MAX PAYNE 2 ELEMENTS OF STYLE SERIES
Hell, the wrinkles in the back of his shirt will animate as he jogs through the level.ĭespite all this, Max Payne 3 still does what the series does best, and these details are more of a coat of paint rather than a shift in gameplay style. Carrying a rifle but firing a pistol forces Max to hold the bigger gun in his off hand, and firing two pistols will make him drop the carbine altogether. Shooting an enemy in the head with a high-caliber weapon will result in a grisly exit wound. Diving Max headfirst into a wall will cause him to end his elegant dive and instead fall to the ground to pick himself up. For a game about leaping around like Chow-Yun Fat, Max Payne 3’s animation is surprisingly well grounded in reality. The biggest stuff is, funnily enough, the small details. The gameplay itself, however, has received a less radical makeover. Gone are the comic pages, and gone is the New York City snow.
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Most of the game takes place in Brazil’s seedier areas, and a traditional Rockstar ensemble cast of weirdos rotates around him as the story progresses. The game is still decidedly noir, but in a grittier, more grounded neo-noir sense. In an oddly Michael Mann-esque move, important snippets of dialogue appear on the screen as well, sometimes turning cutscenes into a video game version of Man on Fire. It’s a bold visual look, to be sure, although some people may find it irritating. In fact, the game is rife with these stylish blurs – cutscenes are filled with odd smearing effects, scan lines, and color shifting. In an amusing twist, he’s now addicted to the painkillers that served as health items in the previous games, and using them in Max Payne 3 results in a disorienting blur effect. Older, tougher, paunchier Max is having a rough ride. The story is far grimmer than Max Payne has ever really been, though it’s a little jarring at first, although it probably wouldn’t have served anyone well for Rockstar to simply ape Sam Lake’s tongue-in-cheek writing. For those worried about the series ditching its film-noir roots, the opening of the game features not one but several narrative time-skips, all narrated with James McCaffrey’s gruff voice. Max Payne 3 sees our downtrodden hero in Brazil, having been run out of New Jersey.
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Max Payne is back, and his journey through depressing noir-esque story tropes lies ahead of him. “Max Payne’s long journey through the night will continue,” we were promised. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne didn’t set the world on fire by any means, but the series garnered enough of a cult following thanks to its flashy mechanics and endearing style to make the lack of any follow-up (besides the awful Marky Mark movie) a tad strange. It’s hard to believe that Max Payne has really been gone since 2003.