I was telling Blue at work that I fully expected to come home and discover trailers of a half-dozen newly announced titles today - for lo, thus it has been in E3s past. But here I am, at home, on my trusty desktop, and nothing! Nada!
Unless you count the rumor that Quantic Dream is unveiling their next year at Sony's presser on Monday - which I don't.
Well, fine. All I want to do is talk about Max Payne and play more Max Payne, so that's what I'll do - in that order.
If you've been paying attention to the blog lately, you've no doubt come to appreciate how much
I appreciate
Max Payne 3 - and I laid it out pretty plainly in the review, but there's multiple things I didn't touch on that I feel are a valuable part of the
Max Payne discussion.
I barely mentioned the Last Man Standing mechanic, I didn't dedicate a paragraph or so to all the lens distortion and cool drunkie effects that saturate the game and I didn't bother telling you how well it transitions from cutscenes to gameplay - 'cause, man...
Every single review I've read for MP3 lays down those bullet points. It's so pervasive that I'm convinced if a media site is of a high enough profile, Rockstar has been telling them "here's a free review copy of our game - now make sure you mention the cool filter effects and how smoothly the game transitions from cutscene to gameplay!"
It's like, seriously - does everyone need to hear the effects in this game look just like those in Man On Fire with Denzel Washington? Is that really what MP3 reminds you of? Not of Hard Boiled or Desperado or Die Hard?
I know it's not nice to accuse people of things (even gigantic collections of people, like Rockstar), but it kinda' got on my nerves that I felt I was reading the same review for Max Payne 3 everywhere I went. And it's not like I intentionally tried to not mention those things - but if I'm trying to explain to you the important points of Max Payne 3, cool filters effects and cutscene transitions aren't even in the top twenty.
Neither is the facial animation - which everyone's lauding as spectacular, and I will only acknowledge as "pleasantly subtle and very capable." Rockstar's facial animation rig - the amount of movement a face in
MP3 is capable of - isn't nearly as impressive as Naughty Dog's and certainly nowhere near that crazy
L.A. Noire tech. That said, it's still well above-par, well in line with the triple-A standard, and let's face it - pleasantly subtle and very capable animation is a far cry better than we see elsewhere, as a general rule.
I felt I should have spent more time detailing how pleasantly surprised I was with how much Max's relocation to Brazil pays off. The detail and variety of locations is sublime, with multiple set pieces directly referencing the designs and atmospheres of Max Payne 2.
Even when it's not doing that, it's constantly shuttling you from one very-different environment to the next - all of which are very cool places to engage in a gun-fu shootout. Max Payne 3 seriously lets you shoot your way through the stratospheric highs of ultimate glamour to the most desperate slums, and I love the fact that - for ninety per cent of the game - Max is a very strange man in a strange land.
I wish I had spent more time detailing the effectiveness of the writing and story. I've loved
Max since 2001, but even after standing in the room where his parents died, even after watching his chance at redemption die in his arms, I never felt more
connected with the fellow than I did, here.
Rockstar's handling of story is excellent. Verbose though he may be, I never wished Max would shut his gob - he was so damned charming. His seething, acid-tongued internal monologues give way to an almost-shy, ever-so-tactful handling of powerful personalities when he actually opens his mouth, and the supporting cast do great things with potentially hammy dialogue and powerful melodrama.
"Max Payyyyyyne! You killed my boy! My only son! I'm comin' after you, you fuck!"
I have no idea who played that guy, but he was awesome.
And that's how I feel about
Max Payne 3. Similar to how I felt about (2010 GotY)
Red Dead Redemption, it is just strength upon strength upon strength.
Art direction - 9/10
Soundtrack - 9/10
Graphics - 9/10
Writing - 9/10
Cast - 9/10
Level design - 9/10
Pacing - 9/10
Design - 9/10
Gameplay - 10/10
I like MP3 more than Red Dead Redemption. RDR was all nines. MP3 is all nines and a ten. Oh - except for like two things...
Load times - 5/10
Lack of bugs (audio) - 7/10 - for one cutscene that always screws up on my PS3.
...which I am more than prepared to accept, in the name of such a uniformly excellent product. So, I'm gonna' go get back to my Old School playthrough. G'night!
