Antiheroes are damned entertaining.
They lack the morality, the kindness, and the
generosity that plagues many characters with objective blandness. Videogames of
generations past were riddled with such principal characters that were completely
devoid of personality. The videogame industry was in need of an interesting
character; one that was relatable, had no super powers, and wasn't entirely
sure of what he was doing.
Max
Payne, with his snarky pessimism, took the gaming world by storm, and made him
an instant fan favorite.
Max Payne and its sequel both received
hefty critical acclaim, but only the first installment was welcomed with
financial success. In fact, the financial failure of Max Payne 2 was so extreme that it forced Rockstar Games to heavily reconsider its next investments. It
seemed that the franchise had come to a decisive end.
It came
to the gaming world's shock, then, that
Max
Payne 3 was ever announced. Fans rejoiced, skeptics were intrigued, and the
world started dreaming about shooting up bad guys in bullet time.
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| You will never feel as cool as this in Max Payne 3. |
In the
end, Max Payne 3 was not what the
audience expected. Devoid of cheesy comic book cutscenes, New York City, and a
head of hair, the videogame took a decisively cinematic turn away from its
predecessors. Although it received identical critical acclaim to that of Max Payne 2, this new installment left a
bitter taste in the mouths of fans (including myself). Of course, many
considered this a welcome change of pace for the franchise, but no one could deny
that this game has problems. Simply put, Max
Payne 3 was unbearably close to true greatness, but it was boggled down by
confusing conceptual design choices. This game has fundamental flaws in three
aspects of its being: its mechanics, story, and multiplayer.
Mechanics
Max
Payne is synonymous with slow-mo, matrix shooting. We saw it first in Max Payne where he could mow down foes
with style. Max Payne 2 further
developed this intense experience by actively rewarding players for running headfirst into a crowd of
gun-wielding goons. So, what's the best way of wasting bad guys in the newest
installment? No, it's not by running through their ranks, using bullet time to
narrowly dodge bullets so that you can fill them with a couple of your own;
this isn't Max Payne 2. One of the
biggest crimes of Max Payne 3 is that
it ignores the perfect bullet time of its immediate predecessor, which rewarded
the player for taking risks by increasing the power of Max's bullet time as he killed
enemies while using it. Instead, Max's bullet time has a fixed potency. Max also
gains an insignificant amount of bullet time for each kill that he acquires,
and his maximum capacity is stifling.
In
general, the bullet time's decreased power discourages the player from taking
the same ultimate risks that made the combat in Max Payne 2 so satisfying. Encouraging Max to take advantage of the
newly-implemented cover system isn't itself a problem. Taking away means to reward
the player for taking risks is indeed an issue, because mitigating the risks a
player can take, or mitigating the reasons
for which a player would want to
take a risk, makes for gameplay that can quickly become unsatisfying. By making
Max more realistic, Rockstar Games
made Max Payne 3 a more linear,
repetitive game.
Other abilities
provided to the player also add to this repetitiveness. While Max is
underpowered in terms of basic damage-trading, he has a few incredibly powerful
abilities that certainly don't exist for the better. One of them is Max's
"last stand" mode, where, upon taking lethal damage, Max has the
opportunity to take an instant-kill shot at the inflictor, or die. If he kills
his target, he restores the same amount of health as a painkiller normally would.
The catch is that he requires one bottle of painkillers to do it.
Understandably, this feature is meant deal with constant death in the first two
games, and it almost works. However, the gimmick gets boring fast, it stops the
pace of combat, and it negates the use of painkillers since saving them for
"last stand" ensures that Max can never instantly die. It doesn't add
to Max's ability to dive into combat, since if he takes lethal damage and kills
the inflictor, he becomes prone; if he gets caught in a crowd of enemies, he
might as well be dead. Let's not forget the fact that a bottle of painkillers cannot save someone from a lethal bullet;
the realism that MP3 boasts vanishes
instantly. The result of this "solution to death" slows down combat,
and once again encourages Max to stay behind cover.
Bullet dodge, unfortunately, has
been changed for the worse. Bullet Dodge is Max's literal leap of faith.
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| Perhaps the most badass move ever. It's bound to break a few ribs though. |
This
incarnation is a mixture of those seen in the previous two games. During bullet
time, Max is invincible (seen in MP1),
and he can shoot while prone (MP2).
However, the former perk of this move is what cheapens the whole ordeal. In a
game that boasts cinematic realism, the main character is able to take a
face-load of bullets while in mid-air without taking an inkling of damage. This
is literally what happened in one of my playthroughs: while using bullet dodge,
someone stuffed my head with enough bullets to kill a village. Although
humorous, the fact that I was laughing at such a silly thing meant I was taken
out of the experience. In MP2, one of
my favorite videogames of all time, Max was vulnerable even during bullet time.
With the power that he was given in his bullet time, his bullet dodge became
less of a viable option to survive, and more of a "look at me, I'm a badass!" ticket. The opposite is true
in MP3, where the bullet dodge is so powerful that bullet time is
downgraded in order to compensate. Bullet dodge shouldn't have to be spammed or
gimmicky, as is encouraged by MP3, it
should be savored for the perfect moment.
Max
should be given tools to achieve ultimate awesomeness. Unfortunately, what is
provided is a bunch of limiting mechanics that don't make much cohesive sense.
They exist as a means to take full advantage of the cover system, thus limiting
what the player can or wants to do. There's less inherent risk in the system
that made its predecessor so intense, and thus the game feels more restricting.
It feels like all of the game's encounters were more calculated, less organic.
"Get behind this cover to kill these guys," the game dictates. By
being more cinematic, MP3 ends up
being less engaging, and more repetitive.
Story
POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW
After
everyone he loves dies, and after he eliminates New York City's crime moguls, Max becomes an alcoholic. After angering NYC's kingpin of crime,
Max is forced to flee his home with an old friend, Passos. He and Passos, a
boring character, then find work as personal guards. Despite having nothing,
Max lives on. Essentially, the only thing keeping him alive at this point is
his tolerance to the various drugs that he consumes. He says that he is alive in order to see the man that kills him, but
that's an utter cop out.
Eventually,
the family he has been contracted to protect finds itself in danger, and it's
up to Max to save the day! The first half of the game can be summarized as
"people get kidnapped, Max tries to negotiate/take them back." If you
know this guy's luck by now, you know that things go wrong preposterously quickly.
The
second half of the game sees a bald Max (a decision I still find appalling)
undergoing extremes to save this family, and taking revenge on its aggressors
(who are exceedingly dull). Max goes on a rampage, killing an amount of people
tantamount to the Nagasaki Bombing. The story ends our hero on a beach, looking
like he's in retirement.
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| Why Max why?! |
As you
might have guessed, nothing is particularly grabbing
about the story in MP3. The whole
thing seems like it should be completely out of one human's hands. (I cannot
express enough how many people Max kills. He kills everyone. Seriously, everyone
dies.) Where in the first two games, Max Payne has a personal, understandable
involvement in what's going on, MP3
provides no way for the audience to connect to Max. He is, for all intents and
purposes, just an outlet for genocide.
He eventually
overcomes his alcoholism through the game's run. In the context of this being Max Payne, the man who
has lost everyone he loves, this should prove some sort of significant feat.
However, the player has no way to -- case in point -- connect with Max
overcoming this burden; there is no direct change in the way MP3 plays that would suggest that he is
currently experiencing overbearing stress. In fact, if the game were to contain
no cutscenes, there would be absolutely no way for the audience to tell that
Max was ever an alcoholic. His withdrawal could have been enough excuse to get
a dream sequence in the game, famous in the Max
Payne series. That right there is missed potential.
It must
be pointed out, by the way, that close to half
of the campaign's run time consists of cutscenes. For that much time, the
player should be given something interesting.
In
summary, MP3 takes far too much time
in telling a story that doesn't matter, while providing no way to connect to
the game's titular character.
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| Who is this guy, you ask? It doesn't matter, he's boring. |
Multiplayer
For me,
this is the greatest disappointment of the game. Not because it's bad, but
because it's too good. Shooting up real people in bullet time, making nemeses,
and taking advantage of the intricate customization system proved an absolute
blast. Yet, regardless of how shockingly well-thought the system was, the
online community dissolved almost instantly.
What on
earth happened? I believe I have the answer: Call of Duty.
MP3's multiplayer features loadouts,
extremely low health, and killstreaks. It's easy to point out these similarities
to
CoD, but why did
Rockstar Games even attempt reusing such
popular material? Now, I'm not a fan of the hate that borders on barbaric on
the massively successful
CoD series.
Yet there is one truth, whether one hates the games or not, that can't be denied:
everyone wants the kind of success that envelopes this franchise. And so,
Rockstar Games tried its hand at
creating an equally popular game to no avail. The very existence of half a
dozen active
CoD games and
communities doomed the multiplayer of
MP3.
This is synonymous with the unfortunate demise of
Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite a triple A budget, it simply
couldn't stand up to the guns of the already massive
World of Warcraft. Add to the fact that low health almost
completely closes the gates to unskilled players, and that leveling up is
punishingly slow, and we can see just why the promising
MP3 multiplayer was left with no community in a matter of months. MP3's multiplayer becomes less a matter of skill as the first person to shoot tends to win.
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| You'd hope that you could get out of an encounter like this alive. Unfortunately, all you need to die is a half dozen bullets, so that's unlikely to happen. |
Commendably,
MP3, through eight years of
development, has diminutive issues. These problems, however, begin to stack
upon each other until they produce a glaring vision of what is fundamentally amiss with the game. Despite vicious
polish and the masterful attention to detail that this game boasts, there really is
no way to dress up fundamental conceptual
mistakes. An unfulfilling combat system, an uninteresting story, and a
multiplayer that lacks its own staple of originality all add up to a sense
that something went wrong with Max Payne 3
To
finally conclude, why am I talking today about a year old game that is
currently being talked about by approximately nobody? This game is,
unfortunately, seen as a failure by Rockstar
Games on a financial level. The game turned out to be an unfit use of
resources, and we may never see a game of its like for another console
generation. Max Payne 3 is the
perfect example of a perfectly capable game, forgotten because of a thousand
tiny conceptual faults that could have been diverted through a little more focus on the part of the developers.
