Max Payne 3 - Cheap Thoughts

Max Payne 3 was one of the highest praised games when it came out back in 2012 and has often been described as "cinematic". So I was excited to play it, despite never having played a Max Payne game, but considering the 9 year gap between games, i figured it wouldn't be a requirement to play the previous games, which it really isn't. I can honestly say that this is one of the most overrated games I have ever played, and i'm starting to think that the term "cinematic" is really getting overplayed with these type of games, a more accurate term would be generic. The story follows Max Payne, a former New York Police Officer whose wife and daughter were killed a long time ago, since then, Max has become a drunk, pill addicted wash-up, who is now working private security for a rich and powerful family in Sao Paulo in Brazil, when they are attacked by several gangs as a conspiracy begins to unfold and Max is caught in the middle of it all.

If you want me to sum up why this game is generic, here's a description of the first two levels of the game: The first mission has you as a bodyguard for the obnoxiously rich family at a party where Max is annoyed and drinks his scotch, when you're attacked by a gang and they kidnap the blond girl and you have to save her. The very next mission has you as a bodyguard for the same family at a party where Max is still annoyed and drinks his scotch when the same gang attacks you and kidnaps the blond girl again. It literally took them one mission before they decided to repeat themselves.

Everything about this story is generic, predictable and boring, the people who i knew were going to betray me, betrayed me, the people who i knew were going to die, died, and throughout the whole thing Max will go through no sort of character arc or have any kind of unique emotional connection to anyone and will do nothing but complain for the entire game about how goddamn miserable he is. Max is one of the most boring and one dimensional game protagonist i've ever seen. He's a rundown former NY Cop, we've seen that a million times, he's got a dead wife and kid, we've seen that a million times, he now hates the world and drinks his troubles away, we've seen that a million times! And more so, his name is Max-Fucking-Payne and i'm supposed to take that name seriously? Maybe this would have worked if the game was a little bit more self-aware and clever but they take it 100% seriously. Now not to turn this into a feminist thing, but the women in this game are literally nothing but walking cliches, the woman in the fridge, damsel in distress, it's all there, now i don't mind cliches like this if the women are still interesting characters, but there is zero character to them in this game, they exist to be plot points and nothing else.

Just because the game attempts to have a story like a film doesn't instantly make it cinematic, this all sounds like a bad Steven Segal movie, that doesn't instantly make it cinematic. Cinematic games have creative stories, they have themes and character development and a unique style. Actually i take that back, this game does attempt to give it's game a style by having the screen go fuzzy every so often and have text appear on screen, except there is zero point to it, the text seems completely random, the fuzz has zero purpose and can be really annoying. If you're going to give your game a style, have a point to it, otherwise it makes your game look even stupider.

But story is only half of what makes a game good, how about the gameplay? It's most unique feature is the slow-mo shooting. Which i used way too often because it was the only way i was having any fun while playing the game, otherwise the game is just your standard third person shooter with the same small selection of guns, bad cover system and the same enemy character models repeated over and over and over. The cut scenes were a drag to get through due to the uninteresting story and drawn out pacing, making them feel more like really long checkpoints than anything important to add to the story. The graphics of the game are good, but nothing amazing or unbearable, they're suitable for the game, no glitches or bugs so it functions very well, but then again this is a 3 year old game, if there were any bugs then they would have fixed them by now.

Max Payne felt like a drag to get through, the story is bare-boned, the gameplay repetitive and almost never fun, it's a standard game that doesn't do anything unique, i wouldn't even call it bad, because bad games still are interesting because of how bad they are, this game is just: simple. 5/10.

-Danny