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Rockstar knows how to do sleaze, that's for sure. From the Latino sex clubs of GTA III: Vice City to the rickety saloon bars and whore houses of Red Dead Redemption, this company has always reveled in the sights, smells and pleasures of the low life. And with Max Payne 3, the third part in a downbeat shooter franchise adopted from Finnish developer Remedy, it has crafted a masterpiece of underworld carnality, depravity and violence.
As soon as the action kicks off, Dan and Sam Houser – the enigmatic siblings who run the Rockstar behemoth and steer its creative output – bring their obsession with genre cinema to the fore. Crammed into this story of a fallen cop seeking redemption as a bodyguard in the crime-ridden mega-city of Sao Paulo, there are snatches of Heat, Carlito's Way, Elite Squad and most obviously Man on Fire, Tony Scott's homage to bruised masculinity and doomed heroism.
Indeed, Scott's entire ouvre is here; it's in the agonised self-loathing of the lead character, the brutality of the choreographed set pieces and the hallucinogenic lighting that floods every scene with woozy oranges and yellows. But here, this isn't just about style, it's about subjectivity. Payne is a drunken wreck, delirious with grief over the murder of his wife and daughter a decade ago. His battered state of mind is constantly communicated via a barrage of effects – from blurred, doubled graphics to saturated colours blooming over the screen like migraine flashes. It is a sustained conceit that, in less assured hands, could have become tiring and off-putting very quickly. Here, it's the most enthralling hangover you'll ever have.
Because whatever else Max Payne 3 is, at its heart it's a blisteringly entertaining third-person shooter. Recruited as a private security contractor by an old police academy colleague, our hero is supposed to be looking after Rodrigo Branco and his brothers, a degenerate bunch of property magnates and party monsters, living the high life as the poverty piles up against their ultra secure apartment block. It all goes to hell when a street gang attempts to kidnap Rodrigo's trophy wife, and we're quickly drawn into a bloody war between drug runners, right-wing vigilantes and covert police forces who constantly clash and collude amid the squalor.
This is a breathless hair-trigger blast-'em-up that veers thrillingly between high-class clubs and low-life strip joints, from million-dollar yachts to the tumbling corrugated iron shacks of the nightmarish favelas. Through 14 chapters, the memorable set-piece encounters pile on top of each other; a messy hostage exchange in a football stadium; a tense escape from a crowded bus station, a jail break that makes Oz look like Prisoner Cell Block H. It is relentless, pulverising stuff.
The key to the game is the pitch perfect control system. A customisable auto-targetting system lets players select between hard or soft auto systems, the latter subtly guiding your reticule rather than aggressively yanking it toward specific enemies. Both are smart, seamless and intuitive, allowing newcomers to acclimatise to the turbo-charged pace. There's also a free aim system for veterans, happy to do their own thing with the rather sensitive cross hairs.
Manoeuvering within the environment is super slick too. Hitting "X" gets you into cover from which you can easily target enemies, or blind shoot for a more cautious spray-and-pray approach. Disengaging just takes another tap on "X", while pressing "A" gets you to roll out of cover, allowing Max to speedily traverse an environment without providing too much of a target. Eventually, you start reading locations in micro-seconds, working out how to strafe the floor plan from object to object; enjoying the feel of it. You know you're in good hands when merely getting in to cover feels fun and expressive.
At the core however are bullet time and shootdodge; the twin engines in Payne's brutal, hyper-stylised combat machine. Essentially, they're tweaked updates on the standard recipe – get kills to fill the meter, then press right analogue to go into slow-mo bullet mode, allowing our anti-hero to take out multiple targets while the enemies are still getting their bearings.
These have always been the signature components of the Payne experience, but here, within a series of hugely complex environments, and powered by Natural Motion's advanced character animation physics, they lead to moments of absolutely thrilling action, which perfectly blend the interactive and the cinematic. There's a possibility it ought not be this utterly satisfying to dive headfirst down a stairwell, firing twin Uzis at a roomful of coke-frazzled gang members, but you feel it every single time. Even when you crash into a table (I've done this a lot), or accidentally leap off the side of a boat (this too). We have been promised an interactive tribute to those balletic John Woo sequences for years, and now we have it.
Unlike most Rockstar titles, Max Payne 3 is an entirely linear experience – there is some room to explore certain sections, but we're locked into a narrative corridor and rocketing toward a single inescapable conclusion. While that's hugely restrictive compared to the open worlds of GTA and Red Dead, it has also allowed Rockstar to sharpen its narrative skills – the labrynthine plot, while hardly revolutionary, is involving and carefully delivered, and there are several engaging little side-stories, from unrequited love affairs to the tragic tale of a much-loved local footballer who fails to escape the violence of the favela. Together with snatched news reports and plenty of discoverable clues, these add some depth to the chaotic through-line, and give us sense of this vast, corrupt universe operating just out of Max's field of vision.
Holding all this together is James McCaffrey's masterful performance as Max. His gruffly delivered mental monologue is a world-weary, Picaresque diatribe – part-classic Noir voice-over, part-raging suicide note. There's plenty of pitch dark humour in there, of course, but the over-riding subtext of loss and hopelessness is Rockstar at its indulgent, nihilistic best.
On top of the 10-hour(ish) campaign, there's an arcade mode, split into two options: Score Attack gets you to re-attempt any chapter you like for the highest score possible, adding multipliers to consecutive or stylish hits; New York Minute is all about finishing missions as quickly as possible, earning extra time from kills. Both have global high score tables, but players can also compare scores against their friends, which should keep competitive Payne fanatics amused from sometime.
And of course, there's a diverse selection of multiplayer modes, combining team and solo-based favourites with a bunch of typical Rockstar twists. Payne Killer, for example, puts two players into the roles of Max and his academy cohort Passos – they've just got to survive as long as possible with every other player after them; if one gets killed, the successful assassin takes on the role. This is, of course, all about the fleeting allegiances that flare up between players in the buddy roles, as well as those chasing them, and it's a neat take on the familiar one-against-all mode.
The highlight however is the epic Gang Wars option, which takes elements from the story mode and sows them into a multi-stage team-based face-off, split into a series of different challenges, from conquest-type territorial skirmishes to tense battles with no respawns and bomb levels where one team plants and the other has to diffuse.
There are other cool plays on familiar conventions. Players can select from a range of "Bursts" limited special moves that work like Kill Streak rewards to alter the conditions in your favour. The most amusing is Paranoia, which marks out all the members of an opposing team as enemies to each other, resulting in a frenzied few minutes of accidental team kills. Screams of "don't shoot me, it's just paranoia!" will ring out around the globe.
The one question mark is over the use of bullet time throughout multiplayer, which only effects other players in your sightline. It can be a little confusing and capricious, though with time, may prove a workable USP in a crowded market.
Max Payne 3, then, is another stylish, self-conscious and enthrallingly full-bloodied title from the Rockstar hivemind. If it is at all possible to distil every great Hollywood action flick into one interactive experience – with all the wise-cracking thuggery and anti-hero angst that would entail – this is it.
But Max Payne 3 is no mere tribute to action cinema. There's a chance it points toward a future in which action movies aren't merely copied by games, they are replaced.
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Comments
14 May 2012 5:32PM
Sounds good, roll on Wednesday!
14 May 2012 5:34PM
Nice!
I jumped the gun a bit with this one and have set up a crew for Guardianistas here:
Not a Number
You need to set up a Rockstar Account and then link it to your PSN or GamerTag or whatever. It's pretty simple and seems like it will add some interesting 'meta game' to the whole 'slow motion bullet in the head' shenanigans.
I am pretty sure PS3/PC/XBox can all join the same clan.
14 May 2012 5:37PM
So, forty quid for a ten hour game (with some replay-tweaks)?
:-/
14 May 2012 5:57PM
Well, it could take considerably longer - especially if you go for the hardest setting and really scour each level for clues and golden gun parts. I suspect many people will do it in 15 hours. In fact, I may well edit that line as it's possibly misleading.
There's also a really large multiplayer component, remember.
14 May 2012 6:27PM
Sounds good, saw Charlie Brooker tweeting about it earlier and it sounded like he was having fun. I like the sound of the multiplayer, just wish I had time to play games these days.
14 May 2012 6:31PM
It will turn our children into drug riddled killers.
BAN THIS DISTUSTING PIECE OF ELECTRONIC FILTH!
14 May 2012 6:32PM
I'm actually looking forward to the Rockstar experience distilled into a linear ten hours (even though multiplayer will add countless more to that, I predict). Most recently I completed Mass Effect 3 (35 hours) and have barely scratched the surface of what Skyrim can offer (even at 85 hours) so something relatively 'bite-size' would be a nice change ...
14 May 2012 8:31PM
I've just registered on here and will probably never comment ever again - but I read this review and felt compelled to.
Quote: "spray-and-prey"
Seriously? prey? really? Ok, personally I would have plumped for, 'spray and pray' but if you want to hide around corners, shooting at rabbits and other prey animals, then I would suggest trying out 'Big Game Hunter 2012'
14 May 2012 9:05PM
Thank you for pointing out that typo - I've changed it.
In return, can I advise you that the "really? seriously?" meme is so over now.
14 May 2012 9:28PM
it wasn't a typo, it was a misnomer. I have no idea what the really? seriously? meme is - but thanks for the heads up - no need to get over defensive Keef!
14 May 2012 9:37PM
Lovely review Keef.
I have to ask - does the slow-mo third person gunplay match up to Vanquish? Because I'd take another game that delivers gunplay in a way that entertaining and stylish in a heartbeat.
I also find myself very encouraged by the comment that this isn't another sprawling open-world game. GTA IV just felt too big, with too many distractions and, frankly, annoyances which are a big part of the reason why I never finished that game.
If this tightens up the narrative, the shooting mechanics, the mission structure and still delivers the classic Rockstar style, humour and characterisation, I'm much more likely to be sold.
(Also, I really don't mean to complain in any way, but that last screenshot... are you absolutely sure you meant to put that up?)
14 May 2012 9:49PM
It feels different to Vanquish, but it's still incredible. I've just been having a Twitter conversation about it - Max Payne is effectively bullet hell, but in 3D - it's about navigating bullet trails; an arena of death. The 'repitition' is countered by the sheer number of ways you can exploit each scenario, in terms of cover, weaponry, use of bullet time.
I didn't choose the screens. That one is rather full on isn't it?
14 May 2012 10:17PM
MAX PAYNE 1 and 2 were brilliant games, not just because of the fun of shooting people in slow motion but because they had a very unusual (for the time) metacommentary about their own natures as games. There's a brilliant moment in MP1 when a drug-fuelled Max convinces himself he's in a computer game and is horrified at his life and tragic backstory being reduced to repetitively shooting through the air in slow motion whilst firing guns. There's also brilliant black humour and a focus on the main character's emotional collapse over the course of the two games (until he finds redemption - of a kind - at the end of the second title).
MP3 looks slick, graphically impressive and, based on the writer's previous form with the GTA games, should nail the characterisation angle quite well. However, it does look distinctly less humourous than the first two games and it's disappointing to hear that the comic book cut scenes are out, as well as the toning down of the preposterous voice-overs to something more serious.
Something that the reviews have also made me concerned about is the use of a cover system. Some of Rockstar's previous statements suggested that you can ignore the cover system if you want to go old-school (and in the previous games, jumping in slow motion through mid-air was the cover system), but the reviews all seem to be saying that you can't, and will die if you don't use cover. Cover systems have made shooters a lot less fun than they used to be and it'd be a shame if it was vigorously enforced a game that really doesn't suit it.
14 May 2012 10:51PM
Actually, you have to use cover sparingly, and always as a means of actually getting to the enemy - you can't sit in it; they start bunging in grenades very quickly. I used cover quite a lot because that's how I tend to play, but if you're an accurate shot, an alternative technique is to gather headshots early on and then use the resulting bullettime and shoot dodge to finish up. It's possible to run and gun it with very minimal use of cover.
15 May 2012 12:37AM
Aping Tony Scott films is really scrapping the barrel. The Housers are much, much better than that... how much of the game did they write?
15 May 2012 1:34AM
Don't understand this method of calculating value myself.
So, forty quid for two hours with Jessica Alba?
So, forty quid for 90 minutes of football?
So, twelve quid for two hours at the cinema?
If you want to dispense your time as cheaply as possible, I suggest you buy the game and then sell it when you've completed it. (£40 new - £30 resale value) / 10 hours = £1 an hour.
15 May 2012 7:52AM
not sure if trolling or just a daily mail reader
15 May 2012 7:59AM
And now, an all new episode of "Lords and Ladies", brought to you in part by Aesir Corporation.
15 May 2012 8:12AM
I've just registered on here and will probably never comment ever again - but I read your comment and felt compelled to. You're a bit of a douche aren't you?
15 May 2012 8:45AM
5 star! Keef I'm sold. I have happy memories of playing Max Payne 1, and five star played a central and inspiring role in my musical upbringing, so it's a cosmic coming together of forces that compels me to buy and play Max Payne 3 until another game comes along or the DLC for BF3 lands.
I haven't just registered but dukeguy does sound like a pedantic douche. He's not wrong, but he's not right.
15 May 2012 8:46AM
I can't believe you went through all that trouble constructing that response for a simple typo. Sad sad little man you are
15 May 2012 8:52AM
So, forty quid to fill the car up with petrol and drive to the effing beach? 5 hours wasted!
So, forty quid to eat in a restaurant with friends and then only have to crap it out later? Evening wasted!
Agree. You pay for the pleasure not just for the time.
15 May 2012 9:42AM
Is it as good as Stranglehold? I love that game
15 May 2012 9:57AM
But I bet you've paid over £10 for two hours of Hollywood remake crap?!
15 May 2012 11:29AM
I was going to buy this, but I just decided to play Little King's Story again. I think I made the right choice.
15 May 2012 12:16PM
Just wait till the Mail gets hold of that last screenshot :)
15 May 2012 12:29PM
The Mail wants to ban violent media, The Guardian wants to ban Jeremy Clarkson. Both are equally guilty of hypocrisy.
15 May 2012 12:47PM
To be fair to Max, the guy was coming at him half naked and sporting a Katy Perry tattoo. He probably deserved it!!
15 May 2012 12:51PM
Good review, I'm tempted but the Eurogamer review isn't nearly as positive and mentions a fair few issues with the controls that aren't mentioned here - Can't double check the review cos I'm at work now but it was things like always defaulting back to a single weapon after cutscenes.
Still, after reading that I think I might have been convinced and I don't hold eurogamer in such great regard since their 9/10 SSX review
15 May 2012 12:56PM
I'm not sure I've ever seen the Guardian suggest he should be banned have they. I think they merely go along with consensus that he is quite often a prick.....
That said, he is also quite often very funny.
15 May 2012 12:58PM
I thought that too! Using the new ratings system this review would get an 18 with that picture. I was eating a sandwhich when getting to that point as well!
I'm tempted to buy this now after this review, I hadn't even considered it previously.
15 May 2012 1:02PM
There have definitely been a few articles on The Guardian calling for him to be taken off the air (I can't cite any, but I'm certain there were a few after the whole suicide and strikers incident). Also, the comment sections of anything Clarkson related on The Guardian website are usually horrible. The left just don't appreciate his honesty and the big FU he delivers to the PC brigade.
15 May 2012 1:12PM
Hi Maiquitol - I'm a long time chatterbox lurker, I've requested to join your crew as mr_elcw - very excited about this game :)
15 May 2012 1:38PM
Hmn.
Bargain bucket purchase, methinks.
15 May 2012 1:45PM
Where, KFC?
15 May 2012 2:18PM
Sent you a request to join in the fun / bit of the old ultra-violence.
Will be playing from release day Friday. Cheers
15 May 2012 2:31PM
I AM INCREDIBLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
15 May 2012 3:06PM
Cheers to those who have signed up to the NaN crew for this.
After a slow start, we are pushing for double figure membership now... the Daily Telegraph crew will be quaking in their boots!
Anyone who is interested please feel free to sign up. I am not going to be any kind of leader here - I am just doing the admin of accepting the requests to join - feel free to invite anyone else in.
Here's that link again: Not a Number
15 May 2012 3:36PM
The important question is do any of the goons utter the immortal words "It's Payne! Get him!"
Glad to see a positive review of this, the first 2 games were a blast and this looks like it will be too,
15 May 2012 4:28PM
That's strange, I never noticed the weapons defaulting to single after cut-scenes. It may well have happened, but I got so used to cycling through my entire armoury in every shoot-out that it just didn't impact on my experience. Also, I am so ferociously deadly, it could have defaulted to a feather duster and I would have annihilated everything in the room.
15 May 2012 7:03PM
Love Rockstar games. Although this one isn't open world it'll still be worth it. Can't wait.
15 May 2012 10:32PM
You know, taking the opposing argument to extremes and then 'defeating' it works both ways.
So, using your own logic, I suppose you would be happy shilling 40 quid for a 5-min. video game, provided it was the best 5 minutes of gaming you had ever experienced, correct? Sort of a really nice (interactive) screensaver.
Well, you know what, no doubt the concept is foreign to you, but most of us actually don't have unlimited funds at our disposal, so value for money is kind of important. And, more often than not, 'value' includes both 'quality' (in this case, how good the game is) and 'quantity' (how many hours I can spend having fun with it).
Do you understand "this method of calculating value" any better now?
16 May 2012 12:21PM
Assuming your example of a 5-minute-game-that-was-also-the-best-game-ever did exist, which it doesn't, why would it be worth anything less than top dollar? We'd be talking about a game superior to thousands of other games, across multiple decades - in other words a life-changing, unforgettable experience - delivered in a bite-sized rush. Presumably you could then play it over and over and enjoy it for years to come, since gamers routinely do so for other games that, unlike this hypothetical, can't even boast of being the best gaming experience ever.
Your attempt at an absurd logical extreme doesn't work, since If anything your hypothetical drug-in-game-form could command double or triple normal retail price.
Games of 12 hours or less which provide top-dollar value aren't comparable to some freakish non-existent 5 minute wondergame. Ico was about 6-7 hours long with no multiplayer yet is held up by many as one of the best games ever. Half Life 2 was about 12 hours long with a separately sold multiplayer component, and the same goes. The precursors in the Max Payne series should go without saying. Really, quality over quantity used to be the rule before more people started judging games as if they were family packs of Wagon Wheels, leading devs to substitute quality of experience for feature-bloat. And that's all before pointing out that, unlike the above examples, Max Payne 3 has a multiplayer component - quite an entertaining looking one - which could conceivably provide hundreds of hours of entertainment.
If you measure a game's worth so strictly against the number of hours it kills, single player narrative-driven shooty-type games are unquestionably among the worst value choices you could make, but that should be a given. Far better performers on that scale would be games like Civilisation or Football Manager - or even Dwarf Fortress (free), which takes more hours to learn to play than Max Payne will take to complete. Personally I'm stuck waiting for the PC release of MP3, but I'm very much looking forward to see what R* can pull off when they're forced to deliver a more linear, compact experience, as opposed to their usual meandering sprawl.
16 May 2012 2:15PM
10 hours.
Wow.
And they wonder why piracy is still around...
16 May 2012 2:52PM
I really don't want to get dragged into an endless argument in comment form, however I know I am as much to blame for it happening as you are (since I, too, responded to an already existing post). Here goes then:
I can't help but notice how opposed you are to my hypothetical example of the 5-minute 'supergame'. Can I assume that you consider hiphoppopotamus' example (to which I responded in my post) to be valid and reasonable? You know, the one where he compares playing a good 10-hour game to spending 2 hours with Jessica Alba?
Yes, I did mention my imaginary game as being the 'best game ever' in my comment. But, frankly, it baffles me how you can make the leap from that to referring to it as a "drug-in-game-form" or as a "life-changing, unforgettable experience". Don't you have a personal favourite-game-of-all-time right now? Have you ever been close to getting high from playing it? Have you ever thought of it as an 'almost life-changing experience'? Why should a game that's a bit better than your current favourite be all those things? At the end of the day, the 'best video game ever' is still a video game, and nothing more.
Look, try to think of it like this: Recall your favourite 5-minute segment of any video game you have played so far. Remember how much fun you had playing it. Now if you could have twice as much fun, would you pay £40 for it? Would you recommend it to a friend who hasn't played it?
You see, no matter how you try to spin it, video games are, and always have been, consumer products. And consumer products are evaluated based on their quality, as well as quantity. Now, obviously these terms mean different things when it comes to different products (and services). And when it comes to games that are advertised as being, first and foremost, single-player games, quantity is judged by how long the game is, not by how many pages there are on the manual, or by the size of the box the game is sold in. And yes, open-ended games like Football Manager or Civilization are judged by different standards since, by their very nature, they don't have a finite length to be judged upon, so, please, stop trying to compare apples to oranges.
And, last but not least, if people like me are the reason developers resort to padding their games to provide them with artificial length, then people like you have to be the reason more and more devs feel comfortable releasing games with single-player campaigns that barely last 3 or 4 hours. Or is this a good thing in your book?
16 May 2012 2:54PM
10 hours is way too long for a Max Payne game. MP2 was about three hours long, and all the better for it.
16 May 2012 3:13PM
I assumed irony.
16 May 2012 3:34PM
Sounds like one to hold off on and get when its a bit cheaper probably.
How does the bullet time in multiplayer work Keef? That just sounds confusing.
16 May 2012 8:11PM
Yes, hiphoppopotamus' comparison to a pop concert was valid and reasonable, since people do spend £40 and much more on gigs and other experiences much shorter than those provided by games (by orders of magnitude). From your italics, are you saying you think that Alba is obviously the better experience? I know which one I'd rather spend my money on.
Nobody spends £40 on a 5 minute 'supergame' because, unlike hiphoppo's example, no such thing exists. In order for such a game to exist it would have to be much more than simply '5 minutes of gameplay from your favourite game'. I can't think of any critically acclaimed game that could rely on an isolated 5 minute sequence to carry its whole reputation. What you now seem to be describing, rather, is the nebulous genre of 'casual games', which don't provide an experience comparable to single player story arcs.
Rovio and Popcap, for example, make games that are hugely entertaining for 5 minutes, but only charge budget prices for them because they know nobody would call their stuff the 'best game ever', despite the fact they can be good for hundreds of hours of fun. Your 'supergame', in order to be so short and also be the best game ever, would surely have to be an iconic gaming experience like a Planescape or a Psychonauts but condensed into a 5 minute blast - which is why it's an impossible concept and why it would take on magical euphoric qualities. If your example is not those things, it's just Angry Birds.
Obviously there may be a critical threshold beneath which a single player game is so short it takes the piss, but critical response to classics suggests that threshold is not 10 hours.
However much they fail to reach their aspirations - and the failure is nearly a 100% rate - many games do aspire to something greater, particularly games with a clearly defined narrative. A family pack of Wagon Wheels (another consumer product) won't attempt to establish its value by taking inspiration from classic film & lit, or using emotional hooks, or delivering some kind of ideological message. Many might scoff at the attempts made by games to do the same, but then I'd assume that those gamers would by definition steer clear of story-heavy, shortlived rides like the Max Payne games, Bioshock or most other shooters of that ilk.
And it still continues to make no sense that Max Payne 3's multiplayer element is being repeatedly overlooked in all this 'we want value!' argument.
I'm not aware of any trend of single player games getting shorter in response to consumer demand. They vary now just as much as they did back when Sega was able to generate global hype with 90 minute experiences like their arcade-to-console conversions and Sonic 2. I am conscious of a clear trend, however, of bloating games with features in order deflect criticisms of 'poor value for money'. As such, you get multiplayer games lumped with ill-fitting single player campaigns (BF3), and single-player-suited franchises suddenly appearing with multiplayer elements tacked on, like, well, Max Payne 3. It's fine when this results in good extra content, but other, more common symptoms of this problem are flabby narratives and interminable rehashing of the same gameplay within derivative environments. If MP3 is good and makes sense within its 10 hours, you can be sure I won't be sat there wondering why it wasn't 20 hours instead.
17 May 2012 12:24PM
I think it's reasonably good value all told. I could quite easily spend half that time in the pub for less money - but don't anymore should be said.
As a minor aside - I spent £10 on Journey for two hours (I think, roughly), and I can't trade it in. And I have no complaints whatsoever.