Max Payne 3 Catch All

I just watched the opening sequence with my boss and tried to play it. They've changed all the buttons again and boy did I suck.

The next thing he asked me is there a way to just watch the cutscenes like a movie. I think honestly I'd rather have paid $20 for that option.

I rented it, and loved it. The night I took it back, ironically, I injured my shoulder in such a way that I have to wear a brace rather like a shoulder holster and pop pills, and my most comfortable shirt is a garish tropical themed monstrosity. I already had the beard of sorrow.

Anyway, I want to buy it at some point.

I finished it this weekend. Overall verdict: enjoyable but not Rockstar's best. I'm glad I played it, loved some sections but found the story dragged at the end. Top notch production values (I love the music playing in the airport scene) and worth the money.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I rented it, and loved it. The night I took it back, ironically, I injured my shoulder in such a way that I have to wear a brace rather like a shoulder holster and pop pills, and my most comfortable shirt is a garish tropical themed monstrosity. I already had the beard of sorrow.

Anyway, I want to buy it at some point.

"The parrots on my shirt were the chorus for the Greek tragedy my suburban life had become. Now all I needed was a stripper who turned out to be my sister and a middle manager who demanded that I bury her in the countryside."

Dramatic Marlin wrote:

I finished it this weekend. Overall verdict: enjoyable but not Rockstar's best. I'm glad I played it, loved some sections but found the story dragged at the end. Top notch production values (I love the music playing in the airport scene) and worth the money.

How is the music overall? A college friend of mine manages the band that did the soundtrack (HEALTH), so I'm curious to know how it turned out.

It's good. Some of it is really good; one piece has a drumbeat that reminds me of a track from the Akira soundtrack, another has shades of the music from the remake of Scarface. The track Tears has a lovely plaintive feel. From what I can tell on YouTUbe, people are counting one of the game's levels, with that in the background, as one of the highlights of the game. It's certainly an experience.

Listening to the music outside of the game, there's a clear motif and reliance on certain types of sounds, but that's not a problem.

So... Any comparison between the PC and consoles yet? On paper if nothing else...

I want this one but I'm not sure if I should wait for the PC port or not. I'd probably end up playing with the controller anyway. I'm pretty fond of the triggers. Please don't hurt me.

Rockstar games aren't particularly known for playing nice with PC on installation, but if you got that covered, I'd say go with what's a more comfortable playing experience. There doesn't seem to be much of an online group for it, so you won't be missing out on that of you don't get 360.

Just reiterating, though, that the game has crashing, locking and loading issues on 360. Expect them to be worse on PC.

Maclintok wrote:

]It's just underwhelming.

Yup. I got it, played though the first 3 chapters straight away, and haven't felt compelled to play it since. I will finish it, but not through any excitement.

Eyecandy aside, there isn't anything new there, really. Adding cover mechanics to the game just takes most of the fun away. The major hold-overs from the first two games, such as the health system, feel a bit anachronistic. I may feel differently by the time I finish it, but I doubt it, somehow.

Mr.Green wrote:

So... Any comparison between the PC and consoles yet? On paper if nothing else...

Doesn't release until next week on PC.

I finished my second play-through and I'm so confused by the load times. I wish someone who knew more about game development and design would look into this because I can only offer uneducated guesses. When the game loads from menu it doesn't take very long at all, yet it seems like you have to watch most of a five minute cut-scene before you can skip.

The weirdest thing is that after the game is over it's still loading before the credits. I'm hoping that when the game loads for awhile it's not loading the rest of the cut-scene. That would be incredibly pompous of Rockstar Vancouver. Personally, I'd rather get rid of the seemlessness to watch a loading screen for a minute than have a seemless transition that I have to watch the entirety of.

Either way, I'm going for one more "achievement run" play-through and then it's off to the trade-in shop.

I only had one crash on the 360.

skeletonframes wrote:

Either way, I'm going for one more "achievement run" play-through and then it's off to the trade-in shop.

Now that you mention, I'm 1/3 of the way through single-player and not a single achievement logged yet. Where are they hiding? I'm not an achievement hunter but over 5 years of xbox has trained me to expect some gamerscore reinforcement. Now I feel like checking the list and expect to find dozens of esoteric or grindy tasks to complete.

CptGlanton wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I rented it, and loved it. The night I took it back, ironically, I injured my shoulder in such a way that I have to wear a brace rather like a shoulder holster and pop pills, and my most comfortable shirt is a garish tropical themed monstrosity. I already had the beard of sorrow.

Anyway, I want to buy it at some point.

"The parrots on my shirt were the chorus for the Greek tragedy my suburban life had become. Now all I needed was a stripper who turned out to be my sister and a middle manager who demanded that I bury her in the countryside."

I laughed.

I played through chapter 4 this afternoon. I still died a lot (on normal) but I felt that something clicked a bit better.

I was interested in this, I really was. Then for some reason I just... stopped being interested. I spent my gaming budget for the month on Diablo 3 and Ghost Recon and kind of ignored Max Payne.

I suspect I'll get it eventually, but probably not until it's steam sale fodder a long time from now.

Maclintok wrote:
skeletonframes wrote:

Either way, I'm going for one more "achievement run" play-through and then it's off to the trade-in shop.

Now that you mention, I'm 1/3 of the way through single-player and not a single achievement logged yet. Where are they hiding? I'm not an achievement hunter but over 5 years of xbox has trained me to expect some gamerscore reinforcement. Now I feel like checking the list and expect to find dozens of esoteric or grindy tasks to complete. :)

The achievements are kind of tough. Several are for killing all of the enemies during the scripted shootdodge sequences (there's one where you fly up a chain, one rolling on a cart, etc.). Several are tied to finishing on the various difficulties. And there are others for finding collectibles (which the game misspells), finishing the "grinds," as the game calls them (which I kind of love), getting a kill with every gun, and so on.

CptGlanton wrote:
Maclintok wrote:
skeletonframes wrote:

Either way, I'm going for one more "achievement run" play-through and then it's off to the trade-in shop.

Now that you mention, I'm 1/3 of the way through single-player and not a single achievement logged yet. Where are they hiding? I'm not an achievement hunter but over 5 years of xbox has trained me to expect some gamerscore reinforcement. Now I feel like checking the list and expect to find dozens of esoteric or grindy tasks to complete. :)

The achievements are kind of tough. Several are for killing all of the enemies during the scripted shootdodge sequences (there's one where you fly up a chain, one rolling on a cart, etc.). Several are tied to finishing on the various difficulties. And there are others for finding collectibles (which the game misspells), finishing the "grinds," as the game calls them (which I kind of love), getting a kill with every gun, and so on.

Yeah. It's pretty stingy with the achievements.

The game bestowed me with my first achievement last night. I checked the list and quite a few of them require Free Aim to be enabled, to which I say F- that. The soft lock aim can be janky but it's saved my hide too often for me to ditch it for a few cheevos.

I thought the game was too reliant on cover when I first played through it also. If you're a decent shot with the sticks, bullet time and a little precision can be more handy through a majority of the game than ducking behind a low wall. I even found there were a handful of points where complete lack of cover made bullet time mandatory. Near the end of the game I hardly shot anyone from cover. I would like to ask again, what were people expecting from a third person shooter?

I finished it on Hard with free aim last night. Very rewarding in the end, with lots of "F you!" moments along the way. I also discovered that for most sticky situations, the correct answer is to use the RPD. The only part that was truly frustrating was in the favelas and involved lots of molotovs; luckily, I found that you can actually run away from that encounter. Also, if anyone has trouble with the last encounter,

Spoiler:

you can use endless shootdodge to keep him from firing grenades. It makes it pretty easy.

Maclintok wrote:

The game bestowed me with my first achievement last night. I checked the list and quite a few of them require Free Aim to be enabled, to which I say F- that. The soft lock aim can be janky but it's saved my hide too often for me to ditch it for a few cheevos.

I found that once I got the speeds adjusted properly (I think I used 7 for each sensitivity and 6 for acceleration) free aim was more rewarding. With soft lock, you can just quick-scope everything from behind cover.

subaltern wrote:

I would like to ask again, what were people expecting from a third person shooter?

Unless I missed a post, you asked what people expected from a Rockstar game last time. In answer to either, the question is "A Max Payne game". The first two were about running and gunning with ridiculous bullet time gymnastics. This one is not the same. It's not that it is a bad game, just not what I was expecting.

Maybe with practice, I'll get to the stage where I can not rely on cover, but at the moment, I largely get my arse handed to me when I try. I'm spending far too much time squatting against a low wall, popping up occasionally to head shot someone, building up bullet time to dive to the next bit of cover, taking out a few guys en-route.

After I play through on Normal, I might try an easy run, see if that recaptures the old Max magic for me.

Spider J, if you want to play the game without using cover, Easy is the way to go. I played a level on Easy for an achievement last night, and ... it's an apt name.

I agree completely with Spider J and Glanton.

This is not a Max Payne game. It is a game that features Max Payne. Easy difficulty is more true to the namesake in style of play. It was a good game. I'd recommend it for a rental. In the end, for me, the load times/unskippable cut-scenes make multiple play-throughs a chore, so I can't recommend a purchase.

Wow...so this post probably belongs in the "Things you should know by now, but only just discovered" thread as well.

I feel really really silly here.

I played the majority of Max Payne 3 without knowing that the right thumbstick triggered bullet time. Yes, you read that right.
I've been so miffed at Rockstar the last few days for leaving out the ability to just activate bullet time by itself without a shoot dodge, and it was there all along. It just seemed like such a weird oversight, but it turns out the oversight was on my part.

Finally while playing a bit tonight I decided to go into the settings and look at the control details after getting, I'm guessing 3/4 of the way through the game, and there it was.

I just...cannot believe I missed that part of the tutorial.

Thought that was repeatedly going through my head while playing the game up until tonight: "If effing shoot dodge is the only way to get into bullet time, then stop making me play in these cramped levels where a shoot dodge lasts about two seconds before I bump into a corridor wall or a table (or some silly random random pixel) and it ends!"

Durr.

I almost feel like I owe Rockstar an apology after all of the internal thought-rage I've been directing their way.

I'm enjoying the game about 100% more now; I'm dying about 100% less, and I'm freed from being forced to play the game as a cover shooter, which was just annoying me no end.

Guess I now have a good reason to do a second playthrough on hard. You know, maybe play the game as it was meant to be played this time.

Sigh.

Easy was quite difficult in places.

Oh absolutely. I still die a lot. I meant that I'd like to play the whole game actually using the mechanic that is one of the defining characteristics of Max Payne game.

Chapter 7 and I think the game might be starting to click for me. That is, I'm beginning to forgive its shortcomings and to "just go with it".

Max Payne 1 & 2 were both challenging games. The challenge in 3 is quite frustrating as I'm constantly fighting the incredibly detailed animations. The artists on this team really made their voices heard and advocated for their hard work to stay in the game. This was at the expense of having tight, responsive controls. I can't tell you how many times I'm just gritting my teeth waiting for Max to swing his arm around so that I can even begin lining up the crosshairs on a guy.

The music still kicks ass.

Well, after getting thoroughly stuck for a while, I dropped the difficulty down to easy, set it to free aim, and now I'm having a lot more fun!