Max Payne 3

The Good
At the first sight of this game, the new graphics, textures, shadows, lighting and pounding soundtrack will certainly wow anyone. In regards to weapons, the game realistically only allows three to be carried at a time, but the variety is where it gets good, not only by gun types but some of those have utilities including scopes, flashlights and occasionally suppressors. And speaking of weapons, the combat manoeuvres are a great deal more plentiful and give Max the fighting chance, so far as duck and cover tactics go.

The Story Mode has a generous length, almost as long as the first game, and the flashback chapters that you play also feel nicely in place, not all like the lazy and unimaginative prologues in the second game. The Grindings encourage the player to get creative in killing styles and certainly deliver replay value. And there's even more value where the single-player story mode is complemented with two arcade modes and a multitude of multiplayer options to bring non-stop amusement in this title.

The Bad
The cutscenes that involve Max Payne's alcoholism and addiction to painkillers were okay the first time, but get repetitive, treating players like they haven't got the point. The dreary messages just aren't teaching any morals or anything you haven't already seen from Max Payne before. What sort of motivation to play the game is that supposed to bring?

While the game does have its fair share of new features, it's lacking in interactive objects such as vending machines and radios and there are only a few televisions. Those are things the game can manage without. But then the one thing Max Payne could have done with is grenades and molotov cocktails, which are only used by enemies. And the only thing that's missing from the game for effective grasp of the gameplay is a tutorial.

The Bottom Line
Who would have thought that Max Payne would make a drastic return after a decade wait from the second title? Rockstar definitely took the Max Payne series to new heights, leaving that Noir Detective style behind in favour of an action-based game that stands out from the rest of the series. When you've gotten the hand of the game mechanics, you may feel like you're playing a Call of Duty Modern Warfare game in third-person. Fair to say, this title revived the series where the second game brought it down. Lessons learned.