REVIEW: Max Payne 3

From the snowy streets of New York, Max gets a bit of sun in Brazil but some things never change.


If you've played Max Payne before you will know that it has always been criticised of style over substance. There's a lot of bullet time shooting, which is it's main appeal, however it's dark film noir-ish story was also what kept it captivating at times. The first game concentrated on him losing his family, the second one about his relationship with another woman and moving on and this third one about what he is exactly moving on to.

The previous games were told as an internal monologue over a comic script, however, 9 years on since Max Payne 2, Rockstar have really blown the doors wide open to make Max Payne 3 a sun soaked shoot fest that never lets up.

Graphically, Payne 3 is phenomenal and the favelas of Sao Paulo are something quite remarkable. The gameplay works, but the bullet time isn't a necessity like it was in the previous games. Also changing guns is often awkward and cumbersome and if you run out of ammo? You might as well use your last bullet to shoot yourself in the head for the same good it will do you. The levels are nice and long and it does take a good 9-10 hours to complete, with a lot of ridiculous action set pieces in between, but still I feel there's a lot that lets it down.

Firstly, I found it often quite repetitive, the one thing that could really break it up from other shooters is the bullet time, but where you would often jump round corners, if you hit anything or hit the floor too soon, it will snap back out, so I often found that it's just easier to run around, find cover and shoot the old fashioned way, thereby making bullet time somewhat pointless. I would sometimes use it to go over cover and do some headshots but that's about it.

There are also a LOT of cutscenes, which I don't usually mind, but I think it could have done with a bit less and a bit more just enjoying the action. The story is quite lame really, we're used to the anti-hero disgruntled cop thing which Payne epitomises but it doesn't feel as authentic as it does before. We're also getting tired of his self-loathing and cheesy statements and the idea of going in gun-ho is nothing new, we're watching a mid-life crisis and it just lacks that edge that there was before.

The plot is about Payne having to run from New Jersey to Brazil and take up a personal security job looking after some rich family we don't care about. They are getting caught up in all the local and global politics and everything goes south real quick. That's about all I could make it, there's some twists and turns but to be honest you're just waiting for the next chance to shoot something.

Overall, this game is a smooth addition to the Payne serious and makes a nice transition from the despair of New York to the heat of Brazil. However, it's hard to feel sorry for a guy who is surrounded by beautiful women in the sun the whole time. There's a reason why Noir works so well in dystopian cities and Payne 3 proves it. An average story, some good graphics and decent but repetitive gameplay makes for a slightly above average experience. It's definitely not unmissable.

Rating: 7/10 

NEWS: LA Noire To Be Featured At Film Festival

Rockstar's "LA Noire" which I've been excited about for a while is to be featured at the Tribeca Film Festival.

It's a revolutionary step forward for an underappreciated medium that is clearly starting to be taken more and more seriously. LA Noire is going to be one of the most exciting games this year and I'm jealous of the lucky buggers who will be able to see a preview of it before it's release in May.

Do you think it's right to put a game into a film festival? Should games be appreciated as an art form just as much as films? Do you think Rockstar will be able to hit the big time again after the incredible Red Dead Redemption?

NEWS: LA Noire New Trailer - Gameplay

Latest trailer for Rockstar's LA Noire. How amazing does this look? One of the biggest games of 2011 and will be released in May.

LA Noire Debut Trailer Released

Rockstar have released the debut trailer for upcoming game LA Noire and yes, it's a film noir type story set against LA - how could you guess? You might recognise some faces including Mad Men's Aaron Staton. As you can see, the facial movements is something that is far superior to what we're seeing in today's games so this looks likely to be one of the biggest games of next year. Will keep you updated as and when.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare DLC

Red Dead becomes Undead in this new DLC that successfully combines the Western genre with Horror so that shooting zombies never looked so cool

Rockstar have graced us with an odd add-on that takes the original game and completely changes it by adding zombies into the Wild West without taking itself too seriously. You start as John Marston again on his farm as his dead Uncle attacks his family and turns them into zombies. After tying them up, he vows to find a solution to help them and so the action begins.

Rockstar have taken advantage of the current Grindhouse trend and given this a B-movie cult horror genre feel by exploiting it in all the right places and being completely self-aware. The zombies move realistically and can only really be put down with a shot to the head and when you do shoot, instead of a typical gaming 'blow-up' head shot, instead only that part of the head is blown away giving the game a physicality not often achieved, especially with such fodder as Dead Rising 2. As you save town after town trying to uncover the truth, you bump into the characters from the original story making it a bit of a nostalgic trip as well. Similar to the original game, you have to help strangers along the way, find missing people and other small missions but essentially you're trying to find out what's behind all this.

As fun as it was to play, saving town after town by giving survivors ammunition (something that is scarce at first but builds up rather quickly) becomes a bit of a ball-ache. You have to go up to one survivor and then head to the others giving them ammo before finishing off the zombies. Trying to negotiate a way to get up to these survivors can be taxing to say the least, especially with zombies biting at your tails. However, once you've saved all the towns and done the main storyline (with a great 'few months later' epilogue) I'd imagine unless you're a completist you'd probably leave it there.

They also cleverly use the zombie factor as an excuse to include zombie animals as well as special 'Apocalypse' horses that if you catch, give you a certain special power. Though my Pestilence horse which was supposed to be impossible to kill, died almost as soon as I got it by falling off a cliff but yet I survived, so that was a bit of an anti-climax. However, there are Sasquatches, unicorns and more to find should you wish to do so. But as fun as it was, saving the towns occupied a lot of my time and soon became annoying. Also the final onslaught in a cave wasn't the big finale I expected it to be, instead it fell quite flat. It's also worth noting that you can still use your Red Eye slowing down time meaning you shouldn't really become too overwhelmed with zombies at any one time. The good thing is there is more than one type of undead, you have the normal ones, you have little fast spider like ones, spitting ones and big boulder-like ones. Therefore, it can keep the killing fresh by mixing it up with an assortment of the four. Weapons are also customised for zombie killing including a gun that shoots dead flesh back at them.

The game still sticks to it's open world sandbox roots, with certain Ranked missions, Treasure hunting and outfit collecting so there is something for everyone here. I couldn't justify spending enough time on it to complete it 100%, but doing the main storyline with bits afterward took about 8 hours, perhaps a bit more, and that's saving all the towns as well.


For a downloadable pack, this is great but I still felt they should have eased off saving all the towns constantly and concentrated more on doing missions. It's a nice, strange 'ending' as such with Red Dead Redemption and a great alternative to the Western feel of the original game. It's unique, brave and has successfully won over a lot of the audience, it's also due to come out on disc form in the near future as well. Rockstar have also announced that a Red Dead bundle will come out at the end of November with this and all the other DLC available in one big package. I recommend you buy this, especially if you loved Red Dead Redemption and it's a great DLC but again it's not perfect. Great idea, great gameplay, but felt like there could have been more to the story and saving all the towns became more of a chore as it went along. I'd love to see a DLC to this DLC (if that makes sense) which just opened it out a bit more, but for such content, depth and originality, it's one of the best DLC's out there. Go forth and enjoy - dead or undead.

DLC Rating: 9/10