ThunderPeel2001

Maximillian Payne: Part Trois

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So this is out in Europe today, and it's been out in the US for a few days. Has anyone played it? If so, how does RockStar's latest effort hold up?

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Not going to be able to afford it for a while, but this makes me want it:

WIzyXYmxbH4

I'm liking the concept of getting to see Max Payne go even further down the rabbit hole of despair (Is that even possible?!) and ending up as the slaphead wreck the original announcements unveiled. I originally thought the game would just take place in Brazil from the outset and have little in common with the past Payne aesthetically or otherwise but that seems to not be the case. :tup:

Also, hearing that theme gets me nostalgic as fuck. ;(

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Who is the new protagonist? he looks nothing like this guy.

Welcome_to_the_World_of_Max_Payne.jpg

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Max has been portrayed by a different actor in all three games. Check him out in Max Payne 2:

max-payne-3.jpeg

The same voice actor has performed for all three games though, and in the third he's done his mo-cap too. His MP3 rendition is quite visibly based on the MP2 actor:

mp2_photograph_25.jpg

As opposed to the MP1 guy:

SamLake.gif

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Interesting and surprising, I've only played the first one. I remember swooning at the required HDD space when we installed it at a friend's house.

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I remember shitting my pants at how cool the slow-mo dive was the first time I tried it. I was also surprised to find that the ending to Max Payne 2 was different if you beat it on the hardest difficulty. I was exposed, against my will, to some spoilers (although I don't know if they were accurate) about the ending of the third game. If they are true, they sound pretty shitty to me.

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You forgot about the most notable actor to portray Max Payne!

YITB_68_Max_Payne.jpg

I was baffled by the reaction to homeless Brazil Max Payne when it was announced years ago. I love the idea of a studio saying, "Here's a character that we haven't seen for years. His life has progressed. He's gotten older. He's not living in the same place."

Having never played either of the old games, I don't know whether the gameplay is any good, but I do know that I like that they changed things up at least on an aesthetic level.

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Yeah I was always confused by Max Payne 2 because of the actor switch. They got a guy named Timothy Gibbs to play him and I just interpreted as an older max, like 35-45... which wasn't the case, which is kind of a shame, because I thought that was a neat idea... then it happened for MP3.

Anyway, the first concept image of max that was released for MP3 was based on Timothy Gibbs, it's basically a paint over, other ones they used a stand in model for the body, then eventually settled on using James Mcaffery as a starting point for the face because he was the voice actor.

Though I'm sure there are still articles from way back when that Mcaffery pulled a Niko by slamming Rockstar about royalties which is why it took so long to announce he was going to do the voice because I guess it was hard to strike a deal with the bad blood.

I haven't played the final release yet, curious to see what it's like, watching a friend try to run through it, it seemed hard as fuck. The cover and bullet time(shoot/dodge) mechanics were always at odds and it looks like cover eventually won the struggle, which is a shame, because this game is a Euphoria poster child of fucking awesome events when you jump around into things. Again, haven't tried it myself, but I think people are so use to seeing cover they think they have to do it, when in reality you kind of have to make your own fun with bullet time by running around, not worrying about ammo, and just painting the screen with slow mo bullets and crazy jumps.

Also very disappointing (Just like I was with Red Dead and crashing horses) that when Max jumps into people... at least the couple of occurrences I saw, he doesn't roll them over. I know that used to be in there, which kind of made things easy to knock people down then shoot them, so it may have been a tuning thing or a performance thing.

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I've heard negative things about the added cover dynamic, that it kind of negates the need to John Woo your way through a gunfight.

But, having enjoyed the first two, I'll definitely pick this one up once the price drops.

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Watching the Giant Bomb quicklook really soured me on the game. I was kind of looking forward to it, but i don't think i'll play it now.

The writing doesn't really have that tongue-in-cheek hard-boiled noir flair of the Remedy games, and there's some really obnoxious stylistic visual artifacts smeared all over the game.

The lack of the graphic novel conceit also kind of makes his internal monologue seem a little out of place.

Also the cover system, and the constant QTE-like things.

MEH.

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Watching the Giant Bomb quicklook really soured me on the game. I was kind of looking forward to it, but i don't think i'll play it now.

The cut scenes! Oh, those indulgent, indulgent Rockstar cutscenes.

Max's client practically says "BIG BRAZILIAN BOOTIES!" at one point.

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I'm kinda disappointed so far. The cover definitely defines the combat, and is not just there as an addition. I've not been able to run and gun without going down in a fountain of bloodsplatter. So a lot of the times I end up playing duck hunt, finding a spot and shooting at the heads that pop up. The combat very much feels like the same kind of encounters from Red Dead.

Speaking of, I feel like the engine is kinda showing it's age. They're going for the hip Kane & Lynch 2 "shot on video" effect a lot of the time, with blown out colours and scanlines and such. It works well enough at times, but I often find the environments too... Well lit? Combined with the fact that everything is kinda shiny in the video game way, and it detracts very much from the stylish, cinematic look it feels like their trying for. (PS3 version by the way, PC might look better?)

I just got the act 1 trophy, so I guess I will be back once I feel more about it.

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You can't shut your eyes. A small child spots you, waves eagerly. You try to reach him, but are stopped short as the cables restraining your fingers go taut. Struggling against wires and straps binding your shoulders and feet, you get one last glimpse of the boy before he's dragged screaming into Max Payne's departing van.

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Max Payne 3 rewards highly conservative play. It's all about staying in cover and engaging enemies who are too far away to even see, thanks to the resolution. (This will likely be much better on PC.) I find myself waving the reticle around until it turns red to show me that I'm aiming at someone. So… I guess Max Payne 3 has the dubious honor of introducing pixel-hunting to the shooter genre.

I don't get the sense of solving a combat puzzle through practiced choreography that I got from the earlier games. I'm sorta interested in seeing what happens next, so I'll stick it out a while longer, but the combat is not fun.

I think the first Max Payne was the best. In 2, the bullet time was so plentiful that it trivialized things, but in 3, it's not useful.

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Every time Max speaks I think of Chris. Unfortunately that's probably the best thing about the game.

Any game that encourages me to look for hidden gun bits while failing me for stopping to look for gun bits is a little annoying.

That said, the

nightclub bit

near the start on headphones was wonderfully disorienting. And found myself agreeing with Chris, er, Max about the

terrible music

.

Also, what's a SOILER tag?

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Also, what's a SOILER tag?

is soils content with comic sans

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So this is out in Europe today, and it's been out in the US for a few days. Has anyone played it? If so, how does RockStar's latest effort hold up?

Isn't the PC version still like over a week away from release?

I have my doubts about MP3, I don't like the cover shooting that they have added to the game just because every game these days has that...

Also as a Finn and Remedy fan I miss Sam Lake's dialogue, it was funny in the previous games. I laughed when I heard James McCaffrey's voice also talking Max Payne stuff in Alan Wake suddenly. :)

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Yeah, PC release is exactly a week away in the US, the usual three days later for Europe as far as I know. The delays on PC versions of new games still bugs me, but two weeks is a damn sight better than the months Rockstar has often waited over the last few years. Not to mention Red Dead Redemption still has no PC release! What is that about? I've long since finished it on the 360 myself, but it still seems bizarre to me.

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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.

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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.

I've had pretty much the same experience. The game feels like it's giving me all these cool toys to play with, but then punishes me if I try to do something cool with them.

I currently stopped playing the game because I'm at a rooftop sequence that throws a ton of guys with you, and tops it off with an armor guy that appears with a cutscene, therefore popping you out of cover. And while the color palette is very pretty, it sometimes makes it really hard to distinguish enemies from the environments.

Another misguided moment is the sniper sequence near the beginning. Instead of setting up a cool setpiece where you find your vantage point and pick of enemies one by one, protecting your friend, they show a cutscene where your friend runs, then hides, and then puts you in scope mode, making you take out 3-4 dudes, before showing you the guy running and hiding again, and you have to shoot more. It's basically a timed point-and-click adventure game.

The game had a lot of these moments, moments that are designed like some that is supposed to, or assumed to be, thrilling, instead making them actually thrilling.

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Yeah the dissonance between the cover mechanics and the bullet time mechanics are referenced in basically every review or even casual mention of the game I've seen, and they've come up constantly for me while playing too. I also had exactly the same frustration that you can't just press the "take cover" button while on the floor, you have to get up and wait for the right frame of the animation before you're allowed that control again.

As for the gun in cutscene thing, it's sort of irritating but at least they show whatever other weapon you have in your other hand, and your default weapon is also modelled correctly. It's not quite a Mass Effect arbitrarily giving you the default pistol/assault rifle in random cutscenes whenever it feels like it situation.

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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.

This is pretty much an exact list of the issues I have with the game. Compared to my recent gaming habits, it feels sort of odd to be playing a game that is absolutely nothing but running around and shooting, which makes it sort of odd that the mechanics the game does have are often so spotty.

By volume, the majority of my frustrations with the game are related to the stream of cutscenes the game is constantly tossing up at every opportunity. In addition to the clear problems you call out (bad camera positioning in "last stand," the weapon resetting), I also simply found it really weakened the experience for me for the game so frequently to toss me a softball just so I could knock it out of the park by clicking the mouse. The game is often fairly difficult when you're doing the most routine thing (just shooting a bunch of guys), but when you're doing the most totally outrageous and ostensibly difficult thing, the game is at its easiest because it occurs either entirely in a cutscene or is so primed by a cutscene that the player's involvement is token.

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I also simply found it really weakened the experience for me for the game so frequently to toss me a softball just so I could knock it out of the park by clicking the mouse. The game is often fairly difficult when you're doing the most routine thing (just shooting a bunch of guys), but when you're doing the most totally outrageous and ostensibly difficult thing, the game is at its easiest because it occurs either entirely in a cutscene or is so primed by a cutscene that the player's involvement is token.

Man I didn't even think about that particularly dissonance. That actually is quite weird when I think about it, because yes the game is actually somewhat unforgiving on normal difficulty in spots. At the very least it heavily favours quite a patient and careful playstyle that is, as we've all mentioned, rather at odds with its tone. But the fact that its difficulty actually directly but inversely scales with the contextual difficulty of the protagonist's actions is bizarre!

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Finished it today, and thought of another dissonance. They've hidden both health pick-ups, gun upgrades/collectibles, and little story pieces around the environment, encouraging you to explore after you finish a firefight. However, whenever you do so, Max or whoever he's with will start complaining, because there's always something in the narrative that should require haste.

So in the end Max is combing through a room, looking over desks, grabbing painkillers, looking for the telltale shine from golden gun parts, stopping and whispering to himself; "I'd better get a move on quick, or those scumbags are gonna give me the slip...", continuing around the room, then turning on the TV to watch a cartoon.

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