Oh, Max. I've missed you. I'm betting your face won't look like this in Max Payne 3, though.

Rockstar Games is known for taking its sweet time developing video games, and Max Payne 3 has been no exception. The game dropped of publisher Take-Two Interactive's release schedule for a while there, and like most Rockstar Games releases, no one was willing to say much about it. All Rockstar Games would promise is that the game wasn't dead.

If the Houser brothers are to be believed, we'll be playing Rockstar Games' interpretation of Remedy Entertainment's gaming noir next March. That's conveniently just before Take-Two's scheduled to reveal its fiscal results for the year. Dropping a highly anticipated Rockstar Games release might help!

Things are looking a bit different this time, but the series' aging mechanics wouldn't have held up.

Max Payne 3 does take place after the events of Max Payne 2. The first two games were developed by Remedy Entertainment, who spent the better part of the last decade working on Alan Wake for Microsoft. Max has left New York behind, and finds himself acting as private security for a "wealthy industrialist" in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Gangs begin targeting the family he's protecting, forcing Max into action. Something tells me he might have to make a trip back to New York at some point, too.

We don't know much about the gameplay, except that it's third-person again and maintains the series' trademark Bullet-Time mechanics. Bullet-time was a nifty trick in 2001 that's been exploited to hell since. I'm curious to see how Rockstar goes about properly updating it for 2012.

Max Payne 3 will introduce the series to multiplayer, with a teased feature that will somehow "dynamically alter maps," and as per industry standard, a leveling system. Clans are also in the mix.

Rockstar Games keeps teasing that we'll see more of Max Payne 3 soon. I'm looking forward to it.