Bold and Back on the Sauce
Max Payne 3 is Rockstar’s follow-up to Remedy’s Max Payne 2 from 2003. It’s been nearly 10 years since Max’s last outing and he’s returned old, jaded, and on the sauce. This time the slums of New York City have been traded for the rough underbelly of São Paulo. Rockstar has put its own touch on the game, forging a mature narrative and adding a cover mechanic. The still frame, comic-style presentation has been traded in for a more cinematic styling, brimming with visual effects. A rock-solid presentation backed by satisfying gameplay make for a well paced, bullet-ridden adventure.
The story follows Max as a hired gun tasked with protecting a high-profile businessman’s wife. Once she goes missing, Max embarks on a formidable journey that drags him through the depths of Brazil while dealing with shady characters and the well-off, debauched, Branco family. The game presents a struggle between these businessmen, low-life street thugs, and an aggressive paramilitary force. The way these forces play against each other is interesting and creates a genuine sense of chaos.
Max sticks out like a sore thumb among the São Paulo populous – he’s a brash American who’s about as concerned with the local culture as he is with his own well-being. His only slightly stable contact in the game is an old Brazilian police counterpart, Passos. He acts as a wingman of sorts and a genuine bond is created between the two throughout. Tommy and Lance from Vice City anyone?
The rugged style and self destructive nature of the game permeate throughout. Max is presented as a deeply flawed character, struggling with substance abuse and searching for self identity. Film grain and polarization effects abound in every cutscene. These effects drive home the theme of Max’s internal struggle with alcohol, pills, and a lack of self-worth. The cutscenes are presented in a foggy, drug-induced haze, narrated by Max’s gravelly voice. The action is packed into an animated, comic-style framing. The way in which these cutscenes unfold feels like Rockstar’s modern GTA experience. Successful gunplay leads the player from cutscene to cutscene delivering the story at a satisfying pace. It’s often hard to find a stopping point once you start playing. Although the game goes a bit overboard on the alcohol abuse and film effects, the mature themes and means used to depict them, are an overall success.
The presentation value and graphics in the game are top-notch. The game will take you through numerous environments including lofty building tops, a moonlit soccer stadium, and a myriad of disheveled favelas. The game is riddled with epic set pieces, creating a memorable romp through the story. Each area has an insane amount of detail packed into it; the environment designers clearly put a lot of thought and research into the spaces they constructed. I couldn’t believe how much detail they crammed into something like a simple restaurant kitchen (The shrimp kabobs on the grill made me hungry)! During the game a few moments present themselves where no enemies attack and the player can roam through the space taking in the environment. Visually, one of the most striking moments of the game is a transition from dusk to night during an action packed crawl through the favelas.
The gameplay in this iteration remains largely unchanged. You have the basic mechanics from the previous game: shoot-dodge and bullet time. One modification is that when Max lands from a shoot-dodge, he can remain on the ground with full shooting capabilities. In addition, a soft-lock feature and cover mechanic have been added. The cover works as expected but fundamentally changes the way the game plays as a whole. When presented with a room full of baddies, my first inclination is to dive into the action and start blasting fools. Unfortunately this only works well in a handful of situations (mainly in the beginning of the game). I found myself forcing the shoot-dodge mechanic in most areas to induce that sort of floaty-action-lunacy that I wanted out of the game. The issue the cover system presents is that it takes away the ridiculous time-slowed action sequences in favor of a more slow paced, cover-to-cover approach. Later in the game, several enemies overwhelm the player, attacking from different tiers in the environment. It’s difficult to see them and impossible to survive without the use of cover. Fortunately the soft-lock feature allows you to snap onto enemies making them easier to spot and dispatch. The only unique thing I enjoyed about the cover system is shoot-dodging out of it and laying into hostiles. There are also some awesome points in the game where the player is forced into bullet-time and must take out large groups of enemies while in some absurd predicaments. Did I mention the game is pretty damn difficult on the standard setting?
This game is very mature. Every corner on the game is filled with Max’s desperate internal dialogue, gratuitous violence, and a gangster/paramilitary threat that is genuinely frightening. One aspect that is particularly violent is the ability to pump multiple rounds into the last remaining foe in a sequence. Once the killing blow on an enemy is landed, slow motion is triggered and the player is given the option to riddle the falling body with countless rounds. Blood spurts out of the body and graphic, chunky entry wounds are depicted when a head-shot finds its mark. It evokes a visceral thrill and sense of catharsis that I indulged in after the harder sequences throughout the story. It also serves a practical purpose as it lets the player know the last enemy in the sequence has been killed and there is no threat of further gunfire.
Overall the game is a satisfying experience. Although nothing truly new is presented to the gameplay, the presentation and well paced delivery of the story make for a fun ride. The strongest point of the game for me is its narrative. The game stands out as a dead-serious, violent tale of a desperate man, out of his element, in a chaotic situation. In light of this, I found myself playing for extended sessions - I just couldn’t put the game down. Max Payne 3 is what you make of it. If you actively try to pull off as much ridiculous gunplay as possible, it can be reminiscent of the action in the previous games - and a lot of fun at that. If you play it like a traditional cover based shooter, you will be presented with a predictable, standard experience dressed up in a snazzy suit.
