Max Payne 3 - Morally bankrupt.

Started playing this game recently. Thought id share some of my views on it and the current state of gaming through this blogging medium.

Max Payne 1 and 2 were excellent third person shooters, with a bit more depth than most games of thier style. sure, they introduced bullettime to gaming, after the matrix introduced it to film. but both these games charted the life and times, in a awesome comic book style, of a cop called max payne. They used a very Noir dectective style, and despite there being violence and lots of criminals being shot, they justified it by the fact that the criminals killed paynes wife and child. The style of the game was unique. a crime noir shooter narrated via the main character, using metaphors and wordplay to describe the world you played in. Both games were of thier time, but excellent for what they were.

The ensuing years, over 10 in fact, since the 2 games came out, gaming has changed. we now have Call of Duty ruling the gaming landscape. as memory serves me, I remember them being average war world two games. obviously, they improved them slightly over the years, but COD is really just a very average FPS,and its somehow became the standard because of how standard it is. Thats my understanding of it anyway. Ive played other FPS in the last 5 years, and all are far superiour to modern warfare, black ops and thier ilk. But the impact has been made. Gaming is now a far reaching, mainstream culture. Black ops 2 adverts litter the media, and I even saw a building sized poster for the game in Birmingham. a far cry from the days of the megadrive. perhaps im getting old.

Anyway, to elaborate on my point. The impact these games have made on the environment and landscape of the current gaming generation is undeniable. Gamers now crave instant action. I first heard about Max payne 3 coming out start of 2012, and I instinctively decided not to bother with it. It looked too action orientated, and totally of odds with the original games. Turns out I was right. Picked it up for a tenner, cheap really considering it came out in July. Thought id try it.

Max Payne 3 to me, sums up all that is wrong with the current gaming generation. It was immediately obvious that they had changed the enviroment Max was in, this I could deal with, but after playing the game for a few hours it became even more obvious that Max payne had changed to fit with the current standard COD has set. In the game, you are pushed from mission to mission, protecting this rich family, and then you get attacked by armed foes, and have to bulletime your way to the end of the mission, all the while adding to the Grind counters (in game awards) and occasionally collecting golden guns. So the game has the usual staple of collectables, and the levelling up grind rubbish from the COD multiplayer, and then every single level is basically is the same after that. you shoot a bunch of people, using bullettime to stop being shot yourself, and then go to the next level and do exactly the same. But heres the worst bit. The Narration from the previous games is still present, only this time, instead of interesting wordplay,inventive narration and metaphors we get Max payne, The moaner.

Max payne moans and whinges his way through this entire game, making it actually a very depressing experience. Perfect example, you bullettime through a window, shooting guys in the face, land on the ground and shoot your last bullet, which by the way slows down so you can see it enter the face of the enemy, and then we get a monologue about how maxs day has gone from bad to worse and all he wants to do is drink and forget it all. we then get a cut scene of max passing out from drinking a bottle of whiskey. So let me clarify this. we are in sao paulo brazil, hes in a fully paid for apartment in the sun, hes just done some cool ass moves and saved the people hes protecting, and all he can do is whinge and moan and hand out depressing monologue throughout the entire thing. your kind of taking the audience away from the fun of the game, and sucking you into his depressing and pointless existance. and then of course, the game continues. and in every level, Maxs bodycount raises, often your shooting people for no particular reason other than your in the wrong place, wrong time. as Max, you massacre entire neighbourhoods, and a police station, and the entire time, his moaning and whinging underscores it all. He has been turned into this disgusting, unlikeable, hateful murderer essentially.

For most of the plot, it could all have ended and Max would be fine, if he had just walked away. instead, the storytellers reiterate how hes addicted to painkillers and booze, and that hes stuck in this rut. well, as a player, I find it slightly morally wrong. I think that the games only purpose is to shoehorn action scenes, intense violence and to glorify an alcoholic waster. I feel that they have tried too hard to bring Max Payne alongside the CODs of the world. The franchise has lost all the depth, meaning and purpose that it had for the first two games. I actually find a lot of max payne 3 offensive and pointless. To me, it sums up all thats wrong with this current generation of gaming. I feel that had remedy kept this game, the story would have been so much different. I  Suppose maybe im just a sour puss, getting old. not seeing the fact that things have to change. but really? like this? Turning a detective noir shooter into a violent, pointless and depressing piece of crap?

Maybe im just getting old.






Heres some Quotes from Max Payne.

“I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans were less popular than the clap.”
“I didn’t know what to think any more. This town had more smoke and mirrors than a strip club locker room.”
“I’d been stuck in the past so long I’d forgotten what year is was.”
“It was Monday afternoon and I’d already been thrown out of a party, been to a strip club and got into a bar fight. This latest mid-life crisis was certainly ticking all the boxes.”
“This kind of place made me want to puke. I needed a real drink to cope with the electronic music and robotic people” - on entering a nightclub.
“There was a bar ahead. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I figured sobriety was no used to me if I was dead.”
““Sao Paulo is like Bagdad with G-strings”
“There must have been another way out through the VIP lounge. Rich fools love a private exit.”
“I stood out in this place like a street walker in a monastery” at a party in a shanty town in Brazil.
“These bastards made the NYPD look like the Hari Krishnas.”
“Do you think a pile of shit feels popular because it’s surrounded by flies?”
“When you’re stuck in a foreign country and don’t know the words for “reverse charges” and you’re in some lonely skin joint in the middle of some poor slum and just had every last cent robbed from you and you call yourself a bodyguard then you know you’re a loser.
“First day off the sauce and somehow I’d still ended up in the gutter.” - after being robbed by a gang of thugs.
“I’d been sitting at the bar for three hours, or five hours depending on the way you looked at things.”
“The way I see it there’s two types of people, those who spend their lives trying to build a future and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past. For too long I’d be stuck in between, hidden in the dark. What was I really doing walking in there with my bad haircut and ridiculous shirt? – gatecrashing a party dressed in Bermuda shirt.