Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Don't believe the hype"

I have no idea what made me buy this ridiculous, defilement of a great series, sequel. I love Max Payne 1. It is one of my favourite games of all time. It had incredible atmosphere, gunplay, ridiculous monologues, and great balance. Rockstar took what made Max Payne one of the greats and too a **** all over it.

Let's start with the terrible dialogue/monologue. Who the **** wrote this crap?! Did they even graduate high school? It is one of the most annoying and unproffessional pieces of writing I have ever seen in a game. The first Max Payne game and even the second had so many metaphors and other literary devices that it made the whole game seem poetic. Sure it was over the top, but that's what gave the game such a unique feel. MP3 feels like a bad headache.

The comic strips are now replaced with full on cutscenes... Could have been fine, but no! Let's add some TV scanlines and flashes every two seconds, and let's have the cutscenes play every time you kill 5 enemies and walk through a door. WTF!? I didn't mind this in Metal Gear because there was an interesting storyline, saturated with interesting characters. Max Payne 3 has neither! The whole story is ridiculous, it felt like I was playing Man On Fire ...the game. Instead of Denzel we get some fat mirage of what used to be a stellar character.

Alright... let's get to the gameplay. Most of what's here is fantastic. But it is held back by some stupid notion that every game needs to be Gears or COD. **** that! **** the cover system and the close up camera angles. When Max is in the air slow mo blowing heads off of goons, the game is freaking awesome. But when you are thrown into a room full of bad guys and the weapon has auto switched to a handgun and a flashy cutscene shows Ma get into cover... well, I'll tell you what that is... that is the game controlling me! That is Rockstar telling me that I need to use a handgun in this scenario and take cover under that garbage can... That, my friends, is not what Max Payne was ever about.

Gameplay (6/10)

+Great controls and feel of weapons
+Varied environments and enemies
+Mini boss-like fights break up the pace
+Cool slow mo deathcam
+No health regen
+Sweet "on rails" type slow mo parts

-Gameplay is way too segmented and separated by too many cutscenes
-No grenades! WTF?
-Hard to see enemies in most environments
-All over the place difficulty curve (previous Payne games had a very balanced approach to increasing difficulty)
-No save anywhere (however checkpoints are ridiculously frequent)
-Too many times the game wants you to use cover
-Some enemies take way too many hits to the torso to die... I mean the ones not wearing a vest of course
-Weapon cary limit is for COD and Gears, **** off Rockstar, there is nothing realistic about this game, don't pretend there is

Graphics (9/10):

+Great looking environments
+Great models
+Huge variety in environmental design
+Good special effects
+Great framerate on my rig

-Animations could be better
-Absolutely retarded cutscenes plagued with flashes, tv lines, frame splits, and idiotic key words that pop up when someone says them

Sound (8/10):

+Great gun sounds
+Good vocal quality
+Mostly good soundtrack

-Hearing Max Payne theme in this game infuriates me...
-Some crappy voice acting here and there (no amount of acting can save the writing however)

Value (5/10):

+Ten hour campaign (longer than the other 2 games)
-too bad half of that time is for stupidly edited cutscenes
-Overpriced
-Non replayable
-Have to sing up for social club just to get past the start screen

If you are a fan of the Payne series, and has been holding out of buying this game for financial reasons, keep your money in your bank. There are better things in life sixty bucks can buy. Rockstar can take their Social Club and shove it.