http://www.avitable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/maxpayne3_screenshot.jpg
Should have posted this a while back because it's probably been two months since I played it. I ran through this game this Summer and had a great time doing it.

In a lot of ways, this is the anti-GTA of the RockStar world: It's (very) closed world mayhem where you never drive a vehicle or get any down time. No sandbox here, this is straight story action story action rinse repeat.

If fatigue didn't set in, you could easily play the game straight through. There is never a loading screen, no signal to stop playing except for mid-chapter inserts that are usually so captivating that they keep you playing. More than once, I realized I was playing more for the story than for the action. I love a game where you actually care about the characters, and this one really pays off. Shoot there's this one time where ***SPOILER DELETED*** and you are like WTF! I literally shouted at the screen, and promptly blew some poor guys virtual head off.

If you like combat in other RockStar games, you'll love this. That said, to me it feels a bit loose, and the bullet time takes a while to really get down. Headshots in slow-mo are fun, though, and this game get's pretty brutal. Definitely not one to play with someone else in the room if you mind them seeing you commit horrible acts of bloody carnage.

Graphics are pretty awesome: the game sports some pretty awesome lighting, filters and animation (and I'd love to see some hi-res PC shots some time, the XBOX just can't do those things right), and the Euphoria engine (the thing that makes people move like... you know... people) leads to some interesting stuff. Bad guys grab at their wounds, try to hang on to railings, and generally move more like thinking human beings than rag-dolls. It actually seems like canned animations until some small bug throws off the vibe, but they're few and far between.

It's music keeps with the RockStar tradition of late: awesome and responsive to the action. The song that plays through the last level is awesome (maybe not "Far Away" in RedDead awesome, but pretty good none the less), and I've taken to playing the soundtrack while farming in Diablo.

It's a good game. Maybe not a must buy (never really played the MP, but if that's good I'd go for it) but certainly rent/GameFly/borrow/demo/SteamSale worthy. Try it out.

Travis   Admin wrote on 08/25/2012 at 04:13pm

How long is it? I picked it up in the Steam sale but haven't touched it yet.

The one complaint I have (which amounts to very little since I haven't actually played it) is that it doesn't seem like a Max Payne game. that could be all in how they were advertising it though.

Tungsten   Post Author wrote on 08/25/2012 at 06:02pm

It's fairly long. I think I probably put 15+ hours in the single player, more than most narrative driven stories. After a while, I think it becomes a bit more Max Payne-ish, though they have stepped up the "crazy ass crap" factor.

Travis   Admin wrote on 08/25/2012 at 07:49pm

Crazy ass crap is always fun. I just don't want them to lose the noir.

Tungsten   Post Author wrote on 08/25/2012 at 10:08pm

come to think of it, 15 might be pushing it.... maybe 10

Tungsten   Post Author wrote on 08/25/2012 at 10:09pm

Oh, the noir is there, it's just mixed with "Man on Fire" type of stuff.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 01:28am

Sounds awesome, ill snag it on a Steam sale. This one got lost in the Diablo 3 shuffle for me but many ribbed D3 players for being able to play it because it was a proper single player game with offline mode(the servers were not able to handle the d3 players at the time).

Heard great things.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 01:45am

How are the guns? Is there much variety there?

Travis   Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 01:58am

I really wish Blizzard had emulate Borderlands for the multiplayer. True offline single player, easy drop in multiplayer. If the servers are down, you get no multiplayer or auction house but you can still play.

That said keeping it online is a good form of drm, which was probably one of the major factors, and it keeps the core off the pc to prevent hacking and exploits, which is definitely a good thing.

But yeah, the servers close to launch were laughable.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 08/26/2012 at 02:17am

They said it was a multiplayer game that wasn't about the DRM. In theory I can accept that. In practice though, like I don't know it has all the trapping of it and even if you wanted to go back to a Diablo 3 1.0 world, there is not chance you could as its all server side.

Sort of waffle on how I think about that. Wherein the game is fine, it does feel so much like DRM I am not sure there is a real difference.

Tungsten   Post Author wrote on 08/26/2012 at 03:22am

Diablo 2 required a Server connection to update that character. Sure, you could play offline, but you couldn't play with that character in coop games.

If you want to join this conversation you need to sign in.
Sign Up / Log In