You're not the only one that hates it, but I'm not saying I don't.. I love it

It's amazing how many people can confuse clunky controls with weighty controls.

In the later levels where they're many scenarios of you being pinned down needing to take on a bunch o dudes, if you run out of ammo, you're LITERALLY just fucked. Emerge from cover and get slaughtered, then try again. Sometimes you don't even need to leave cover!

You cant have a health system like MP and have scenarios like this where you cant sit and recover to try again. It's either a regen system whilst waiting in cover, or have some cover traversal mechanic that lets me work with the enemies even though I have limited health. Don't just lock me into one spot after a cutscene when I've just fought a bunch o dudes and I have no health. This leaves me no ammo and no options.

I'm very love/hate with this at the minute. Loving Max's character arc and the supporting cast along with their motivations, but for everything the game does right, it seems to do 10 things wrong.

@GenocidalKitten said:

@PrivateIronTFU said:

Yes, you are the ONLY ONE. You are the Highlander of hating Max Payne 3.

It's a figure of speech, I really don't understand how people don't know that, well they probably do and just want to make an annoying, snarky, useless comment.

Oh, come on. It's just a joke. Chill the fuck out.

its a little too realistic the fact that bullet dodging isnt that useful is kinda annoying

although the mp is amazing :)

I thought they were pretty good about health/checkpointing. The fact that they'll give you painkillers if you get smoked too much is a nice touch. However, the only thing that would kind of suck is when you get pulled out of a cutscene, and you now were equipped with a totally different weapon than what you had. I hate how I would have my rifle out(which is what I needed to use for ammo/damage reasons), and then when I come out of the cutscene I have that by my side and instead have a piddly .38 ready. They did that all the time, and it was obnoxious. Also, didn't like the occasional situations where they would throw you out of a cutscene, running straight for several bad guys, with no cover around you. That's just dumb design. They weren't deal breakers, just out of touch.

The game is frustrating as all hell at first. I hated it for the same reasons you hated it.

Fiddle with the aim settings, find something you're comfortable with, and overall just keep pushing forward. It gets a hell of a lot better.

@ShalashaskaUK666: Totally hear you on all counts. This game had me fulminating with rage during the stadium shoot out in the stands. I know Max is supposed to be a drunkard and addicted to pills but I had no idea he'd control like that as well.

He takes an age to get into/out of cover or get the fuck up off the ground, even changing direction is agony. All the enemies in the stadium part are equipped with body armour so taking them out pretty much requires head shots unless you want to waste all your ammo and die while Max fumbles like a virgin to reload his gun. There's also an unforgiving sniping section that swaps your aiming to the left stick for absolutely no good reason other than to fuck you.

The checkpoints occur at cutscenes rather than between waves of enemies, which are numerous and whose placement is just vindictive. Shot all 20 armoured dudes in the stands while your buddy who is ostensibly supposed to be providing sniper cover drinks beers and has a wank? Good work! You're probably low on health so we put two dudes with shotties in front of the pills cabinet around the next corner to gang bang you.

Why does Max switch back to the pistol after every incidental cutscene? Because he is a drunken asshole. Why does bullet time slow your aiming? Because Rockstar are assholes.

I have other things to say about the quality of the writing and Max's character specifically, but I guess I need to slog through the game until I can be sure I'm justified in saying them. Easy mode here I come.

Edit: People who have been apologising for all this by pointing out how realistic the movement is: you can slow down time and painkillers cure bullet wounds. If I wanted realistic I wouldn't be playing video games.

Edit 2: Looks like I don't have to say anything about the writing after all, as Entertainment Weekly have already said it.

So I FINALLY finished it this morning.

I had some pretty fun moments in terms of JUST making it through some gun battles near the end. I do think I totally got the hang of the game in the second half, but my final thoughts on it are that this didn't need to be a Max Payne game at all.

Going off Rockstar's established credibility, they could have just created a new IP about an ex cop in Brazil, and it would have had the same story beats as this. Or maybe make it an offshoot of the main MP franchise, like 'Max Payne: Fallen Angel' or something. I would have loved SOME connection to the old games during the flashback scenes, anything to try and give a reason why this couldn't have been a seperate franchise, but alas we get nothing.

To be completely honest I didn't really follow the story when the major twists started flowing in, I thought they were pretty hamfisted and conclusion-jumping in terms of establishing the real villains, therefore instead my motivation for finishing the game was just for the sake of that I'd started it.

Final thoughts on the mechanics of the game are that you can't really riddle a dude with bullets until the final one, which is cool for a 'fuck YOU, I got the final shot' kinda thing, but I just found myself having to resort to bullet-time-in-cover headshots to avoid getting shot myself, because Max doesnt have enough health to just up and run through a bunch o guys.

I guess taken as a whole, its definitely a very memorable experience, and I'll probably go through it again at some point. As for now there were just too many absolutely frustrating as FUCK moments for me, including a glitch in the second last battle where Max wouldn't take cover or fire a weapon, so that was fun! His character model eventually spazzed out and floundered about on the floor, and then I could play again haha!

All in all, Max Layme (I know) :D

@ShalashaskaUK666 said:

I just found myself having to resort to bullet-time-in-cover headshots to avoid getting shot myself

Man, that sounds like a miserable way to play this game.

Shootdodging is a must if you want to deal the most damage while taking the least.

I didn't like the game either.  Max's constant crying and moaning was just really horrid.  I mean QQ a river you pussy.  Then his constant ramblings during missions.  The presentation got annoying real fast.  Story was stupid and poorly told.
 
I didn't have any issues with the actual gameplay like the aim which I thought was good on free aim.

I use Free-Aim. Haven't had a problem.

Are we seriously still making threads with the title "Am I the only one?" How is this not outlawed by now?

I definitely prefer this to Uncharted 3. On chapter 5. Last couple chapters have been great

Good music and dialogue

Shame about the flashy Tony Scott over the top editing and the words on the screen, not really needed

I have a few issues. I know it's a third person shooter but it is repetitive as hell, I just found it a bit of a grind at times. There's very little variation in the weapons and also why no projectiles? Have I missed something or is this a Max Payne game without Molotov Cocktails?

Also had this major issue with one part of the story.

Spoilers Below

When Max descends on the place were Marcelo and the girl are being held he just walks in and asks the guards nicely to release them and then gets disarmed like a pussy and they get shot. That was such an anti-climax. This is a guy who can shoot rockets out of the damn sky, surely a few guards wouldn't have been an issue!

Anyway, good game nonetheless, just not as good as 1 & 2. Love the little TV cartoons/adverts.

This is one of those "Am i the only one" that's probably true.

As the game goes on - (I am just into part III) I am loving it more and more. I am playing it on Hard wth free aim(the toughest you can go for at the start) and it took a while to get used to the controls and a bit of fiddling about with settings but as the game has gone on I have got better and better until now I feel really in control of Max.

I didn't play the first 2 so have no preconceptions but I think the shine and style R* have delivered with this game is up with the best of everything they have done and makes me really excited for GTA5. All the characters have real, believable personaltites, the settings seem realistic and detailed and I think the action is superb with loads of scope for really cool slo-mo hijinks. Dropping the buses on top of the paramilitiaries was a particular fave.

The only crease is the usual R* problem of the story and the action seeming to happen in two separate realities. You have believable cut-scenes and story and then action where your protagnoist mows down hundreds of people. This same jarring effect hampered Red Dead, but it is tollerable if you can suspend disbelief, and if it is all presented with as much panache as R* do.

this game sucks, rockstar has sunk to a new low. first there was la noire now this piece of shit. if i wanted to watch a shitty action movie i wouldn't, if i wanted to spend the whole game in slow motion i wouldn't, what the fuck were they thinking? this is just another shitty video game where you over and over again the same shit until it ends and you put it away and never play it again...oh yeah, just like max payne 1 and 2, imagine that. wow, i'm glad i stole this game because if i paid for it i'd be going to rockstar headquarters in nyc to get my money back