Zero Punctuation: Max Payne 3

[For.I.Am.Mad]

Max Payne 3 taught me that criticism is dead.

 

[Strazdas]

As a person who keeps wishing there were actual writting in video games and not liking when they actually do it, you contradict yourself. Good deal you got here for yourself.
Max payne wasnt fun because of its shooting, it was fun because of its story.

 

[Christopher Haacke]

Always has been; just used to be a lot funnier too.

 

[Breywood]

I haven't laughed this hard at a Zero Punctuation all year. Your descriptions of how you could mess up the bullet time was priceless. Well done.

 

[Geisterkarle]

I just bought MP3 today and so far I have really much fun with it!
It's interesting, how everyone says how "dark" MP3 is... actually I think MP2 was much darker and sinister than this! This quite basic and straight forward. Thanks Yahzee for the spoiler heads up, but I'm not at this point yet but had this "idea" like 15min into the game
I bullet-time-jumped in to many corners and water to count so I give you that but I wouldn't have liked the game to be totally easy! And if it is hard because of me and a tricky jumping... so be it!
Yahzee mentioned all the current standard FPS games... well MP3 is much better than most of them! Maybe a mopey main character is a little bit "dumb" or you don't like it that much ... but it is more, then CoD, Battlefield, ... ever did!

 

[satsugaikaze]

The thing that bugs me about Max Payne 3 is the necessity of the sequel (or lack thereof).

Max Payne 2 was a finely-crafted in-medias-reas homage to traditional, classic film-noir, and had a distinct moment of emotional closure, which to me felt like a definitive ending.

This game just feels like Rockstar went, "but oh wait! He didn't actually find peace, he's still screwed up. Here, have a Rockstar game with a bald dude in Brazil!"

 

[game_freak123]

man i loved this game and another good review. Yahtzee keep it up.

 

[[[Woody]]]

How do you make you animations...

 

[careful]

yah! yahtzee still got it!

 

[xdiesp]

And here I thought Requiem: Avenging Angel was the first game to introduce "bullet time".

You, Sir, deserve a medal to remember that one.
It was also the first game to host a bajillion other FPS effects like summoning

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well if nobody mentioned it yet "Max Damage" is indeed a character, he has his own comic series called "Incorruptible", and a girl sidekick named Jailbait... despite how this sounds it's not a parody OR a satire.

That said, it sounds like Max Payne did what it set out to do, but fell into the simple trap of something ceasing to be cool when everyone is doing it. In this case the angst driven emo hero has become such a ridiculous stereotype that it's just not fun anymore, and what's more it lends itself to more analysis than it used to due to everyone and his dog doing the same basic kind of protaganist. Thus when someone spits out a character like this, which is written that way "because it's popular" (even after 3 games) and there isn't much holding it together, it's rather transparent.

To be honest I think we need some straightforward heroes, who aren't emo/angst driven whiners/grouches, and aren't reluctant to the extreme as an "alternative" crying every 15 minutes about how much it sucks to have super powers (of whatever sort) and how they want to be normal.

I think gaming really needs to go back to the basics.

 

[Victim of Progress]

]]How do you make you animations...

Those aren't really animations. Rather, frame by frame picture stills. You could probably do something like that, using MS paint and movie maker. Great review, by the way.

 

[Darth_Payn]

And he had me at "jaunty fez" and "YOU TOOK ALL THE PILLS IN THE WORLD!"

 

[[[Woody]]]

Thanks :3

 

[Grivahri]

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.

I agree. I think Max is more interesting than most of the main characters in games today. And that is mostly because he is flawed. A "perfect" character that saves the day without losing anything or anyone, gets the girl in the end and seems to not be mentally bothered by the events at all is quite boring. An example of this is Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible, the king of boring.

 

[Nerexor]

really like this game, but I absolutely SUCK AT IT

Seriously; trying to be a badass, but spending more time getting bullet holes in my chest..Bullet time DOES NOTHING FOR ME

I almost never end up using the shootdodging as its practically holding up a "Please hit me with ten thousand bullets" sign. The thing I found most annoying in this game wasn't the story or gameplay mechanics, it was the god damn immortal army you're up against. In Max Payne 1 if you hit a guy with a shotgun blast at decent range he went down. That was the end of it. In Max Payne 3 you can point blank these bastards and they get up as if you had lightly brushed them with a feather duster! Last I checked being part of a gang doesn't mean your skin is made of goddamn kevlar! You have to headshot ordinary mooks at least twice to expect them to stay down, and when you go up against the guys in body armor it gets worse. Four shots to the head minimum and forget even bothering to use a shotgun anymore, they're worse than useless. Note: All of this is from my experience playing it on normal difficulty.

Meanwhile Max takes one unlucky shot and you get treated to the fifteen seconds of him tumbling around while the word "DEAD" appears on the screen, and of course its impossible to skip which pours a salt/lemon juice combination into the wound. Or if you are lucky enough to have painkillers (which I recall were much more abundant in previous games) you get stuck trying to return fire to an invisible/impossible to hit enemy or your gun clicks empty after a single shot.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the game for the most part, but it inherits some of the unfortunate aspects of the earlier games. Namely the "you are going to die in this section FIVE ZILLION TIMES until you do it exactly right" aspect that I recall from a few areas of MP1. Only now you can never be sure when you've actually dealt with all the bad guys due to them all having Resistance To Bullets cast on them.

 

[Tommy1138]

really like this game, but I absolutely SUCK AT IT

Seriously; trying to be a badass, but spending more time getting bullet holes in my chest..Bullet time DOES NOTHING FOR ME

I almost never end up using the shootdodging as its practically holding up a "Please hit me with ten thousand bullets" sign. The thing I found most annoying in this game wasn't the story or gameplay mechanics, it was the god damn immortal army you're up against. In Max Payne 1 if you hit a guy with a shotgun blast at decent range he went down. That was the end of it. In Max Payne 3 you can point blank these bastards and they get up as if you had lightly brushed them with a feather duster! Last I checked being part of a gang doesn't mean your skin is made of goddamn kevlar! You have to headshot ordinary mooks at least twice to expect them to stay down, and when you go up against the guys in body armor it gets worse. Four shots to the head minimum and forget even bothering to use a shotgun anymore, they're worse than useless. Note: All of this is from my experience playing it on normal difficulty.

Meanwhile Max takes one unlucky shot and you get treated to the fifteen seconds of him tumbling around while the word "DEAD" appears on the screen, and of course its impossible to skip which pours a salt/lemon juice combination into the wound. Or if you are lucky enough to have painkillers (which I recall were much more abundant in previous games) you get stuck trying to return fire to an invisible/impossible to hit enemy or your gun clicks empty after a single shot.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy the game for the most part, but it inherits some of the unfortunate aspects of the earlier games. Namely the "you are going to die in this section FIVE ZILLION TIMES until you do it exactly right" aspect that I recall from a few areas of MP1. Only now you can never be sure when you've actually dealt with all the bad guys due to them all having Resistance To Bullets cast on them.

Yup, this is exactly why I stopped playing. I got as far as the bloody basebal stadium level before it became so ridiculously unfair as to be nigh-unplayable since everybody was a goddamn bullet sponge but me. I would empty an entire mag of 9mm ammo into a mook and the bastard just wouldn't f@@king die, meanwhile his buddies are all lining up their shots or flanking me. I liked the game and wanted more but I just could not face any more of that blatant unfairness.