Playing the game on harder difficulty levels, you soon learn that Max is a little more fragile in bullet time than he was in earlier games.įrustratingly often, you’ll dive out of cover like Chow Yun-Fat, only to get stuck on a low wall or table, lose your bullet time and promptly get killed. In reality, there is a tension between cover and bullet time that doesn’t always resolve in a satisfactory way. You’re meant to cower behind walls and furniture while you build up your bullet time, giving the game a rhythm between playing it safe and going in for the kill. The trick is that Max needs to wound and kill enemies to build up bullet time, and this is where the new cover system comes into play. It is paired with the “shoot-dodge” mechanic where Max dives and shoots in slow motion. Bullet time allows Max to get the jump on his enemies by slowing down time around him while being able to aim and shoot at the normal speed.
Max Payne 3 puts the “bullet-time” hook of the earlier Max Payne games right at the centre of its gameplay. The game pulls you into an action-movie world that takes inspiration from sources such as Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Michael Mann and the Denzel Washington film Man on Fire. His involvement with a wealthy family in Sao Paulo draws him into an iniquitous conspiracy and offers him a chance for redemption. He is forced to flee New Jersey and take up contract work as a bodyguard in Latin America after some nasty business involving the mob. Addicted to painkillers and booze, Max is a weather-worn wreck of a man drowning in a sea of self-pity. Max Payne 3 resumes Max’s story years after the events of Max Payne 2. But it has taken only a few tweaks, such as the addition of a Gears of War-style cover system and the obligatory on-rails shooting sections, to make the Max Payne formula feel completely contemporary.
Since we last saw the ex-cop with the constipated grimace in 2003, ownership of the franchise has changed from Finland’s Remedy Entertainment to Rockstar. Drawing on Hollywood realism as much as videogame convention and propelled as much by narrative as gameplay, it was the granddaddy of Uncharted, Gears of War, Alan Wake and the rest of today’s popular cinematic actioners. Max Payne, first released in 2001, pointed the way to the future of the third-person shooter more than any other game released 10 years ago.
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