Comments on: Thoughts: Max Payne 3.

By: Griff

Griff — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 05:43:32 +0000

I knew this would be shit the moment they said it was set in Brazil, because nothing says “film noir” like a bright, sunny tropical setting, am I right?

either Rockstar was too dumb to realize this or we’re intentionally being ironic by setting it there, either way it’s retarded

By: thecat17

thecat17 — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 23:27:57 +0000

I, for one, really appreciate the difficulty level of Max Payne 3. That’s not to say that I didn’t get super enraged at dying over and over (I played on the hardest difficulty setting), but I found the mechanics of the shooting too much fun to give up playing, and the story and characters intriguing enough to keep pushing on. Given that many games I’ve played these days seem to be set on automatic Easy Mode, even on the hardest difficulty levels, I still feel that MP3 is a true hardcore gamer’s game. The sense of accomplishment for finally getting to another checkpoint felt utterly satisfying. And I remember finding myself dying less often as the game went on, which I take as myself understanding the mechanics of the gunplay more.

I honestly felt that MP3 was one of the best games I’d played in 2012. Unpopular opinion, I know. But the shooting was meatier and more satisfying than, say, Borderlands 2 which I felt had very weak shooting mechanics but still got critical acclaim left and right. I’m still a bit torn whether there may not have been enough gameplay in-between the hefty amount of cinematics, but the ride was awesome and I certainly did not regret taking it.

I applaud Rockstar Games for attempting to make something different. The lack of loading screens hidden by the cinematics made the experience more immersive for me, and made it more novel.

There are points you’ve made in your article that I’d like to offer my own perspectives on because I don’t agree, and there are some things I agree with that I felt may have been supposed drawbacks to the game too. I first read the article last night and am commenting on what I remember you writing about instead of re-reading the article again. Maybe I’ll get to that in another comment.

Kudos on writing an excellent article, even if I don’t agree with portions of it.

By: Aleksei Volchok

Aleksei Volchok — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:22:29 +0000

As for Max Payne – gameplay is just dull. Shooting first 300 guys in slo-mo is fun, but afterwards everything becomes just boring grinding. And that’s the only way gameplay correlates with story: the story becomes similar mashup of meaningless actions and expected betrayals of everyone by anyone. Empty, bad game.

By: Aleksei Volchok

Aleksei Volchok — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:17:38 +0000

Fire Emblem really suffers from permadeath. You are very limited and tactics as well as AI that doesn’t try to win, it only wants to force you to restart by killing your beloved unique character. That makes you value tactics like Battle for Wesnoth: no fancy story and unique characters but interesting and diverse gameplay.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:59:09 +0000

Turning the difficulty down would have been admitting defeat, and anyway it’s the developer’s responsibility to make sure a feature they’ve included in a game doesn’t horribly break it. Again, it actually does offend me that so much effort has gone into how the game looks but they couldn’t be bothered to ensure one of their basic gameplay features worked properly.

By: innokenti

innokenti — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:21:37 +0000

I really did not like Max Payne 1 or 2 either in way of story, or telling, or gameplay (it’s a wonder I played any of 2, actually), but I absolutely loved 3. It was bright, but noir, it had bucketloads of gritty narration that despite the cheesiness was… enjoyable to go through. And it had pretty great combat – there were a few frustrations, sure, but for the most part it was incredibly fun and robust. I did try it on the difficulty below though, because I had a feel for how silly-unforgiving it might be on something harder…

Shame you couldn’t enjoy it (or turn the difficulty down), because I thought it was a pleasantly entertaining and juicy experience. Nothing revolutionary, but a Max Payne I could actually definitely get behind.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:26:33 +0000

I recall that the original Max Payne was almost as much of a pain in terms of enemies (my memory is too hazy to remember whether or not the camera issues and whatnot were such a problem back then) but the noir approach was fresh enough back then to get me through it. I only got around to playing Max Payne 2 a couple of years back, and while the subsequent (short) review was apparently not one of the ones I retroactively lifted and put on here I found that it was a pretty good story welded to a somewhat mediocre game. It certainly didn’t enrage me to the extent that Max Payne 3 did, anyway.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:24:23 +0000

What was your opinion on the original bunch of Paynes? I enjoyed the first two at the time, for sure, but I went back to Max Payne 1 a few years ago and good God it’s just as unforgiving. I don’t want to go back to Max Payne 2 now >_>