Now when I was younger and the Max Payne series came out, I was not much of a fan. It was because I felt that “Bullet Time” was being over used, kinda like what happened to every shooting game that came out after The Matrix. I felt like this third Max Payne 3 was going to use this tired feature and that it wouldn’t be original. Walking out of this game demonstration, I erased all my pre-conceived notions about ” Bullet Time” and watched as Alexis played the game. Her method of playing is like watching a honey badger, she doesn’t give a f*#k and plays like a bat out of hell with a gun, which is great for Max Payne. The game plays with a combination of a lot of runnin’ and gunnin’ mixed in with duck and cover (something Alexis does not believe in). While watching her play the cover system kept reminding me of the cover system in Red Dead Redemption but it’s better. The cover system in RDR allowed you to cover all day and the AI wouldn’t be able to kill you, they were kinda dumb. However in Max Payne 3, while cover helps you have to try not to stay in it too long because the enemies will come for you. You can use “Bullet Time” to slow down the gun battles so that you can kill multiple enemies which is just as amazing as it sounds.
While watching the wife struggle a bit on a level in Brazil with a bunch of semi automatic wielding baddies, I decided to take control. Aiming is similar to the shooting mechanics in previous releases of Rockstar games. In Red Dead Redemption that Auto lock was perfect, and so it makes a return in MP3. Auto lock is there for the players who just wanna breeze through the game or you can go for a challenge and use free aim. Each level that we saw was filled with so much detail and the NPC’s are quite intelligent. Different enemies use different tactics, for example the lower level thugs carry hand guns and small SMG’s, meanwhile the Brazilian militant groups have body armor and fully automatic guns.
As for multiplayer all that we got out of them was that the Crews that you create on the Rockstar Social Club will carry over into Max Payne and into future Rockstar games. One of the cool Crew features is called Gang War where your crew can go up against another crew. The more kills you get on someone will trigger a rivalry between the two crews. These rivalries can be tracked on the Social Club. These crews can also carry over into GTA V when its released. This was all the info we could get out of presenter about the multiplayer aspect of the game but so far it sounds like a blast.
With a release date set for May 15th, we all can get our hands on this very soon. From what we played, it’s going to be a fantastic game. Just keep an eye out for more news and a review fairly soon.
