It seems most people either absolutely love the MP and are shocked about how good it is or people really loathe it to bits.
 
The past few nights i've really been trying to get into MP and give it a fair shot but it's really starting to grate on my nerves. There is some fun to be had but the controls are the worst offender here.

If your relatively close to someone and they have a bead on you, the game's crappy movement makes it virtually impossible to get away from them if you don't shootdodge your way into some cover or around a corner. And i particularly hate using my shootdodge defensively as i feel it's of better use to me offensively in helping take down an enemy. You're best bet is to confront them and hope for the best.

For the longest time I had no clue in the world what the melee button was and i was losing close quarters combat left and right by people elbowing me in the face. The game makes no mention to tell you on the controller layout screen and based on the SP tutorial, i was assuming that if i got close enough to someone and hit the fire button it would melee....Nope, it's actually triangle -_-

Don't even get me started on the grenades smh. On launch day i didn't realize the grenade had its own dedicated button so i thought you had to equip it at the weapon wheel and then throw it which was infuriatingly time consuming. Once someone told me all you had to do was tap L2 i was relieved thinking this was make using grenades more viable...NOPE. It takes all of 3 seconds just to throw the damn thing and even after you throw it it takes about another 3 before it explodes. It's practically worthless. Most people just lob grenades at the start of a match or when they're playing seige in gang wars hoping they just get lucky.

Sometimes i feel like my button presses don't register. I don't know if it's the spongyness of the dualshock triggers but sometimes when i tap L2 to throw a grenade it wont throw it and because the animation to throw it takes so long as is, I ended up waiting like 2 seconds to see if maybe it's a matter of the animation taking longer than necessary or if it really didn't register. There are times where i double tap the roll button to roll and he wont roll although rolling is pretty much useless as well.

The movement and animations make for a real clunky experience. Where in a twitch shooting environment, i feel i have to think too much about some of my decisions before i actually make them.

It's so funny that MLG had coverage around this game. R* must of thrown huge amounts of money at them because the MP is not really up to par for ordinary casual gaming much less competitive gaming which kind of leads me to believe R* wasn't particularly confident about the MP would be received and/or their overall track record with MP and wanted to get some positive press about Max Payne's MP.

I also ran into some freezing and lagging issues yesterday. One game i had a hard freeze and had to reboot. More commonly (i.e. annoyingly) my game would lag on the kill cam screen. Normally when that screen comes up you have 5 seconds before you can respawn. It would glitch to the point that it would just freeze there for about 10-15 seconds without the option to even respawn. I thought my game froze but i could still hear talking and shooting in the background. Then after those 10-15 seconds, the information on the kill cam screen would show up and then the respawn counter would count down. I was playing one of the game modes called gang wars and this happened about 5 times. Happened at the end of the match too where it tells you which team won. Real annoying. Would have quit but i was afraid of losing my XP

Eh, I think the multiplayer is fun and plays different enough from not only other shooters, but other third person shooters.

They also need to commit to Soft Lock OR Free Aim, it looked like it was split pretty evenly on the 360 and it won't do them any fucking favors by having this community split like that. It's what killed Gears 3 and it will kill Max Payne 3 too. Choices are great, but something fundamental like that that can go either way only splinters groups that won't crossover with each other.

It's not like Soft Lock helps people anyway, the handful of times I went into that playlist with some friends I only ended locking on to the person I wasn't even remotely thinking about shooting, refused headshots as the reticle was deadset on the chest, and of course it makes Paranoia which is a minor parlor trick in Free Aim really turn into a nightmare as you actually lock onto your own teammates.

@Doctorchimp: I definitely agree that having both is a huge mistake. There is no reason to have lock on aiming in an online shooter, ever.

Also for the OP, did you not read the instruction manual, that's the first thing I do while I wait for my game to install and it clearly tells you that you throw grenades by tapping L2. Also your L2 issue sounds like it's with your controller, not the game, because it works fine for me. I agree that it's slow but I feel like it's more for campers.

It's a weird experience for me so far. I have been using the soldier class so far (with the AK) and I have never lost a long range gunfight, however I frequently lose close up encounters, even if I shoot first. However that is likely just me and I will just have to keep playing and improving.

@hbkdx12: It;s funny you say that because pre-every game having a in game single player tutorial it was a reasonable assumption that the user would read the manual. I miss that because so many games are so similar that I feel like most tutorials are pointless and I can find small differences in the manual.

Also I have yet to play that office map, sounds fun!

I'm loving it. Playing death match dual pistols going something like 45-8 on a regular basis. Nothing better than dominating people in the deathmatch with just pistols.

The spawns are kind of busted, especially in Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. It's incredibly easy to post up on the opposing team's spawn and just murder them as soon as they appear.

Also fuck that office building level right in the ass. Worst map in the game.

In some cases, it's pretty fun but it's buggy as fuck. It didn't let me respawn after one particular death and the game didn't actually freeze on me.

Super broken, but super fun, too. Sadly, it feels like the kind of game that's rife with exploits, and will probably be a busted wasteland of cheaters and ultra-dedicateds in no time.

Until then, though, it's a whole lot o' fun.

I haven't really touched it, I play one game and I enjoyed it. But as soon as I finish the story I doubt I'll be putting the disc back in, if I wanted to play a online 3rd person shooter I would play Uncharted 3.

It's really good. I've only done deathmatch levels (I think level 4 is where you unlock the "real" multiplayer, you unlock so much at that point) but it's good fun. Never played Uncharted multiplayer as I only have a 360 but I imagine they're similar from what I've seen. I'm not that good at it but I generally suck at online deathmatch modes anyway. Got like 49 kills, 48 deaths.

I'm definitely leaning more towards the "hate it" side most of the time. My problem is simply that the gameplay does not translate well to a fast-paced multiplayer game. Actually trying to hit someone is a battle within itself because the aiming is so goddamn horrendous. There seems to be quite a lot of people who don't have that problem though, since I seem to get one-shotted constantly. I don't get it. Seeing someone go like 35 and 13 in a deathmatch round is maddening because that doesn't even seem feasible. There are a bunch of weird bugs and balance issues I don't like, but if the game was actually competently playable in the first place, that would make multiplayer worlds better.

Also, not sure if this is a bug or part of a Burst or what, but there have been more than a few instances of me shooting someone and getting their life bar to basically empty, but then my bullets stop having any effect right before they should die, no matter how many times I continue to shoot them. This has lead to a cheap death almost every time.

Oh cool I thought it was just me and my not so great left analog stick, can't go backwards ever. What is with that roll? I'd love to see the game design reasoning behind that!

I think it is ok. I have been playing it a lot over the past 2 days and think it is fun but I doubt I will be sucked into it.