Call me a dribbling fanboy, but I'm really sour about Max Payne 3, cuz the original writer of the old games (Sam Lake, also attributed to the Alan Wake games) pretty much washed his hands of the whole thing. Even had a whole opening of a chapter in Alan Wake devoted to how Lake considered the Payne series dead. It's sorta a Terminator situation: if the original creator considers the series dead, they should just leave well enough alone.
Kevin Bennett said:
While I agree with most of Yahtzee's vids, and even when i don't still LOL, as someone who recently bought Max 1&2 on Steam to get myself in the mood for Max 3 i have to say if you remember Max 1 he has a VERY good reason for being messed up, he was literally about 10 seconds too late to save his wife and newborn baby, actually hearing the shots that killed them as he ran up the stairs.
Whether or not you think someone could get over that without years of therapy is one thing, accepting that would seriously mess someone up is quite another. I had forgotten how truly cold and vicious the backstory in Max 1 was until I played it again but knowing that just five minutes would have changed your life HAS to mess you up. I know Waylon Jennings ended up in a mental hospital because he flipped a quarter with Buddy holly for a seat on the plane and the thought that if it would have landed tails he'd be dead drove him bonkers, but to have something as trivial as "if you ran that last stop sign your family wouldn't be dead" would have to seriously mess up your mind.
The problem with this is, well... That was the beginning of the first game. That's a fucked up place to start out, yeah, but spoiler alert: he got over it! By the end of the second game he had completely moved on not only from his wifes death, but the death of his new lover and probably closest thing he has to a friend (never mind the fact I busted my ass playing that game on the hardest difficulty to make sure she lived, cuz apparently now it's not canon. Thanks Rockstar.)
NuclearShadow said:
I think those who dislike Max's character simply do not like a humanized character. Not every hero has to be a macho brute with no emotions but anger. Max was a common man who was deeply emotionally scarred because of the events that took place, he became a addict and shows true humanity in him. He is flawed and that is his appeal.
The game-play criticism is fair enough but I think Yahtzee was just looking for something to complain about beyond that and targeted the character. He also seems to fail to realize that we are suppose to judge Max in our own way. So whether you find Max to be a tragic character that you sympathize with or one that you think is over emotional and looked down upon, the character worked perfectly as intended. It's a shame to see him express his dislike against the stereotypical macho characters in the past and then position himself against the very opposite of that here.
So in closing, either Yahtzee just needed another complaint and attacked the well developed character or Yahtzee really just doesn't understand the arts.
Let me guess, you liked Metroid Other M too?
Bad character is not better then no character... especually when Max Payne already HAD a character, and this game shat all over it! Max Payne was humanized, he was a three dimensional- ok maybe not three dimensional, but fully actualized character. The closing line at the end of the second game still gives me shivers: "I had a dream of my wife. She was dead. But it was all right."
Supporting a huge step BACKWARDS for a character and justifying it by calling it "humanization" isn't just not understanding the arts, it's not understanding human beings.
