I want to start saying that I've been a long time lurker and enjoyer of reading the posts of this sub and finally decided to write something about my game experience with Rockstar's Max Payne 3.

In recent times, I've not been really having great time with modern games. And I feel like some of the major reasons behind this lack of enjoyment are:

A-) In modern games, the entire screen is filled with fillers/filler props to achieve realistic looking environments. It causes poor visibility, and distracts me from paying attention to the things in the environment, that I need to be paying attention to.

B-) Color scheme choices. Another issue that I have with modern games is, again, due to them trying to portray realistic visuals, blending. Modern games tend to take away an essential accessibility feature from gamers, that is, readability of a scene. It sometimes gets very hard to distinguish the differences between the enemies and the environment itself. They blend into each other almost too perfectly, in some games. If I am playing a game where stealth is the most essential part of the gameplay loop, I don't have a problem with this. But when it comes to action orientated games, it becomes a big issue.

I feel like maybe I should make another post about this subject because the post feels like it's getting longer and longer, so I think I should get into what I enjoyed and disliked about Max Payne 3.

This post contains no spoilers.

Music 10/10

I had discovered Health's Tears before the game, then found myself listening to the game's OST all the time. There are real gems in this OST such as Panama, Future, etc. I had already played the game when it first came out, but I was very young back then to appreciate how much work is put into this medium. I think the music in this game serves its role perfectly. In the action scenes, you get that chaotic feeling with the bullets flying above and below your head, while the environment is being destructed upon you.

During the cinematics, music compliments the emotional damage that is expected to hit the player. In short, I believe the music in Max Payne 3 connects the chaotic nature of the combat and the environmental story telling very tightly, firmly but gently.

Story 7/10

I liked the choice of Rockstar going with "the problems an addict who can't let his past go faces" approach here.

But again, I've never played the original Max Payne but having played Max Payne 2, and remembering the dark ambiance of it indistinctly, even to me it occured how the tone of the game changed in this third installment. Don't get me wrong, the ambient of Max Payne 3 is still very dark and heavy as well but it doesn't really feel like the 3 games are sharing the same elements when it comes to creating the atmosphere of this franchise.

Even though I enjoyed the story for what it was from beginning to end, every second of it, I found some parts to be too easily foreseeable, and there were some events that made me question the quality of the writing.

Overall, the writing was very decent, but there were some moments where I felt like I was watching a second class movie. I believe this happened because the moments that evoked these feelings were the moments where something that shouldn't be there, was there and people who can put every pieces to their places very easily showing up and providing the essential information for the sake of story to keep evolving.

There were some great "in your face" lines reflected to the screen, but there were some very lame ones as well.

Graphics & Physics 10/10

Honestly, I don't really care too much about a game's graphics as long as it offers solid and enjoyable gameplay elements. When I launched this game, I was well aware of that Rockstar was also trying to go with the realistic graphics but knowing that this game was released during the PS3/Xbox 360 era and the limitations of the hardware that came with them, held Rockstar back from achieving what we can achieve today with today's technology, and I'm happy about it, actually. In these days I feel like game developers lean into graphics too much while the gameplay mechanics themselves are treated as something secondary, when it should be the number 1 priority.

Back to the game. This game portrayed realistic enough images while still leaving the player in a state where they could say: "Yep, this is definitely a video game."

Due to the limitations I mentioned above, there were not a lot fillers on the screen and I found it very balanced for my taste.

I think where the game shines the most is, the physics. You couldn't break everything on your way, but having so many destructible stuff on the screen such as windows, bottles, flying bales of paper, light bulbs, (some) destroyable tables and walls and so on, added to the game's combat a lot and brought heaviness to it. If I recall it correctly, I guess this game had won an award called "best animation in videos games" or something along those lines and I definitely agree with that. I liked how real-life-like felt the animations. Also seeing the enemies reacting to where they are shot at was very eye-pleasing.

Gameplay Loop & Game Design 9/10

I do feel like gameplay loop was very well balanced for me, but I can see some people not liking it because at some points you do a lot of walking, and sometimes it can get pretty pretty slow. I am a big fan of interactive story telling games but I can understand that maybe one of the reasons why people have negative thoughts over this game is there were lots of and lots of cinematics. And aren't they long? Personally, I enjoy greatly animated cut scenes and Rockstar never fails to deliver in this regard. I also enjoyed how missions were diversified enough. Without going into too much detail, from ground fights to assassinating people from a helicopter and chasing some bad guys from rooftops to balconies, it felt refreshing. I think the bullet time feature was given enough time to be used and being able to jump and slow the time down whenever you want was pretty neat.

I also want to mentioned that, Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part II are getting a lot praise for having no loading screens but Rockstar had already done this in 2012 by hiding them behind cutscenes. So this was another reason for me to appreciate this game.

I give the gameplay loop 9/10, because; I remember watching videogamedunkey's MP3 review a while ago, and vaguely remember he saying something along the lines of: "It is impossible not to die in this game." And I agree with him.

There were some moments where I felt like the player was given no time or choice to take cover. Not that the enemies were too overpowered so you'd die instantly, but the environment itself was the enemy and the direction the enemies spawned from felt unfair. Probably I forgot to mention a lot of stuff but to keep this post short, I want to add one more thing and finish it:

In a lot of games, when you clear an area, you clear that area for good. In this game, after the action ends, you might still encounter some bad guys hiding behind a door or a wall, making no sound, waiting for you to come closer. The tension never dropping to zero was also something that I appreciated.

My general score for this game would be 9 out of 10. I can't wait to replay it again in the following years.