Impressions of Max Payne 3

I think I’ve finally hit the wall when it comes to Dragon’s Dogma. It’s an awesome game, truly. And I’ve loved every minute of it. But I’m pretty sure I’ve squeezed as much juice from that game as I’m going to. The “New Game Plus” mode was actually a bit disappointing, and I didn’t spend much time with it. All the enemies seem to be the same level as the first time I played through, so I just ended up doing a bunch of level 5 quests with level 50 armor and stats. And that, boys and girls, is a recipe for quickly diminishing returns. Plus, I didn’t see any new uber-loot dropping, just more of the same stuff I’d already unlocked on my first playthrough, so that was a disappointment as well.

I was hoping New Game Plus would extend my playtime with Dragon’s Dogma, but it really just ended up being a very brief diversion following the end credits. Oh well, the first playthrough was more than good enough to make me hungry for a sequel, so I’ll let ‘em slide on the substandard post-game content.

Anywho, I was out and about the other day and decided to pick up Max Payne 3. The purchase was really a spur of the moment thing. I’ve never played the first two games in the series, and despite my love for Rockstar’s GTA franchise, I’ve never been particularly drawn to any adverts for Max Payne.

Unfortunately, nothing else of interest was out, and I needed something to fill the void left by Dragon’s Dogma, so I ended up paying full price for a game which, now, I’m not too keen on.

First, let me just establish that Max Payne is a beautiful game in terms of production values and graphics. The folks over at Rockstar really outdid themselves on this one. It has a very strongly flavored cinematic experience wedged in-between the protracted shooter elements, and tends to exhibit quality writing, even if the inner monologue of the main character is often a bit too reminiscent of a cliched private detective novel.

My biggest problem with Max Payne is really born from my ignorance about the franchise more than anything else. I didn’t really know what to expect, having never played the first two, but I assumed it was something along the lines of a generic third-person action game, albeit heavily leaning on gunplay elements. What I didn’t expect was such a purely shooter-based experience, in which you’re basically just progressing from one gun-battle screen to the next, while taking the occasional story break in-between.

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of people will love Max Payne 3. Like I said, for what it is, it’s a really well-made title. It just happens to not be my cup of tea. I like a little more variety in my games. Some exploration, maybe some puzzle-solving, a few disparate game styles mixed together. Anything to break the monotony, really. Because for me, Max Payne 3 is a very monotonous title. It’s just too heavily focused on that one, very specific, element of game play.

I also had a few pet peeves about Max Payne 3 that made the experience frustrating for me. For starters, there are huge loading times. And I’m talking about loading times that reminded me of playing PC games during the mid-nineties. I’m talking about having to sit there for over five minutes or more between levels, just waiting for the game to get itself in gear.

This was my experience on the PS3 version, so your mileage may vary. But PS3 has a mandatory full install for games, so I can only imagine it being worse on the Xbox 360.

Now, they do a pretty good job of hiding those loading times by playing story sequences over top of them. But if you try to skip the story sequence (which you can) while the game is still loading, a small message appears at the bottom of your screen saying, “Still Loading.” So if you’re re-playing a level you’ve already played three times before, trying to find some particular collectible, you’ll have to sit there for several minutes, watching the same damn story sequence, over and over and over, because you can’t skip it until the game finally finishes loading in the background.

That was huge for me, and very frustrating.

My other pet peeve is somewhat connected, and that has to do with the games attitude regarding collectibles. I played through the first four chapters, and most of the fifth, and each chapter contained a set of “Golden Gun” collectibles that needed to be found. These are essentially hidden gun pieces that - if you find all of them - grant you the ability to toggle infinite ammo with a particular firearm. So in other words, if you find all three pieces of the golden P92 pistol scattered around chapter one, you get the option for infinite ammo with the P92 pistol on subsequent runs through that chapter.

There are also a certain number of story-based clues hidden in each chapter, which also net you certain rewards once you’ve found and examined all of them.

This all sounds fine and dandy, except the game is constantly pressuring you to blitz through every room you encounter, and actually goes so far as to punish you for spending too much time exploring your environment. There were several occasions in which I actually came face-to-face with a “Mission Failed” screen, and had to reload from a previous checkpoint, just because I didn’t exit the current room fast enough.

When you also take into account that Max Payne’s ubiquitous pain killers, which are essentially the only health refills in the game, are practically hidden amid the clutter like collectibles themselves, it only makes the constant push/pull of the games need for exploration all the more frustrating.

So unfortunately, for me, Max Payne 3 is a bust. Great production values and great graphics, but ultimately a very frustrating and far too singularly focused shooter for my taste.