Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Ambitious"

Max Payne 3 is an amazing game and has some welcome changes that work well. Max Payne 3, unlike Max Payne 2, tries to innovate the game at every possible perspective and succeeds at the majority of them.

Max Payne 3 was developed by Rockstar Games, and not by Remedy. This is not an bad thing but if you look at Rockstar history, the majority of the games are Open World (Grand theft Auto/Red Dead Redemption/Midnight Club/L.A Noire/Bully/etc.) and only a few linear games, like Manhunt, Oni, Red Dead Revolver and some others that I can´t remember. With this game, Rockstar can prove to the audiences that they can make an good game with an linear story without an huge open world environment.

Max Payne 3 story is mind blowing, the crew involved in this project really wanted to make an authentic and amazing experience. English people speak English, Brazilian people speak Portuguese, they even made each part of society speak with different manners. The richest speak almost fluently English (with an Portuguese accent) and an Portuguese more chic and exquisite. The poor people do not speak English, only Portuguese. Some of them use a more rude verbiage, and this is spot on. In the "Brazilian favelas" it is really hard to live, and the criminality is high, so it´s a little bit normal that some people use this type of verbiage.

Max Payne 3 story is pretty much straight forward, Max Payne is getting an rough time forgetting is daughter and wife. He turned himself into an alcoholic, he drinks and consumes painkillers to forget it's life. Max Payne is really down on luck until he meets an old friend, he's name is Passos. Passos gives Max Payne an opportunity to leave the past behind and move to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to try an new life as an personal bodyguard. Max Payne 3 uses almost the same type of narrative of Max Payne 2, but in this one the beginning is less confusing and all over the place. Max Payne 3 timeline moves forward and backwards, providing the player all the details of the story in the right time. The game itself is not confusing, but the player needs to be real focused in all the details. While you go trough the game you will discover an new Max. In the first two games you didn't found Max Payne so hopeless like in this one. you feel that he is getting old and the past is haunting him more than ever. The story really shines and hits the spot on telling what Max has become and what he is going through in Brazil, since you feel his loneliness and sense of an man apart in an society and language that he does not understand. Rockstar treated really well the fans on some missions, there is one mission in particular that made me have an great blast of nostalgia in front of my eyes, off course these are the mission when Max was still in New Jersey and met Passos. Max Payne 3 story is really well crafted, it´s dark, violent, gory and has that feeling of film noir from the beginning to the end. Every revelation and twist comes at the right moment, with an great timing and pacing. There was some particular revelations and moments that caught me off guard. I am going to be honest, I was expecting an good plot from Dan Houser, what I wasn't expecting were some surprises (can´t speak more because it would be spoiler) that made the story line win some extra points.

Rockstar really wanted to evolve Max Payne, so they tried to implement new things, the one that many people are talking about are the cut-scenes. Some people enjoyed them, others not that much. Has an big fan of Metal Gear Solid, I found these cut-scenes amazing. The style, art and tone used are brilliant, you can really feel what Max is going through. If you are an gamer like me (like to see some awesome cut-scenes that are very important to the plot) you will enjoy the in-game cut-scenes, if not... well, put the game aside, you will need to watch the cut-scenes since you cannot skip them. I know that it might be frustrating to some players, but for me, they son´t bother me at all. Some fans a disappointing because the graphic novel style cut-scenes are gone, but with this top notch in-game cut-scenes, i'm happy with the change, since they didn't broke that cinematic noir experience.

The gameplay is also evolved, new and incredible impact physics, the guns feel real and sound awesome. The graphics are with full detail and the character movement is so damn good, you really feel the weight of the character. The soundtrack is also amazing.

This game is amazing and the addition of an great multiplayer game mod makes this game an worthy successor. Rockstar did an amazing job successfully bringing this game to an new level.