Max Payne 3

[TheMightyEthan]

In my experience Amazon's estimated arrivals are always several days later than the actual arrival.

 

Do they not offer release date shipping over there?

[SomTervo]

Um, I think they do, but it's a few pounds more. Is that definitely more money? I chose free shipping (and it was definitely counted as a pre-order from a week ago) and they still said that was the estimated window. Fingers crossed it's tomorrow.

[TheMightyEthan]

Over here release-date delivery is $0.99. I know the shipping distances are shorter over there so Amazon stuff tends to arrive faster, but the way they do it here is that if you preorder and choose release-date delivery they ship it the day before release, overnight shipping, so it arrives on release day, whereas if you choose free shipping then they don't ship it out until the actual release day and they just use standard shipping instead of overnight.

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

I heard from others that it's difficult. You don't get very much health do you? Do you feel it's something that you'll really get better at with practice?

Yeah, they don't give you much health to work with, and you can get better with practice.

[SomTervo]

That's good.

 

I watched a couple of moments of a walkthrough on YouTube because I'm fucking dying from my copy not having arrived yet; and the fucking aim-lock looks awful. It must have been on 'hard lock' in that video, but it looks like it'll just ruin gunplay: like it did for me in GTAIV and RDR.

 

Once I turned auto-aim off in those games, I had a fucking whale of a time. The sense of achievement and appreciation once you down a bunch of guys without auto-aim is just so satisfying. I imagine MP3 will be no different. I dealt with it fine in 1 and 2: it'll be off in 3.

[Hot Heart]

I never liked the aiming in RDR. Auto-lock made it too easy, while manual was a lot of hassle on horseback. The Dead Eye thing was compensation enough, though I didn't like to rely on it as much as the game allowed.

 

Funnily enough, I quite liked it in GTA IV. Probably because your health didn't regenerate, so you always had to be a bit careful anyway.

[SomTervo]

That's true, it had moments of being very useful in GTAIV, and also GTAIV was fucking difficult because gun's bullets were about as effective as plastic BB's. So with manual aim your gun would just be spraying them ineffectively with air.

 

This is really weird, and not to blow my own pipe, but it might just be me and my skillz, but even with manual aim, I found horseback shooting in RDR really fun with manual aim, and not too hard. You had to kinda really get with the momentum, and shoot while swinging the reticule alongside a guy. But man, it was satisfing.

 

So looking forward to MP3. Hope to christ it comes tomorrow. I don't even have the money to buy it, and it not arriving is just rubbing salt in the badly-judged wound.

[Hot Heart]

Yeah, I guess the horseback aiming was alright once you got used to it, and could make for some satisfying gunfights against other dudes.

 

...but fucking cougars, man. And goddamn bears. ALL THOSE SPAWNING BEARS.

[SomTervo]

Yeah, against animals, I always found Dead Eye much more useful. Necessity, in most cases. They so damn fast.

[TheMightyEthan]

I like some aim assist when I'm using a controller, but I agree that actual lock-on is lame.

 

*Edit* - The exception to that (contrary to everyone else, apparently) is RDR: I thought the lock-on in that game really helped with the fantasy of being the quick-draw, gunfighting cowboy badass.

Edited May 20, 2012 by TheMightyEthan

[toxicitizen]

I've been enjoying Max Payne 3 a whole lot. Super hard though. I had to bump it down to easy.

I heard from others that it's difficult.

 

I'm actually glad to hear that. Action games are so fucking easy nowadays it's not even funny. I can't fucking wait to play this.

 

I think this is the first time I've picked PC over console for a game that had its PC version delayed.

I knew I would have to wait and between Diablo 3 and Alan Wake's American Nightmare in a few days, I've got plenty to play in the meantime. But it still kinda sucks :/ I've been waiting for MP3 a hell of a lot longer.

[SomTervo]

Yeah man, I feel your pain. My copy is estimated for arrival on Wednesday but I'm praying, fucking praying that it'll arrive tomorrow. Just finished a shitton of work this weekend.

 

RDR: I thought the lock-on in that game really helped with the fantasy of being the quick-draw, gunfighting cowboy badass.

 

That's actually a really good point. It broke the immersion when one whipped out the revolver and had to awkwardly readjust the crosshair to even get a badguy's leg.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, I dislike auto-aiming in games but in RDR it felt appropriate.

[SomTervo]

So my copy arrived this morning, which was nice. A whole day before the ridiculous 'estimated arrival'.

 

I played through the first part and half of the second. Pretty damn good stuff!

 

It's definitely not MP1 or 2. Their incredible precision and formulaic rigidity is gone. This beast is weighty and imprecise and hefty and physical. Aiming feels really solid (with auto aim off), though it sometimes is hard to tell if your bullets are doing any damage to guys, not much feedback from that. Shootdodging is awesome, takes a little while getting used to him actually stepping into the shootdodge instead of MP1/2's ridiculous insta-jump move with no inertia or interruption. Actually laughed first time I leapt into a room at an odd angle, shooting at dudes, and bumped Max's head into an adjacent wall. Halfway through a badass slomo Hollywood move Max just grunted and fell to the floor in real time. The animations for getting up and moving etc. are just amazing.

 

Some of the writing is actually pretty damn good. Real witty shit is thrown in there from time to time.But it doesn't get Max's timeless musings like it used to. He almost never is narrating it retrospectively like he did in the old games.

 

The animations are unreal. Whipping an Uzi around and peppering a bad guy just looks like savage, brutal reality. The way bullets will clip the guys limbs and head and torso and he'll get pushed around with blood popping out. Just unreal.

 

And a little touch I love: how, at the end of certain moments of gameplay, the cutscene pops right in seamlessly, so if you shoot a guy and a cutscene starts, the guy will still be stumbling or falling over (to death) while the cutscene gets going. Really makes it feel like the cutscene and the gameplay are one and the same thing: an element of a gameplay experience which not even Uncharted has achieved.

Edited May 22, 2012 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

blergh.... NA release date pushed to friday june 1 so it now has a "worldwide release"

Whyyyyyyyyyy?!? What's the fucking point?! What benefit does this bring?!

I mean, it's only 3 days, but a last minute push like this feels like such a kick in the fucking balls...

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/22/max-payne-3-ships-3-million-units-pc-launch-pushed-worldwide-ju/

[SomTervo]

Gah, that's unfair. It'll be well worth it when it comes, though, man. Incredibly nice game. Really captures something of reality in how it handles things (not that soaking up tens of bullets is realistic on normal difficulty.) The graphics/ animations are the best I've ever seen (in terms of both enmeshing together).

 

Seems to be one of those games where dying is somehow actually fun.

 

Had a couple of amazing moments last night. A standout was me on the last drops of health, making a shootdodge and capping three dudes, hitting the deck, and noticing a guy right next to me that I didn't see. The guy was still firing, his bullets creeping downards in super slomo trying to reach me where I was lying prone, but I just managed to whip around in time, firing a loud round that hit his gun out of his hand, and then popping a silent shot that went through his neck, which he grasped, and he staggered, and subsequently fell into harbour water, while the last of his bullets were still ripping through the floor right behind me.

 

So great.

Edited May 23, 2012 by kenshi_ryden

[toxicitizen]

Hahaha, nice. Yeah, the physics and animations looked pretty damn good in the tech videos they released.

 

Have you tried multiplayer yet? I hear it's actually pretty good.

[Mister Jack]

Finally snagged this game used for 27 bucks and am anxious to get home and play it.

[toxicitizen]

27$ used a week after release? That's surprisingly low.

[Hot Heart]

Great story, Kenshi. Reminds me that I really wish more games had a theatre mode. If I really wanted anything from next-gen it would be some kind of theatre mode, for single and multi-player, in pretty much every game, along with an 'upload to YouTube' option.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

^OnLive does it but I think you have to view your videos on OnLive. Some PS3 games let you record and then upload it to Youtube.

[Hot Heart]

Yeah, I know some games have that capability but it is not as ubiquitous as I'd hoped. Basically, I want Halo's theatre mode (free camera and everything) for most games...but with that YouTube connectivity included for free (because it isn't in Halo's case).

Edited May 23, 2012 by Hot Heart

[Mister Jack]

27$ used a week after release? That's surprisingly low.

 

Mortal Kombat trade-in + 30% bonus when applied to Max Payne + membership discount + 20% off birthday coupon.

[DocSeuss]

(Light spoilers regarding gameplay. No real story bits.)

 

I didn't think I could hate a game as much as this.

 

A description!

 

Ten minutes of cutscene that's not interesting (basically "I shaved my head 'cause um... I shaved my head. Also I know where the girl is. Also, people don't like me!"), followed by two minutes of following a little kid (who yells at you for being slow, but THE RUN BUTTON IS DISABLED FOR NO REASON AT ALL), followed by five minutes of cutscene, followed by thirty seconds of walking across a cesspit and up some stairs, followed by another minute of cutscene, followed by walking down an alley, followed by another minute of cutscene (half way down the alley), followed by another ten minute of cutscene (my controller fell asleep)... and finally, FINALLY, gameplay. After two or three minutes of gameplay, you step into a room, a cutscene with a cokehead occurs, then you step out... and more cutscene.

 

The breakdown was around 35 minutes total, with three minutes of gameplay, two minutes of walking, and thirty minutes of cutscene.

 

Other sections of the game are a bit more generous, but still... it's pretty bad. It's about a 70/30 cutscene/gameplay ratio. Even simple things, like climbing ladders, are cutscenes.

 

Worse still, there are at least three sections where Max is incredibly beat up so he walks REALLY SLOWLY, like the end of Mass Effect 3.

 

The game is hard only because they've lowered your health significantly--which is frustrating, because it means you can't bullet time and shootdodge as easily as you'd like. Worse still, the health system is broken. Ideally, whenever you're injured, Max will bullet time and shoot the guy who injured him, taking a pill automatically to recover. It's a great idea, but about a third of the time, Max couldn't shoot the person who injured him because that person was behind cover, could see me but I couldn't see them, because the gun was out of ammo (and Max can't reload), because Max can't swing the gun around (often because it got stuck against cover)... Oh, and sometimes, even though you have pills, it doesn't work.

 

Also, there are one-hit kill enemies, an escort mission for a pregnant woman, certain bits where you're supposed to do X or Y without knowing (like, "hey, go kill those two snipers through this bus window! Any time spent moving means that another person dies instantly!" or "hey, use the attack button to melee this dude--what? no! YOU CANNOT SHOOTDODGE. DON'T YOU DARE SHOOTDODGE!"), and, last, but not least: shooting galleries.

 

If you thought Gears 3 was bad about taking cover and shooting (and do note, I love Gears of War 3, so when I say this was bad, I really mean it), Max Payne 3 is worse. There are entire sections where you pull L2, pull R2, and then repeat until each enemy is dead. The game, even on soft-lock, automatically zooms into certain enemies (rather than a Halo or Gears-style stickyaim), making shooting them a cakewalk. Problem is, you can't just aim down the sights like you would in ANY OTHER THIRD PERSON SHOOTER EVER. One time, I died because I tried to zoom into a guy and shoot him, but the game LOCKED ON A DEAD GUY ON THE FLOOR and I got shotgunned in the chest.

 

There are at least five sections in the game where you don't move at all and just wait for people to move by. Then you shoot them. Two of these are sniping sections, and you can't even zoom--and sometimes, the game takes control of your scope and moves it all cinematic first persony. They're tedious and unfun.

 

There were five times (three of which ended with gunfights) my controller died, because the wait was so long (so I died almost instantly).

 

Also, the story's just bad. It's like... bad TV bad. There are a lot of "uh... okay?" moments throughout the story--NeoGAF's Max Payne 3 spoiler thread does a far better rundown on this than I could.

 

PC version, I'm hoping, will be better with free mouse aiming (though still bad writing and 70% cutscenes). The PS3 version, which I played, was terrible.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Why not turn off auto aim and the like?