VERY ANGRY RANT AHEAD
It is Max Payne himself. Put bluntly, he is Payneful (I regret nothing) to listen to. I know Extra Creditz and Yahtzee covered this, but they didn't rag on him enough.
I know he's supposed to be a tortured ex-cop with roots in Film Noire, but it's just such a grating slog to get through cutscene after cutscene, often not even a minute apart, of his self-pitying pathetic I'M SUPER TORTURED AND SERIOUS AND SHIT nihilism. It's not as if he states it once or does it through subtlety, but he constantly spouts the same 2 thoughts over and over again; the world is shit and I want to die; for the entire duration of the 8-hour-long campaign. It doesn't help that I cannot skip the cutscenes until they are almost over, at least on my PS3 version, meaning that I'm mashing the X button as hard and fast as I can in order to not be subjected to it for any longer.
If that's not bad enough, he will often have an inner monologue DURING GAMEPLAY repeating slight variations on how disorganized he is and how he turns everything to shit and his worthless societal critiques.
If he is so miserable, why doesn't he do something about it? Is that too hard? Or is he too addicted to misery so he just does what he wants to do and then bitches about how typical it is for him to do so? If I ever met this guy, I would either ignore him and let him go off and listen to emo music while drinking and smoking himself in self-deluded "maturity" or knock his lights out because he won't piss off and shut up.
Is this supposed to be mature? If so, it fails so miserably at it. This game is way more immature than COD or Halo or anything of the sorts for one reason; it thinks that it is mature. Film Noire was cheesy, but it was often deliberately cheesy and often thought of ironically. If it was attempting to be Noire, it failed to understand that the dialogue in those films would either be laughed at if given in small doses or annoy the shit out of everyone if it went on too long or took itself too seriously. I suppose I should admit that I am not a fan of Film Noire because of the dialogue.
The gore is over the top and you can practically hear itself fawning over each last kill in the wave where it goes slo-mo (obviously) and shows every last droplet emitting from the fist-sized holes in the victim (which is often stated to be just desperate people with no other way out of destitution). Max does not have any joy and is completely incapable of dealing with any sort of personal difficulty, which I suppose was supposed to reflect the target audience. Even when he quits smoking, drinking and drugs, there is no change in his personality or behaviour.
If this was supposed to be a parody of other games it still fails because it is just those negative traits amplified to supreme annoyance and intolerability. Think of the Scary Movie/Epic Movie franchise; they are parodies but lack any finesse or understanding on how to critique without simply being an example of its medium at its worst.
The gameplay is fun, though.
It is Max Payne himself. Put bluntly, he is Payneful (I regret nothing) to listen to. I know Extra Creditz and Yahtzee covered this, but they didn't rag on him enough.
I know he's supposed to be a tortured ex-cop with roots in Film Noire, but it's just such a grating slog to get through cutscene after cutscene, often not even a minute apart, of his self-pitying pathetic I'M SUPER TORTURED AND SERIOUS AND SHIT nihilism. It's not as if he states it once or does it through subtlety, but he constantly spouts the same 2 thoughts over and over again; the world is shit and I want to die; for the entire duration of the 8-hour-long campaign. It doesn't help that I cannot skip the cutscenes until they are almost over, at least on my PS3 version, meaning that I'm mashing the X button as hard and fast as I can in order to not be subjected to it for any longer.
If that's not bad enough, he will often have an inner monologue DURING GAMEPLAY repeating slight variations on how disorganized he is and how he turns everything to shit and his worthless societal critiques.
If he is so miserable, why doesn't he do something about it? Is that too hard? Or is he too addicted to misery so he just does what he wants to do and then bitches about how typical it is for him to do so? If I ever met this guy, I would either ignore him and let him go off and listen to emo music while drinking and smoking himself in self-deluded "maturity" or knock his lights out because he won't piss off and shut up.
Is this supposed to be mature? If so, it fails so miserably at it. This game is way more immature than COD or Halo or anything of the sorts for one reason; it thinks that it is mature. Film Noire was cheesy, but it was often deliberately cheesy and often thought of ironically. If it was attempting to be Noire, it failed to understand that the dialogue in those films would either be laughed at if given in small doses or annoy the shit out of everyone if it went on too long or took itself too seriously. I suppose I should admit that I am not a fan of Film Noire because of the dialogue.
The gore is over the top and you can practically hear itself fawning over each last kill in the wave where it goes slo-mo (obviously) and shows every last droplet emitting from the fist-sized holes in the victim (which is often stated to be just desperate people with no other way out of destitution). Max does not have any joy and is completely incapable of dealing with any sort of personal difficulty, which I suppose was supposed to reflect the target audience. Even when he quits smoking, drinking and drugs, there is no change in his personality or behaviour.
If this was supposed to be a parody of other games it still fails because it is just those negative traits amplified to supreme annoyance and intolerability. Think of the Scary Movie/Epic Movie franchise; they are parodies but lack any finesse or understanding on how to critique without simply being an example of its medium at its worst.
The gameplay is fun, though.
