Max Payne 3

[Binnatics]

Reading your game comments so far, Art, makes me curious of two things:
First; what the heck was that revolutionary thing Max Payne had in its first game, and the second? Was the bullet-time thing so new, and were the cartoonish cut-scenes so inspiring to most gamers? I have hardly played MP 1 and 2, but I remember those short bursts of cartoon-like 'breaks' to explain short details of the story, or maybe as flashbacks to lost memories of earlier troubles. I don't have the answer to this, since I've never digged into it and never played those first games. But I'm sure we have some friends around who know the answers ;) :-X 8)
Second: How did Rockstar want to extend that brilliant touch into this new MP 3 edition, in a time where corridor-like shooters are dominated by the power of CoD style wargames and lookalikes, where most games have brilliant graphics and even cartoonish game-graphics have become an Art (Borderlands)?

Some things spring to mind, but I have no clue yet. I'll have to start playing the game for myself first, of course :-D
First thing is Max Payne himself. He is like the Duke. Only different of course. I think he's a mixture of Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen that got caught in a situation where there's "nothing to loose" and "pills galore". Right now he has the visual appearance of Phil Anselmo, the lead singer of Pantera, a 90's trash-metal band that also was known for it's "good friends and a bottle of Pills" (8-X)
Then there's the cartoonish cutscenes. I think Rockstar couldn't choose between realism and cartoonesque craziness and decided to make a mix of both. Result: weird and too many cutscenes that interfere the immersion to the game.
Then there's the bullet-time phenomena; I could swear that I read somewhere they invented that thing in the first release. But I might as well be wrong. Anyway; I've read about their efforts to make it a part of a multiplayer setting. They somehow managed to make it available as a bonus in MP, so that you have an advantage on your enemies. They thought very clever about this whole theme in terms of to whom this 'delay' in the gameplay would benefit and when and how. They did, imho, a brilliant job on making such a delicate SP thing available in a MP setting. If you check the different game-modes that are available for MP, it's also sort of revolutionary. They really did a good job on inventing new abilities and cool features for MP. But still, haven't seen any serious reviews on teh MP variant yet, and haven't tested it for myself either.
So until now, there's many questions and not many answers to this new Max Payne. I stil think I'm going to enjoy it a lot, but unfortunately my real life events and my love for Sniper Elite have gotten me from trying MP3.

To be continued ;)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention; very sharp and good reviews there Art! You can see how it already gets me going, without even having tried the game, lol
I think that's worth a kudo! :-X

[Art Blade]

thanks, Binnatics :)

Not exactly top notch graphics. Looks like rubber and plastic
[smg id=6132 type=preview align=center caption="Max Payne + Deagle"]

Here I took advantage of bullet proof doors or whatever it was supposed to be. They saw me, shot at me, but didn't hurt me  :-D I waited until they came to the side to walk around it and shot one by one down.  >:D Oh, it is a golden weapon I'm using. Just bling, nothing else about it as far as I can tell.

[smg id=6133 type=preview align=center caption="bullet proof glas"]

Note the lower right corner. That's how steam manages to capture its own capture notifications..

[Art Blade]

I've finished the game. :)
[smg id=6134 type=preview align=center caption="the end"]
Now the fun begins, unexpectedly. You can select and play every chapter individually and even select from which checkpoint on (numbers to choose from)! Which means, you can jump to a very specific moment of the game. Nice. :)

And there is an options menu with cheats. You unlock those by completing challenges, collecting stuff and so on. One of which are those golden weapon parts. Now I know why I would want to do all that stuff.. for cheating  :-D
[smg id=6135 type=preview align=center caption="that's why"]

See, above there are two parts of that golden pistol missing, and now I've got them all, doing a slooooow second through on easy.  :-()
[smg id=6136 type=preview align=center caption="gotcha hehe"]

[Binnatics]

Nice! :-X That's a bit like the rewards you get in older GTA games for secret packages and stuff; they make the game easier for you by making extra weapons and ammo available. Cool!

[Art Blade]

it's fun to go to to very specific parts of a mission and of course to hunt for achievements and such :)

[PZ]

I like games where the end user has more options rather than the exceedingly narrow restrictions you have in some of the newer games.  For example the AC series where you have only 3 game save slots.

[Binnatics]

Today just started with the game. My first impressions were that the cutscenes were actually more like a movie, where shootouts were sort of breaks where the game gave you some liberty to act... show them what you're worth. It started to get even a bit annoying when I kept dying on certain points. But when I became more in control of the bullet - dodge and bullet time abilities it became rather fun!
I must say the graphics are amazingly good. The small areas where you're acting are very well worked out according to detail and people. The glance on someone's arms, wounds, look extremely real, the bullet-through-body-animations.... great!!! >:D

The story is indeed interesting. It sucks you into it, and I can't deny it makes me think back to CoD Black Ops. Sort of the same way to tell a story, same 'grown-up talk' to teach you the life of a real tough guy. Indeed it has some Duke-style in it.
The game also reminds me of GTA. Same engine, probably the cause of that. I keep looking at vending machines and cars for a clue, a sign of recognition. But so far, all the cars and other attributes are referring purely to the place we are; Sao Paolo.

More impressions and some screenies to come tomorrow. Bedtime now ;) Max already kind of kept me going too long :-D Nice how the game teases you to stay when you want to quit.

One more thing... I already like Max' quotes; "Like a drunk American has been in a Brazilian never was" :-X 8)

[Binnatics]

"It's been 4 days now since I arrived in Sao Paolo and the heat was already frying my brains. I'd gone through the entire playthrough once, and was working on my second, oldschool style this time. I couldn't remember the amount of pill boxes I'd popped, but it was sure enough to start a pharmacy with it. Was my first trip to Brazil merely a trip through a world full of s#!t that I didn't even understand half of, this second playthrough made me realise it wasn't only me being that dump... this land was crazy as hell, and I finally started to learn a bit about the mess I had become part of.
"I remember back in that police office, I got so surprised on those weird meat-coloured packets on plates all over the place and I decided that I should ask JRD about it, so I went back to the forum and wrote on the MP3 topic about it. Sure thing JRD would help me out on this riddle:

[smg id=6166]

"But now I was back in the Favela, with nothing but an AK and some pain killers to help me maintain a good sense of humour, so I decided to focus on the job again.

[smg id=6171]

I'd practiced a bit at the "New York Minute" arcade game, which was a perfect solution for those getting annoyed by the misery of my life shown in the endless amount of cutscenes, where the game brought you from one action-filled trip to the next, demanding you to shoot as fast as possible through the entire chapter. If not had I gotten so deep into this oldschool playthrough, I'd given it some more time, but I decided to just leave it here at the MP3 topic for the rest to check out. They could see for themselves how cool it could be to play as me 15 years ago, and see for themselves how time flies in a fast developing graphics world ::)"

[smg id=6170]

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[PZ]

Nice!  :-X

[fragger]

Good stuff Binn :-D :-X

[Binnatics]

After leaving the game on the shelve for a few months (I think what distracted me was Sniper Elite, Saints Row 3 and 4 and some more FC3) I picked it up where left it. I decided to give this "New York Minute Hardcore" a try. For once I was given a shot at becoming a real Max Payne :-D
I started with a minute on my watch, with the clock ticking. The only way to add time was to kill those bastards, so I started rushing through the different chapters with a big s#!t-eating grin on my face :-()
It was hard to miss these fucks since they were covering all the angles, but the game didn't allow me to die even once, and saving is for sissies so I couldn't do that either.
I kept practising all the chapters until I brought the chance of getting killed to a minimum. Yesterday I finally succeeded. It took me 95 minutes of gameplay, minus the 22 minutes (or so) I had left on the clock. You can count the kills >:D

Somehow Steam fucked up on me yesterday, so I couldn't rank my scores, but I got the achievement, a nice symbol of a crow :)
I can easily state that this is one of the achievements I'm most proud of ^-^

I'm running the game on the highest graphics settings now, made possible by my GTX780. I must say I've never experienced graphics so detailed and well worked out. I've played the game over 160 hours now and it still surprises me how beautiful everything is worked out.

Here's a few examples of the game in high detail. ?I must confess that moving images are much better showing the quality of the graphics, because you can see the clothes moving, the surface of all different textures glance in the available light while walking round, which is really astonishing. But this is at least a teaser ;)

[smg id=6595]
Caught in the cross fire

[smg id=6596]
Sunset in the jungle

[smg id=6597]
Another bullet-time detail shot. In the bullet you can see the reflection of the surroundings. It's not real reflection as I found out, but it sure as hell gives that impression ;D

[Art Blade]

nice  :) and congrats on completing the game in one go without dying +1 :-X :)

[PZ]

nice  :) and congrats on completing the game in one go without dying +1 :-X :)

ditto  :-X

[Binnatics]

Thanx guys. I've tried to do it again to get the ranking. I believe I should have made a damn good score. But it's too hard. I keep dying somewhere halfway through or nearly at the end, which means you have to start over after an hour of gaming :D :D

Going to focus on the Blood Dragon now ;)

[Art Blade]

 :)

[durian]

Simply amazing feat Bin  :-X :-X :-X  +1 :)
I can't remember how many times I die during my only playthrough on easy  ;D

[Art Blade]

yeah, same  :-D Binnatics is a machine.

[fragger]

Well done Binn +1 :-X :) I've never played any of the Max Payne games but what you did sounds like quite an accomplishment!

[Binnatics]

Thank you guys. It really was an achievement :)

This Max Payne guy is such a good character that you can easily place yourself in his shoes and experience this madness in São Paolo, over and over again. Every time I die somewhere along the story it feels bad, of course, but the game doesn't bore me at all. I think I"ve done at least 20 (not completed) playthroughs in the past few weeks and am still trying to get that score ranked that I got back then. It should be doable to performthe same thing twice, wouldn't it

Well, as long as I'm having fun it's okay to keep trying I guess ^-^

[durian]

Although I'm a small guy who weigh just over 100 lbs, I don't think his shoes are big enough to house me  :-()

[Binnatics]

 

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[Binnatics]

As I said before, I couldn't resist trying to get that New York Minute Hardcore ranked. Yesterday I was successful again. I kept trying every day only once, sometimes twice, and finally it resulted in a completion. I hoped that my score would be ranked this time, because I knew I had a pretty impressing score the first time I completed it. Back then I got 95 minutes total, which is more than the guy who's listed number 1 on the global rankings.
This second try I had both steam and Rockstar Social Club connected and well-functioning, but despite that the game refused to add my score to the ranking. Too bad, because as you can see I beat the best score again   ^-^

[smg id=6616]

I also discovered an Easter egg in the game. When you make your way through the jungle river in pursuit of the boat where Fabiana is been held in, you reach a moment where a cutscene shows you how a small boat full of Molotovs crashes against a pillar of a bridge. It blows up. During that cutscene you see Max look at the scene with the huge machine gun in his hand, and on his left elbow you see a leech. I only discovered it after my 10th playthrough or something ;)

[smg id=6617]

[durian]

Wow I'm really proud of you Bin  :-X :)