Fleeing his New York life to take a job working security for a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, the hard-drinkin', pill-poppin' Max finds that his demons come along for the ride. It's a truth Max Payne knows better than anyone.

Max leaves a part of himself behind, players deftly wash the gutter of his life clean, and Rockstar Games does a company called Remedy proud.By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's Max Payne 3 is the the sale of a killer into a world of violence, and the cathartic administration of lead-based medicine. Though he may never harm a civilian, Max fights to save people not out of honor, but for retribution. He relentlessly pursues the “bad guys” despite an unclear understanding of the bigger picture. Max Payne’s death wish manifests as self-absorbed, faux-heroism. Even his own death – a player’s occasional slip-up – is a minor, albeit gruesome, postponement. Nobody escapes the trail of Max’s bullets. Nothing escapes the hand of the director.

Split panels reveal every perspective at once. Max narrates and the action obeys, his words flashing across the screen in emphasis, driving play forward. Moment to moment, though, Max is in complete control. “The mission was screaming ‘suicide,’ but I didn’t give a damn.”

He calls himself a “dumb-move guy,” and hits every roadblock head first, with no regard for his own well-being. Having had no control over his past, Max submits his life to the hands of fate. One could easily blame Max’s desensitization and detachment, his bitter resentment, on the murder of his wife and daughter – the family he failed to save. The camera blurs and tilts under scan lines and chromatic aberration. Max Payne drinks more scotch, pops more pills. To each, the response is an emphatic “YES!” Adrenaline is drip-fed like morphine it makes each violent scene feel like your birthday. It’s the artist’s canvas the athlete’s “zone.” Flawless execution.Įvery hair-trigger reaction, high-speed chase, and extravagant coup de grâce epitomizes the action genre. Hit the ground, roll over, finish off the last of them from Max’s back. Leap forward, slow time, discharge round after round into a field of helpless targets. Pop a painkiller, take cover, pick off hostile mercenaries like the little ducks in a shooting gallery. Max Payne’s life has devolved into wayward substance abuse and violence – both practiced to perfection. Each firefight is a sentence, a paragraph, a page in the story, punctuated by spotlighted death throes of overzealous gang members, machismo drug-runners, and the shadiest sorts of deal-makers the ellipsis of bullet holes slowly punched into each lifeless body always reminds us that there’s more to come… Max guns his way forward and tells his tale. Time slows, and the precision of bullet-time gunplay reflects alcoholic, pill-addicted Max Payne’s focused determination in a narrative of personal redemption, and an existence he perceives as out of control – thrown to the wind, yet gripped like a vise.

Max payne 3 review