Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

Ok I know the shooter world has changed a lot since I've been playing and the difficulty has increased a significant amount to accomodate the millions of players spending 8 hours a day in CoD multiplayer. With that said, this game is hard for the casual gamer. I do not spend 1000 hours a year playing Call of Duty developing ultra fast twitchy head shot efficiency skills for shooter games. I remember playing Max Payne 1 and 2 and being satisfied with the difficulty though I did play those games on the PC. I'm playing MP3 on the PS3 so perhaps the control hardware is effecting my proficiency - god knows I'm much better on the PC.

This game throws hordes and hordes of enemies at you in wave after wave of action. I can't help but feel Max Payne's movement is slow and clumsy relative to most action heroes in the genre! Heck sometimes just finding your reticule on the screen amidst the chaos is a challenge in itself so I'm not ashamed to admit i play with soft lock on.

max Payne 3 values its own cut scenes about all else. there are many and they will carry you from the conclusion of one shooting sequence directly into the next - sometimes without allowing you to comb the room for ammo after depleting your bullets. Literally, I exhausted my ammo in the office sequence and before I could loot the bodies to replenish, a cut scene took over and started another bloody shooting sequence??? I started that sequence with zero fricking ammo? Thats really rather bush league man. It took me 8-10 tries to run through the room picking up ammo whiles having holes shot in me from 8 different locations in the room.

Beyond little inconveniences like this and a plot that is mostly ridiculous - 750 mercenaries for hire working on a kidnap for ransom job - the game is so bloody well produced I felt like i was interacting with a holywood blockbuster. I mean the production values are just incredible...far beyond anything else i remember playing with the exception of the Uncharted series. But its on that level of polish or very close. I do feel like the action gets very repetitive and its not broken up by other gameplay at all. its just one crazy shoot sequence after another. Bullet time has been diluted a bit as well and the diving shooting thing is rather pointless to me.

All in all a very good game thats missing the higher mark by a few notches for variety, consideration and a rather weak plot - rich guy body guard trying to retrieve kid nap victim? that is so fracking cliche lol