Ah, our old friend, Mr. Max Payne. I gotta say Rockstar waited a LONG ass time to give us another outing of this series and I’ll gladly admit this is my favorite franchise to come out of their studios. I know I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but I have been catching up on some games that I’ve been neglecting or missed out on.
Note: This is another re-posted article that needed to be reformatted from my original blog on Tumblr.
The Plot: (FULL Spoilers)
Nine years after the death of Mona Sax, Max Payne has left the NYPD and spends his days at a bar in Hoboken, New Jersey, nursing his alcoholism and an addiction to painkillers. During a drunken argument, Max kills the only son of local mob boss Anthony DeMarco, who puts a price on his head. After killing most of DeMarco's gang, Max decides to leave New Jersey with Raul Passos, an old classmate from the police academy who helped him defeat DeMarco's cronies, taking a job as a private security contractor in South America.Max and Passos work for the wealthy Branco family in São Paulo, consisting of three brothers: Rodrigo, a real-estate mogul, Victor, a local politician who aspires to be the city's next mayor, and the hard-partying socialite Marcelo. At a private party, Max saves Rodrigo and his young wife Fabiana from members of the Comando Sombra, a street gang based in the neighboring favela. The gang later strikes again, successfully kidnapping Fabiana and demanding a ransom of $3 million. At the site of the exchange (a football stadium), the deal is interrupted by the Crachá Preto, an outlaw, right-wing paramilitary unit, who kill the Commando Sombra and steal the money. Max and Passos escape and meet with the Branco family for their next move. Victor suggests they rely on Armando Becker and his Unidade de Forças Especiais (UFE), a special police unit, to oversee Fabiana's safe return. Victor, Passos, Marcello and Becker leave via helicopter, moments before the Crachá Preto abruptly raid the Branco offices.
Max eventually finds Fabiana with Marcelo and Giovanna (Fabiana's sister), who were kidnapped while trying to pay Fabiana's ransom themselves. Fabiana is executed and Giovanna and Marcelo are taken away. The UFE raids the favela, and Max witnesses them collaborate with the Crachá Preto, selling them the people they arrested during the raids. Max later witnesses the Crachá Preto necklace Marcello, and escapes with Giovanna. Passos later rescues Giovanna but abandons Max, who is saved by Da Silva.
Da Silva reveals that Passos worked for Victor until he hired Max. Max recalls the time when he and Passos worked as security for a yacht party for Marcelo near Panama, which was attacked by Panamanian soldiers in the Panama Canal. Max escaped the yacht to find Marcelo and Passos trying to drive away with unknown cargo. It hits Max that he was recruited by Passos to be the "fall guy" for whatever illicit activity the Brancos were involved in. Da Silva deduces that Passos and Victor set Max up, so the latter would gain access to his brother's wealth and garner sympathy for elections. Da Silva informs Max about a rundown building, the Imperial Palace Hotel, where the Crachá Preto and UFE are seen entering with prisoners, yet none leave. Max discovers it is the base for a black market organ theft ring and corrupt UFE officers are being paid to deliver the detainees for organ harvesting; he frees the remaining detainees.
Max sets explosives to destroy the entire complex, but is held at gunpoint by Neves, the leader of the Crachá Preto and an ex-UFE member. Passos reappears and kills Neves, thus saving Max, then explains that Marcelo and Victor pressured him into the Panama plot in order to get Rodrigo to share his wealth. Passos apologizes to Max, who forgives him. Passos then leaves Brazil with a pregnant Giovanna to protect both himself and his new family from Victor's attempts to eliminate them. Since Da Silva cannot take any action due to extreme corruption within the police, he suggests that Max "turn himself in" to find incriminating evidence linking the UFE and Victor to the crimes of the Crachá Preto and the Comando Sombra. Max does so and escapes into UFE headquarters as planned, finding a surveillance CD stolen from Rodrigo's office and learning the identity of the assassin - a high-ranking UFE member named Bachmeyer. Max kills him in vengeance for Rodrigo's murder, and confronts Becker, but Victor appears and holds Max at gunpoint. Victor explains that he ordered the Crachá Preto to ambush the exchange at the stadium, which went toward funding the organ harvesting ring, the profits of which assisted in the funding of his campaign.
A week later, Max finds out that the remains of Becker's UFE battalion has been disbanded indefinitely due to their ties to the illegal organ harvesting ring, while Victor has been found hanged in his cell, although the circumstances to his death are unclear as to whether it was suicide or murder. Max walks into the sunset, satisfied with the outcome of the last few weeks, and having found some solace after all the years of heartache.
The Verdict:
The Good:
Rockstar hasn’t changed much from the Max Payne we know and love. He’s still fucked up in the head after the murder of his wife and daughter plus the loss of Mona Sax in Max Payne 2. Before people point it out - YES, I know if you beat the game on the hardest difficulty, that Mona Sax survives the endgame ordeal, but they are using the original ending for continuity sake; much like Metal Gear Solid series went by the Meryl being still alive ending in the later sequels. An old friend from his police academy days drags Payne out of his pit of self-pity and into a seemingly easy bodyguard job in Brazil, protecting the Branco family of rich snobs. It wouldn’t be Max Payne if things didn’t take a dive into the shit tank, so expect many screwjobs and things not being so cut-and-dry here as well as in previous entries. The plot is weaved in a creative manner that keeps you interested from start to finish. The story spans two disks worth of content.Much like the previous entries in the series, Max Payne 3 sports a very enjoyable soundtrack. If you’re savvy and look around in the environment during the campaign, you’d even find a few throwbacks to the original Max Payne score. There’s many more than suitable tracks for the environments and scenarios that Max gets himself into.
Occasionally, the game drifts back into Max’s past and we’re treated with the classic Max Payne garb and environments. As always, James G. McCaffrey provides his talents to his voice again in this third entry as Max Payne. McCaffrey has aged just as much as the character has and it’s a rare treat that we get to see gaming icons age and portrayed as vulnerable human beings, despite of all of the stellar things that they accomplish at our control. If anything, I think that that’s what this game does best in its narrative - it displays a man’s inner turmoil and his path to redemption to climb out of his seaming endless pit of despair and anguish.
The Bad:
When I rented the title from my local Blockbuster, the guy at the register went on and on about how brutally hard this game was. I normally brush his opinion out the other ear as if he’s a moron, but I gotta say in this game he’s right. For a game that’s made a name for itself on last generation consoles for reckless, John Woo-esque gameplay, it’s shocking to see that you will RARELY resort to Shootdodging at all in this newest outing. I personally can’t STAND the recovery animation for it. I know it’s been roughly ten years since I’ve played the last entry, but I don’t remember Max being so sluggish and slow to rise after Shootdodging. More commonly, I found myself, hiding behind cover like a coward and picking my shots when and where I could. I could honestly count on one hand how many times I actually resorted to using the series’ staple shootdodging. More frequently the game’s AI has INSANELY accurate precision aiming, resulting many one-shot KO deaths via headshots before you know who or what killed you and from where. I find it strangely odd that they can shoot the wings off a fly but can’t throw grenades accurately for shit. What’s up with that?The Last Stand mechanic (the game freeze frames in a one-on-one shoot off between you and the guy who has you about to die) was cool the first 3-5 times but it’s VERY flawed. If the opponent who shot you goes into cover, you cannot get your redemption and you’re stuck in slow-mo for roughly a minute and a half before seeing that FAILED game over screen. It would not have hurt for them to highlight that enemy who you need to focus on in firefights with multiple foes onscreen at once.
The Cover Mechanic. It’s hit-or-miss here. Combined with the expert aiming of the AI, you’d find yourself gunned down to death before even getting into cover or even peeking out briefly to get your bearings. An option to quickly move from cover to cover would have been a GREAT asset here. Hell, or take that mechanic from Vanquish where Bullet Time is applied as you vault over cover would’ve taken this title to the next level. But again, it’s a missed opportunity. The lack of innovation here really makes this title seem like it was more suited for the last generation of gaming rather than the present.
The Plot. Without any spoilers, I’ll say that the lack of a love interest was really disappointing. To see Max’s life spiral out of control in the last two games and he continue the trend of not being able to save the ones he cares for most in his life, it would have been cool to introduce a female companion for him to defies that cliche of his life. They started the trend since Max Payne 2 where they were slowly stepping away from the film noir presentation, but it hurts me a little that they stepped further away from that in this entry. Max’s narration never disappoints but it comes off as a narrative that would have been in the pre-show teaser trailers for Sin City and Scarface on Blu-Ray.
The Ugly:
Let’s start with visuals. On disk 1, the character renders are roughly the same grade as Max Payne 2 on last generation consoles with a HD finish to them, but on Disk 2 it’s a vast improvement, as clothing doesn’t look painted on and everyone doesn’t have that same generic painted-on rendered face.I already have bad eyes, but this game made it worse with the flashing/blur effect they use during cutscenes and set pieces. I probably could have finished the game even sooner if I didn’t have to constantly take breaks for my eyes to recover from that effect or ease the headache it was causing me. If you sensitive eyes, I’ll gladly advise you from NOT playing this title or at least play it periodically in spells with several breaks in-between.
Any replay value?
The game isn’t long at all, but if you’re fan of the series, then you already know that these games are strictly rentals. I clocked roughly 10 or more hours through the total campaign. There’s more to be had with the extra modes and chores, such as In A New York Minute (a race against the clock through the gunfights of the game), obtaining all of the golden guns and clues within levels, and unlocking harder difficulties, but outside of that, there’s not much other reason to return to the game if you’re looking for a pure single player experience here. I really can’t fault the game at all for that too much, as the previous entries were roughly the same weekend/rainy day affairs as well.Glitches?
There was a glitch I encountered on Chapter XIII whereas Max Payne dropped his guns to play the original Max Payne score on the piano by the elevator to the penthouse His arms floated away and stuck themselves awkwardly out of his chest and head for a few minutes but it fortunately switched back to normal by the next gunfight. You’d think this generation’s of gaming would be over the “ragdoll corpse twitching era” from the last generation from shooters but it’s popped up a few times in this game as well, especially during KillCams — resulting in me laughing hilarious loud at the body jerk reactions. You’d think something like that would get past the debugging guys before retail release.
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