 - a sequel to the groundbreaking Remedy games series that plainly announced its intentions to deliver nothing more than a linear, cinematic campaign.
In this modern video gaming era, players are given so much freedom of choice. They can roam a vast world hunting dragons and pursuing numerous optional quests in Skyrim. They can choose any item from a vast arsenal to engage their enemy in Battlefield 3 and leave a crumbling, battle scarred terrain in their wake. They can ride around, blasting away fellow players and gangs of NPC bandits in Rockstar's own Red Dead Redemption multiplayer and explore a vast story terrain in the single player. With games like these occupying our attention, is there really still room for the linear storyline?

Did I mention the incredible lighting?

Freedom of choice is not one of Max Payne 3's strong points. As I was channelled from room to room, finding only one unlocked exit door in every area, I quickly realised I wasn't getting the opportunity to make any game changing decisions here. Enemies would pop out on cue, and once they were dead I would move on to the next room. Occasional quicktime events would mix things up a bit, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Getting killed repeatedly because I hadn't performed the correct action on cue was beginning to get frustrating, and the earlier half of the game seems fixated with forcing you to use slow-motion every time you get into a firefight. I know this is essentially what Max Payne is all about - slow motion diving into absurd numbers of armed thugs - but the option to take a different approach and survive would have been nice. Only in later levels, once you pick up the heavy duty weapons, do you find that slow-mo is no longer necessary to keep you alive, and then the game becomes nothing more than a straight up third-person action game. Also irritating is the use of the old-school painkillers mechanic. There is no regenerating health system, and at gruelling points in the game you tend to haphazardly sacrifice yourself in order to come back with a clean health bar and the bonus helping of painkillers the game gives you when times become tough. It feels like cheating, but expecting to stand any chance of survival with a fraction of health and no aid in sight is foolish. This game is tough.
In addition to the difficulty levels themselves (I played through on Medium and found it to be challenging), there are also 3 targeting modes to play the game with, varying from full auto-lock to free targeting. It just depends which kind of playstyle you prefer. There are also collectible weapon parts that unlock shiny gold versions of the single player firearms, but this alone isn't enough incentive to make me want to go back and replay the campaign. It's merely an added bonus to amuse those obsessed with 100% completion.

The previous games are referenced aplenty

The gunplay itself is nice, and surprisingly Max can only carry two sidearms and an assault weapon, which is a nice practical touch. If you draw dual sidearms, he drops the assault weapon since he can't magically hide it down his trousers like in most other games, and if you pull a single sidearm, Max carries the assault weapon in his spare hand like you'd imagine a real person would. Its just minor detail, but it's all brought alive by the fantastic character animation.
And there's a cover system which works efficiently, but unusually it doesn't let you transition from cover to cover, which was quite inconvenient during some of the more intense shootouts. While this cover system is new to the Max Payne series, it's nothing new to the genre.
Additionally, at the end of a slow motion dive, you can now remain lying on the floor and orient yourself 360 degrees with a fluid, seamless animation. I thought this was a very nice touch, as standing up into a barrage of weapons fire wasn't always the obvious option.
The violence doesn't really pull any punches, showing gratuitous quantities of spurting blood and holes in skulls in slow motion. Admittedly, an action game of this serious nature would probably suffer from having reduced violence. Since the core mechanic involves killing lots of people, the player would likely feel cheated if it were a bloodless ragdoll physics affair. The gore is a little over the top at times though, but not forced or distasteful.

But considering all that's come before, none of this is really that original. It's essentially just a facelift of features from the previous games in the series, or mechanics lifted from other, more current titles. If reliving the old-school Max Payne experience sounds like your thing, then you'll love this game. If not, it'll just feel like playing an updated action title from the early 2000s, complete with punishing health levels and a basic (but forgiving) checkpoint system.

A human character in an action videogame? Surely not?

It's odd, but what saves this game from mediocrity is not the gameplay itself, but the presentation. First of all, the game looks stunning. Environments are uniquely rendered so you'll never feel like you're stepping into the same area twice, and while unexplorable, the panoramic landscapes offer the illusion of a real, living world outside the playable boundaries. The level of detail is absurd, with desks littered with the personal effects of unseen characters, the police station complete with an obligatory box of donuts and the prison cells adorned with scrawled graffiti above clogged, overflowing sinks. Character models are so lifelike you'll be mistaking them for real people at times, especially during the stylish, cinematic cutscenes. These cutscenes flow directly into the action, so seamlessly at times that you won't realise you're back in control until you're already half dead. There are no visible loading screens apart from the one preceding the main menu, as all loading sections are masked under these storytelling sequences. It all lends itself to that sense of playing through an interactive action movie, with your white vested John McLane-alike protagonist dishing out the justice.
The story is incredible too, immersing the player from minute one into the world of Max Payne. A kidnapped wife in Sao Paulo, murderous gangs from the Favela and a merciless police force reminiscent of those in the Jose Padhila Elite Squad movies. It's all here, and even better, it's guided by an incredibly convincing voice cast and Rockstar's typically smooth and articulate character animation. Payne's noir detective style voiceover is present just as it was before, and infact there isn't an awful lot of dialogue between the game's characters. It's primarily Payne's monologue guiding us through the story beats, allowing us access to his own unique view of proceedings.
The campaign is impressively long too at roughly 10 hours in duration, especially for a game of this type. The music is a fitting rhythm of electronic bass and thundering percussion, and the original Max Payne theme makes an appearance on the title screen, and also via a sneaky interactive piano cameo.

The multiplayer deserves a mention for being far more than just a tacked on extra. Customisation options are quite impressive, especially in terms of your online avatar's appearance. There are plenty of unlocks and rewards, and the slow-motion ability comes into play here too. Multiplayer matches can be played in a series of 'mini-narratives' that string together one game after the other with an overarching objective, and while the online seems fast paced and frenetic at first, I'm sure there's lots to like once I've had time to learn the ropes. Multiplayer maps are small deathmatch type arenas, but it's obvious Rockstar have built upon the success of their Red Dead Redemption multiplayer to create something quite formidable. It's not going to keep gamers away from the likes of the criminally overrated Call of Duty series for example, but it's certainly a way to indulge your enjoyment of Max Payne once the campaign is over.

Isn't that the guy from Breaking Bad?

While the bullet-spraying gameplay certainly warrants a playthrough for the action junkies out there, it's the story arc of the title character that's truly gripping. We initially see Max via playable flashback sequences, fulfilling the familiar role of washed out cop, just as we remember him. He's a drunk and a loner, frequenting the bars of a consistently rainy, noir styled New York City and kicking up trouble with the local mob. As he moves to Brazil, takes up new contracts, makes new allies and battles his own inner demons (also knows as drugs and alcohol), we watch him struggle to identify his own problems. This is a mature story with real world issues, and Max's journey through the game isn't a pleasant one. Many unexpected surprises await him, and his resolutions to problems are often poorly handled or unsuccessful, illustrating a flawed human beneath the tough guy persona.
By the time Max Payne 3 concludes, Payne is a reformed, visually changed character. Like the game itself, everything is familiar, yet perceptibly different. In daring to change the established image of this video gaming icon, Rockstar have bravely taken the series into previously unmapped territory, and given the character an entirely new layer of personality. From the dark, snowy, rainy streets of New York to the bright sunlit tropics of Brazil, now sporting Hawaiian shirts and a grade 0 haircut, Max Payne goes through a dramatic character transformation, and as with all great stories, the true conflict is within the man himself.