I had this post in another tab for days after forgetting to hit "submit reply"!
I appreciate the post, and that we can agree on certain things. The game sounds like it has an identity crisis of whether it wants to be a cover shooter with all the cover points placed throughout a level, or if it wants you to use cover sparingly. I don't buy that the cover points are "believable" throughout the game. The messy experience would be improved if there were more animations of blending into cover from diving instead of awkwardly standing up and getting into cover with too many button presses to go with the animation priority taking its time. Using bullet-time by itself without shoot-dodge is not incentivized (at least not on Hard) because headshots don't make your bullet time meter rise as fast where you can go all John Woo like in Max Payne 2. Why get rid of Bullet Time 2.0? Like someone mentioned above and assumed that I didn't, I did a lot of shooting while prone because then I didn't have to deal with clunky movement.
Yes, I would prefer a game over instead of the badly implemented Last Stand mechanic. Is the bad camera to go along with it some sort of punishment for using it like ninja dog where they embarrass you with a pink ribbon?
I got the "messy, dirty experience" more with K&L 2 because cover in that game is also fragile but movement isn't as hampered so I felt more improvisational and capable to experiment with running Lynch around shaky-cam style, darting from cover to cover, and quickly picking up short-range weapons like Uzis or shotguns rather than doing the whack-a-mole affairs of a Gears of War. Picking up fire extinguishers and throwing them felt really messy but satisfying in a MacGuyver way, while in this game you can only shoot. No grenades. So I'm not given enough tools to improvise to create this messy experience you speak of. I'm perfectly fine with people calling that game shit, but at least I had fun with moving characters around while with Rockstar's implementation of Euphoria, I just don't.
I'm sorry for playing it on Hard, when normal in modern shooters is equivalent to easy. Max Payne 3 isn't hard on Hard, it's just where the little issues of player movement and animation priority blow up.
I got tired pretty quickly in this thread of people telling me to "stop sucking less" and telling me I'm diving into the wrong places, though. And then offering me the optimal way to play the game. Which is eerily similar to how game developers want you to play cinematic games in only that one specific way. No thanks.
The cover in the game is believable in that it fits within its surroundings — tool boxes in a garage, luggage in an airport, Etc. It also isn't ideally placed at every and there are parts where enemies come from more than one direction. If there's one thing I wouldn't think would be up for debate is the believability of the level designs since there's never really anything out of place. Levels are about as linear as they were in the previous two games, but it feels more restrictive with the cutscenes funneling the player on their way.
The cover animations should be much smoother and I would have loved to have the ability to roll or crawl along the ground. However, even though Max stands all the way up when going into cover, he can't get shot during that transition, at least as long as the shots are coming from the opposite side of the cover — I've enver had it happen and I've seen other mention that they've never had it happen. It shouldn't do that and it makes the player feel like they're being exposed to gunfire. Also, when you're prone on the ground, you can still snap into cover if you're within the same distance you need to be at to do so while standing up. You just can't move forward while hitting the button over and over while prone, so it feels off.
It's funny you mention using bullet-time by itself is not incentivized when strafing in bullet-time is one of the most effective means of engaging enemies. Moving while in bullet-time makes enemies' shots less like-likely to hit you and if you're just strafing, it's generally easier to aim/maneuver than doing so while diving since you don't have to worry about potentially hitting something in the scenery. Not getting shot seems like decent enough incentive to use bullet-time outside of shoot-dodging to me.
And yeah, the whole "MP2 is all John Woo," does not jive with me at all. The general gunplay of MP/MP2 never seemed in any way as engaging as any shootout in Hard Boiled to me and the only time I've ever scene anything like the bizarre bullet-time reload in 2 was done by Chow Yun-Fat in The Replacement Killers, but that was directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day).
The Last Man Standing mechanic is not ideal, that's true. I believe you mentioned
Borderlands having a better version of it, but in that your not able to move around. They are repercussions for essentially getting killed and are meant to feel like a punishment. I've always been able to at least get a chance to aim at who shot me unless I waited too long to shoot and fell behind something in the scenery. Swapping shoulder-view helps a ton during those moments and if they were able to shoot you, then you should be able to shoot them. In that gif you made, it looks like you're just aiming around at random, but if you stop for a bit, the reticule will move towards the person you need to kill, and they're also highlighted while everything else is washed out. You were actually just waking it worse
If having a limited amount of shots, a limited amount of time to swap shoulder-views to see/kill who shot you and a viewing range — which all but locks onto the person you need to kill — is a problem for you, then you may as well complain about not being able to move around in Borderlands.
And you mentioned K&L2, which is interesting because you can play that as a whack-a-mole style Gears-type game, even more so than this one. You say MP3 forced you to play it like a cover shooter, then you say the cover placement makes no sense...
I also recall cover in K&L2 being unreliable in that game because even if you took cover, you could still inexplicably get shot, no matter the material your cover is made of. I enjoyed the intensity of some of those shootouts too though, but it's hard to ignore how unpolished the shooting/cover mechanics are in comparison to others aspects of the game.
It's clear you prefer games that eschew physics/dynamism in favor of direct one-to-one control over you character. You managed to experiment in K&L2 because you liked the game's style of play, just as I and others were able to experiment in MP3. You say the game is going through an identity crisis, yet the source of the problem is with how you're playing. If you feel indignant at the accusations of sucking at the game that you've gotten, that's fine. However, you can't just ignore it when people suggest playing it differently than you are.
It's like running and gunning in RE1/REmake; you can do it, but you're just going to make the rest of the game harder — which might be what you're into. But if you complain about how scarce ammo is when you use it all up any chance you get, then you you sound stupid. Or playing Metal Gear Solid — on extreme — as a run and gun game. This is the same as complaining about how the game doesn't work as a cover shooter when you are adamant about using cover all the time rather than trying it a different way.
I know when I said you should keep an open mind that that's what I meant; I'm not saying you're wrong for playing it a certain way, but I meant it as a suggestion that if you're not enjoying the game — and if you're not getting paid to play/review it — then try it another way.
Also, if you make threads like this in the future where you try to assert objectively that a game is bad, make sure you're more up front about your own preferences and what you look for in a game. I can clearly see that you wanted this game to be more like MP2; that was the last thing I wanted, so if this game deviates from MP2's shooting mechanics in a way that places more emphasis on physics and the effects of one's shots (again, a
huge fucking part of a series all about shooting), then that's great to hear. Your entire OP feels slanted against what the game is going for and doesn't evaluate the game for it is, only from the standpoint of what it's not (and what it's not is what it should be, according to you). I hate to think of the people who may have liked this game that saw your post and decided to never give it a try. You gloss over the shooting mechanics themselves and say "Yeah, they're pretty good," then spend forever on what the game does wrong, in turn painting an unfair picture of the game. Even if you hate a game, you can still paint an accurate, balanced picture of it.
Imagine a thread that says there's nothing of any value in K&L2, even though it has amazing sound direction (the LMG being one of the best gun sounds in a game I've heard), a creative multiplayer mode, a story with genuinely shocking moments and an evocative art style. Say the OP only mentions how the game consists of only shooting and is really short, as i these are inherent negatives when, perhaps, that's exactly what the developers were going for. Would that sit right with you?
