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I'll start this with a preface and a link to an old post of mine where I talk about why I ever played the Max Payne series in the first place. This is just to give a background on my experience with the games so it's clear where I'm coming from, since I believe that's the core difference between the OP and I. the link and the quote are optional (and long winded).
Here's that old post; just below this is a sort of shortened version:
Something I want to assert: the Max Payne series is a shooter. If the story, aesthetics, dialogue, themes, music and anything else outside of the shooting is what makes you like the series, then that is, of course, perfectly fine.
However, it'll always be a shooter. It's similar to a gun. A gun can be used to scare off potential attackers, non-lethally incapacitate people or be used for recreational purposes, yet it is designed for killing people. That is its purpose, just like this game's purpose is to be a shooter; there is no substantial exploration, no substantial platforming, RPGing, hand-to-hand combat or whatever. Shooting's what the games are truly about, whether you want to believe that aside. Since these are games and your only true interaction with the game is through shooting, that should be amazing.
I'm skimming though the part about the characters/story though, since I've already discuss how I feel about that in the link to my old post.
You cannot downplay the animations and physics in a game of which the gameplay is entirely focused on shootouts. This makes the repetitive action of shooting and hitting enemies dynamic, and it keeps it different each time since it virtually can't happen the same way twice. It's not about how the animations look, it's about feedback.
Outside of the melee-executions, no enemy death is canned (except for two of the bosses and maybe one sniper in Chapter 12). This allows the player to feel like they're actually having an effect in the game world and even shots that miss cause enemies to duck/flinch from debris. For anyone playing this third-person shooter for the shooter part, that keeps the experience fresh throughout.
It's more than just eye-candy. If you shoot and enemy over a ledge or down some stairs, then their ammo is where they land. If you run out, where they landed is where you need to go changing the flow of battle eve in the most narrow of corridors.
MP3 is the first time in the series the shoot-dodge requires some thought when using it. MP/MP2 Max does that "kipping up" move where he immediately flips back up from lying on the ground, minimizes. Here, things are different, not inherently bad — it happens to be extremely welcome to me.
It's a similar situation as I mentioned above; here's an action that has an appropriate consequence depending on where you use it. If you run straight at a wall and dive into it, you get thrown back, having to scramble back up to your feet. Don't run straight at a wall and dive into it if you don't want to get thrown back and have to scramble back up to your feet.
Again, I welcome this because I love movies like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow where you see the protagonists throwing themselves out of the way of gunfire; they fall, tumble over their surroundings and bounce off of walls, but they keep shooting, and they always get back up. They're not invulnerable and that's what makes the shootouts intense. If they just effortlessly glided through warehouses and hospitals, moving faster the more headshots they get, then there's little actual gunplay, just people getting shot.
In MP3, you have to keep track of your surrounds since, unlike in the past two games, have a tangible effect on the player character, rather than just feeling like static backdrops for the shooting. You must quickly think of where you'll end up after a shoot-dodge and you have to make your shots count if you're doing it in the open. In MP2, the regenerating bullet-time keeps it from being a precious commodity and you can almost always fall back on it whereas in 3 if you screw up a dive you made in haste, you'll need it to give you the edge while Max recoils or topples over a railing.
This mechanic becomes a problem when you're hiding behind cover, which is part of the reason you hear so many people say they didn't bother with/shoot from cover often while playing the game.
Also, the shot that send you into Last Man Standing would've killed you if you didn't have painkillers. If you enter that mode, you pretty much got killed, so if this happens a lot, you may need to change your tactics 'cause you're sucking.
Again, I understand criticisms of the feature, but it's only there to give you a second chance; Borderlands 1 keeps you from moving when you're downed while two slows you to a crawl. Here, you can't reload and if you were cowering behind cover when you got hit instead of going balls-out, then you're stuck. If you don't notice how the person who shot you is high-lighted in time, then you die. It's a hand-out with repercussions that you simply need to work around. You may as well complain about not being able to move in Borderlands' version of "last stand," if we're complaining at all. Or, we could not get killed in the first place. Either way.
The movement in MP3 is annoying at times and the fact that they have vault on its own dedicated button is annoying as well. Taking cover should be smoother and using cover should be cleaned up as well. Yet if you're complaining about segregation between gameplay and cutscenes, you can dive down the stairs in the stadium level, shooting while sliding the whole way down. With practice, the sluggishness you're experience diminishes as you learn not to just mash the shoot-dodge button at any give moment.
And welcome to just about any type of action story. You've got a human character who performs impossible feats; there needs to be an element of relatability to help keep the action intense. Max is self-deprecating all throughout the series and he never gives himself due credit for how much ass he kicks, especially in this game.
And Max got shot in the fucking head with a desert eagle in 2. That may have been some introspective of his tortured soul begrudgingly going forward after dying on the inside upon losing his family, but he still got shot in the fucking head. He ended up in the hospital, runs out and goes on to kill more people. I understand that perhaps you get your ass handed to you during the gameplay before and after these insane maneuvers, but I know that by the end, I was consistently kicking some ass.
All of the enemies in this game have good accuracy, something I actually would appreciate if it were different depending on their training (gang members would rush in more, but have lower accuracy, Etc.). When you take cover pop out to shoot them, you have about one second — perhaps even less — to shoot the enemy before you get shot. If you run out into the open and shoot dodge so you'll land behind cover then repeat, you're much less likely to get shot. Moving in bullet time doesn't speed Max up, but it lowers the likelihood of getting shot as enemies' aim will be just behind Max. Even in narrow places like the favelas, you're better off moving forward than sitting behind cover. The people who you say exaggerate how often they spent outside of cover
And you're telling me you never stood behind something, staring straight into it in the past Max Payne games? I know I did, and after spending some time getting used to the much more demanding 3, I used about the same amount of cover and welcomed being able to actually snap to cover instead of grinding Max's nose into the wall. Since the main character is a human and there are bullets moving toward him at high speeds, so yes, having cover be an option in the game is fine and yes, some people can play this outside of cover 99% of the time.
I honestly feel bad for those who played this as a cover shooter, because it certainly does not lend itself well to being one. There aren't always convenient waist-high walls you can hide behind, so I can image it being a pain to always try to use cover as enemies will regularly flank you. You can and will get shot up, whether you're in cover or diving out into the open. You're never truly safe and whether that's a good thing depends on the player.
If playing MP3 without cover is a trial and error experience that involves memorizing enemy locations, then that means it's right in line with the past two games, most definitely the first one with its grenade-throw traps.
Getting shot almost immediately as you peak around cover and getting flanked by enemies seems to me like it would enough incentive to get out from behind said cover. Giving anecdotal examples of your personal experience with the cover in the game does not prove the game is designed around it, especially since I and many other were rushing out into the open before being halfway through.
Did Alan Wake feature cover mechanics? I haven't played any Remedy games with any, so I can't speak on whether they'd have done a better job in that regard.
That said, the cover system in this game could be much better, that is true. It needs to be smoother; however, when you're decently close to cover and you hit the button, Max will stand straight up then move into cover, but he has never gotten shot during that transition, at least for me and a few others I've seen mention it. It makes you think you're vulnerable and I'd love for there to be more natural animations/mechanics for taking/moving into cover.
You mention cover placement doesn't make sense. Like I mentioned earlier, the game isn't a cover shooter, so there won't ways be concrete, waist-high walls to use as perfectly dependable cover. The game's environments are generally believably designed, so there's only cover where it makes sense. Use it for a breather rather than as the main means of attack and the experience is much more enjoyable.
Again, you're downplaying a central strength of 3's shooting by saying enemy hit reactions are "the only thing it gets right." If I shoot something in a game, it had better react to being shot and reacting well to being shot will directly feed into my enjoyment of the game because it makes sense, and is satisfying.
There also aren't any monster closest spawns in the game as they never infinitely spawn at any point in the game. If you're talking about enemies coming out of doorways or a lot of them rushing in from a particular point, then yeah that happens. They're not always standing around waiting for you to smoke them, which is similar to past games (though I recall there being plenty of enemies just standing around, something I didn't care much for).
I wholeheartedly agree with the these cutscenes being invasive. While I found the first two games monotonous with dull levels, if Max Payne 3 has aped their overall level flow, then it would pretty close to perfect for me, as far as I'm concerned. I was still able to play through the game a bunch of times, so it's subjective whether it outright ruins playthroughs. I do find myself picking particular checkpoints rather than playing through whole levels, but even when I do that, it's simply not that bad since it's worth it to do the shootout in the Branco offices over and over.
And while there were a few moments where Max keeps the same weapon you had out previously, you end up using your pistol far too often. However — and it's refreshing to see someone not complain about this since it's not an issue — there are no bullet-sponges in this game, so every pistol is about as viable as any other gun since a single headshot is all that's needed to kill almost any enemy in the game. Two bullets at most. This is a problem, though I appreciate that your weapons are kept through cutscenes.
Again, I agree, but to a point. Just about all the fail states in this game occur when it makes sense. Girls getting kidnapped? Didn't shoot everyone body on the roof and are now hanging off the edge? Fall into the water while guys are still around?
I feel like the collectibles are there almost out of obligation; having collectibles has been a staple of games for so long and there are those who want them. I feel like it's just an obtuse way of padding out games and I didn't need them here. Though I always appreciate rewarding exploration, make sure that exploration fits into the game. The only exploration I care to do in the Max Payne series was with the shooting mechanics and physics, which is why 3 is easily my favorite.
And I'd like the companions to help out to, but if they did, they'd need to be made invincible because just imagine how annoying those fail states would be. I won't though because the mere thought rubs me the wrong way.
When it makes sense, you're able to just run around though. It's something that clashes with the narrative a bit since it wouldn't make sense to be looking for bonus collectibles in most of the game's situations.
This is another part I agree with you on, at least objectively. I have my own views on the story of the past games and this one, and while I believe there are really good story elements and themes in 3, there is little cohesion among those elements, which is a shame. I talk about that more in that old post I linked above.
Again, I didn't give a damn about Remedy's Max Payne, save for a few moments (mentioned here).
Here's my take:
This game does have problems. But if you accept it for what it and the series as a whole really is, and play it with an open mind, you might be able to appreciate what it offers. That thrill that comes from being in the midst of a shootout, knowing your next move determines whether you die. There's the element of unpredictability that comes with the physics and animations.
It's not a game for the Counter-Strike or Quake player where you're movement is effortless and while crazy, your shootouts are clean, calculated events. It's a series of shootouts directed by John Woo. It's a messy, dirty experience where you'll make a mistake at some point, and it's in that moment between making that mistake an delivering a maelstrom of bullets into your foe in which you feel that elation that I so desired.
Here's that old post; just below this is a sort of shortened version:
Something I want to assert: the Max Payne series is a shooter. If the story, aesthetics, dialogue, themes, music and anything else outside of the shooting is what makes you like the series, then that is, of course, perfectly fine.
However, it'll always be a shooter. It's similar to a gun. A gun can be used to scare off potential attackers, non-lethally incapacitate people or be used for recreational purposes, yet it is designed for killing people. That is its purpose, just like this game's purpose is to be a shooter; there is no substantial exploration, no substantial platforming, RPGing, hand-to-hand combat or whatever. Shooting's what the games are truly about, whether you want to believe that aside. Since these are games and your only true interaction with the game is through shooting, that should be amazing.
I'm skimming though the part about the characters/story though, since I've already discuss how I feel about that in the link to my old post.
I just don’t understand how the few that have played it call it one of the best shooters. Maybe if you judge shooters by just enemy hit reactions and like to stare at animations. Yes, the Euphoria animation engine is great in some ways, but not in others.
You cannot downplay the animations and physics in a game of which the gameplay is entirely focused on shootouts. This makes the repetitive action of shooting and hitting enemies dynamic, and it keeps it different each time since it virtually can't happen the same way twice. It's not about how the animations look, it's about feedback.
Outside of the melee-executions, no enemy death is canned (except for two of the bosses and maybe one sniper in Chapter 12). This allows the player to feel like they're actually having an effect in the game world and even shots that miss cause enemies to duck/flinch from debris. For anyone playing this third-person shooter for the shooter part, that keeps the experience fresh throughout.
It's more than just eye-candy. If you shoot and enemy over a ledge or down some stairs, then their ammo is where they land. If you run out, where they landed is where you need to go changing the flow of battle eve in the most narrow of corridors.
Animation Priority: The Game
It makes shoot-dodging an even less viable strategy because you're knocking your head into walls and bits of cover in the already claustrophobic level design, where you’re then forced into a stun loop while you clumsily pick yourself back up. This process of getting back up takes exactly THREE SECONDS.
MP3 is the first time in the series the shoot-dodge requires some thought when using it. MP/MP2 Max does that "kipping up" move where he immediately flips back up from lying on the ground, minimizes. Here, things are different, not inherently bad — it happens to be extremely welcome to me.
It's a similar situation as I mentioned above; here's an action that has an appropriate consequence depending on where you use it. If you run straight at a wall and dive into it, you get thrown back, having to scramble back up to your feet. Don't run straight at a wall and dive into it if you don't want to get thrown back and have to scramble back up to your feet.
Again, I welcome this because I love movies like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow where you see the protagonists throwing themselves out of the way of gunfire; they fall, tumble over their surroundings and bounce off of walls, but they keep shooting, and they always get back up. They're not invulnerable and that's what makes the shootouts intense. If they just effortlessly glided through warehouses and hospitals, moving faster the more headshots they get, then there's little actual gunplay, just people getting shot.
In MP3, you have to keep track of your surrounds since, unlike in the past two games, have a tangible effect on the player character, rather than just feeling like static backdrops for the shooting. You must quickly think of where you'll end up after a shoot-dodge and you have to make your shots count if you're doing it in the open. In MP2, the regenerating bullet-time keeps it from being a precious commodity and you can almost always fall back on it whereas in 3 if you screw up a dive you made in haste, you'll need it to give you the edge while Max recoils or topples over a railing.
This mechanic becomes a problem when you're hiding behind cover, which is part of the reason you hear so many people say they didn't bother with/shoot from cover often while playing the game.
Also, the shot that send you into Last Man Standing would've killed you if you didn't have painkillers. If you enter that mode, you pretty much got killed, so if this happens a lot, you may need to change your tactics 'cause you're sucking.
Again, I understand criticisms of the feature, but it's only there to give you a second chance; Borderlands 1 keeps you from moving when you're downed while two slows you to a crawl. Here, you can't reload and if you were cowering behind cover when you got hit instead of going balls-out, then you're stuck. If you don't notice how the person who shot you is high-lighted in time, then you die. It's a hand-out with repercussions that you simply need to work around. You may as well complain about not being able to move in Borderlands' version of "last stand," if we're complaining at all. Or, we could not get killed in the first place. Either way.
The movement in MP3 is annoying at times and the fact that they have vault on its own dedicated button is annoying as well. Taking cover should be smoother and using cover should be cleaned up as well. Yet if you're complaining about segregation between gameplay and cutscenes, you can dive down the stairs in the stadium level, shooting while sliding the whole way down. With practice, the sluggishness you're experience diminishes as you learn not to just mash the shoot-dodge button at any give moment.
And welcome to just about any type of action story. You've got a human character who performs impossible feats; there needs to be an element of relatability to help keep the action intense. Max is self-deprecating all throughout the series and he never gives himself due credit for how much ass he kicks, especially in this game.
And Max got shot in the fucking head with a desert eagle in 2. That may have been some introspective of his tortured soul begrudgingly going forward after dying on the inside upon losing his family, but he still got shot in the fucking head. He ended up in the hospital, runs out and goes on to kill more people. I understand that perhaps you get your ass handed to you during the gameplay before and after these insane maneuvers, but I know that by the end, I was consistently kicking some ass.
All of the enemies in this game have good accuracy, something I actually would appreciate if it were different depending on their training (gang members would rush in more, but have lower accuracy, Etc.). When you take cover pop out to shoot them, you have about one second — perhaps even less — to shoot the enemy before you get shot. If you run out into the open and shoot dodge so you'll land behind cover then repeat, you're much less likely to get shot. Moving in bullet time doesn't speed Max up, but it lowers the likelihood of getting shot as enemies' aim will be just behind Max. Even in narrow places like the favelas, you're better off moving forward than sitting behind cover. The people who you say exaggerate how often they spent outside of cover
And you're telling me you never stood behind something, staring straight into it in the past Max Payne games? I know I did, and after spending some time getting used to the much more demanding 3, I used about the same amount of cover and welcomed being able to actually snap to cover instead of grinding Max's nose into the wall. Since the main character is a human and there are bullets moving toward him at high speeds, so yes, having cover be an option in the game is fine and yes, some people can play this outside of cover 99% of the time.
I honestly feel bad for those who played this as a cover shooter, because it certainly does not lend itself well to being one. There aren't always convenient waist-high walls you can hide behind, so I can image it being a pain to always try to use cover as enemies will regularly flank you. You can and will get shot up, whether you're in cover or diving out into the open. You're never truly safe and whether that's a good thing depends on the player.
If playing MP3 without cover is a trial and error experience that involves memorizing enemy locations, then that means it's right in line with the past two games, most definitely the first one with its grenade-throw traps.
Getting shot almost immediately as you peak around cover and getting flanked by enemies seems to me like it would enough incentive to get out from behind said cover. Giving anecdotal examples of your personal experience with the cover in the game does not prove the game is designed around it, especially since I and many other were rushing out into the open before being halfway through.
Did Alan Wake feature cover mechanics? I haven't played any Remedy games with any, so I can't speak on whether they'd have done a better job in that regard.
That said, the cover system in this game could be much better, that is true. It needs to be smoother; however, when you're decently close to cover and you hit the button, Max will stand straight up then move into cover, but he has never gotten shot during that transition, at least for me and a few others I've seen mention it. It makes you think you're vulnerable and I'd love for there to be more natural animations/mechanics for taking/moving into cover.
You mention cover placement doesn't make sense. Like I mentioned earlier, the game isn't a cover shooter, so there won't ways be concrete, waist-high walls to use as perfectly dependable cover. The game's environments are generally believably designed, so there's only cover where it makes sense. Use it for a breather rather than as the main means of attack and the experience is much more enjoyable.
Again, you're downplaying a central strength of 3's shooting by saying enemy hit reactions are "the only thing it gets right." If I shoot something in a game, it had better react to being shot and reacting well to being shot will directly feed into my enjoyment of the game because it makes sense, and is satisfying.
There also aren't any monster closest spawns in the game as they never infinitely spawn at any point in the game. If you're talking about enemies coming out of doorways or a lot of them rushing in from a particular point, then yeah that happens. They're not always standing around waiting for you to smoke them, which is similar to past games (though I recall there being plenty of enemies just standing around, something I didn't care much for).
I wholeheartedly agree with the these cutscenes being invasive. While I found the first two games monotonous with dull levels, if Max Payne 3 has aped their overall level flow, then it would pretty close to perfect for me, as far as I'm concerned. I was still able to play through the game a bunch of times, so it's subjective whether it outright ruins playthroughs. I do find myself picking particular checkpoints rather than playing through whole levels, but even when I do that, it's simply not that bad since it's worth it to do the shootout in the Branco offices over and over.
And while there were a few moments where Max keeps the same weapon you had out previously, you end up using your pistol far too often. However — and it's refreshing to see someone not complain about this since it's not an issue — there are no bullet-sponges in this game, so every pistol is about as viable as any other gun since a single headshot is all that's needed to kill almost any enemy in the game. Two bullets at most. This is a problem, though I appreciate that your weapons are kept through cutscenes.
Again, I agree, but to a point. Just about all the fail states in this game occur when it makes sense. Girls getting kidnapped? Didn't shoot everyone body on the roof and are now hanging off the edge? Fall into the water while guys are still around?
I feel like the collectibles are there almost out of obligation; having collectibles has been a staple of games for so long and there are those who want them. I feel like it's just an obtuse way of padding out games and I didn't need them here. Though I always appreciate rewarding exploration, make sure that exploration fits into the game. The only exploration I care to do in the Max Payne series was with the shooting mechanics and physics, which is why 3 is easily my favorite.
And I'd like the companions to help out to, but if they did, they'd need to be made invincible because just imagine how annoying those fail states would be. I won't though because the mere thought rubs me the wrong way.
When it makes sense, you're able to just run around though. It's something that clashes with the narrative a bit since it wouldn't make sense to be looking for bonus collectibles in most of the game's situations.
This is another part I agree with you on, at least objectively. I have my own views on the story of the past games and this one, and while I believe there are really good story elements and themes in 3, there is little cohesion among those elements, which is a shame. I talk about that more in that old post I linked above.
Again, I didn't give a damn about Remedy's Max Payne, save for a few moments (mentioned here).
Here's my take:
Max accepts the death of his wife and daughter, but can't accept himself. He hates himself; he's talking to himself in the beginning with that "you jerk," line, just as he is throughout the game. R*'s take on Max is that he's narrating his life in his head as if he's a character and that he's being acted upon by fate, by evil forces Etc. He no longer has anything to fight for, but when he reacts to the mob kid hitting that woman, he jumps at the chance.
He complains about trouble always finding him at first, but by the end of the game, he could just get the hell out of São Paulo and be free of this mess. He could've left after Rodrigo got killed, but he doesn't. It's because whatever drove him to become a cop is still in him. The same thing that drove him to kill everyone leading up to Nicole Horne and falling in love with Mona.
He's a killer. He's a decent man as he's always tried to stop bad guys, but at his core he's a killer and when he says that at the end of 3, he sounds like he's just lamenting being played, but he's actually realizing it. He loved Mona because she was the same way. Again, he won't admit it as you see when he says that him going after Victor isn't redemption, just "pathetic desperation," but it is redemption. Saves a wife and her child, something he failed to do years prior. And here, at the end, he's content because he's finally accepted himself and there's no inner monologue because he doesn't feel like he's being acted on anymore. It's not what most would call peace, but it's that for him
He complains about trouble always finding him at first, but by the end of the game, he could just get the hell out of São Paulo and be free of this mess. He could've left after Rodrigo got killed, but he doesn't. It's because whatever drove him to become a cop is still in him. The same thing that drove him to kill everyone leading up to Nicole Horne and falling in love with Mona.
He's a killer. He's a decent man as he's always tried to stop bad guys, but at his core he's a killer and when he says that at the end of 3, he sounds like he's just lamenting being played, but he's actually realizing it. He loved Mona because she was the same way. Again, he won't admit it as you see when he says that him going after Victor isn't redemption, just "pathetic desperation," but it is redemption. Saves a wife and her child, something he failed to do years prior. And here, at the end, he's content because he's finally accepted himself and there's no inner monologue because he doesn't feel like he's being acted on anymore. It's not what most would call peace, but it's that for him
This game does have problems. But if you accept it for what it and the series as a whole really is, and play it with an open mind, you might be able to appreciate what it offers. That thrill that comes from being in the midst of a shootout, knowing your next move determines whether you die. There's the element of unpredictability that comes with the physics and animations.
It's not a game for the Counter-Strike or Quake player where you're movement is effortless and while crazy, your shootouts are clean, calculated events. It's a series of shootouts directed by John Woo. It's a messy, dirty experience where you'll make a mistake at some point, and it's in that moment between making that mistake an delivering a maelstrom of bullets into your foe in which you feel that elation that I so desired.
