On a visual and presentation level, MP3 is pretty amazing. The tiny details in the environment, the silky smooth character animations, the way Max's coat sways, the way Max flinches when a round hits a nearby surface, the lighting (particularly in the favela levels) - really impressive stuff. The environmental destructability was a wonderful change from the mostly static worlds we see nowadays. The Euphoria tech was particularly well done. Seeing a schmuck stumble backward a bit, wobble, then fall is way more enjoyable than it has any right to be.
Which made it all the more baffling in some gameplay decisions.
Why revert me to my default pistol after cutscenes or interactions with some environmental objects?
I found it in my best interest to play extremely conservatively, peeking & scooting from cover pieces - wait for the groundhog to peek its head of the hole and smacking it. This is probably me having incorrect expectations from MP1 and MP2, but I was expecting to be shootdodging my way through the game. Problem is, I couldn't find shootdodge giving me any advantage over playing it safe behind cover. I ended up doing the occasional shootdodge only because "it totally looks cool."
When prone on the ground after shootdodging, I often want to take cover. Why does Max have to first stand up, soak up enemy bullets, before finally snapping to the cover piece?
I quite like the "last stand" get-out-of-jail card they let you play when you're hit with the killing blow. But I often had an issue where my angle denied me line of sight to the target baddie, or I had no idea which baddie was the target baddie, or some foliage or geometry was covering the camera. In which case, I had to just patiently wait until the "retry?" prompt appeared.
I could not for the life of me figure out the laser sight weapons. Whereas normal weapons had the reticle turn red when it had enemy lock, the laser sights had no such feedback. I ended up spraying bullets in the general direction of enemies, hoping some of them were sometimes hitting bad guys.
For a game that's fairly light on mechanics and focuses almost entirely on shooting, these niggling things were constantly rearing their heads. Something that stayed in the back of my mind was the feeling I was playing the game incorrectly - that I should be running & gunning my way through. The bullet time seemed to want to support that, as did the hard-boiled comic-book atmosphere. But whenever I left the safety of my cover pieces, I ended up just getting shot to pieces. Though, I am pretty terrible at video games, so there's always that.