Did you know that "bullet time" is a term copyrighted and owned by Warner Bros.? It was news to me when I went looking up the term this morning, searching for a way to contextualize the evolution of Max Payne that I experienced when playing Rockstar's Max Payne 3 recently. According to Wikipedia -- which totally has its own listing for the term, of course -- the "word" was copyrighted alongside the first Matrix film. That film came out in 1999, two years before Remedy would reappropriate the concept for its first Max Payne game.

No similarly bizarre history can be applied to the term "shootdodge," the portmanteau a Rockstar rep used to describe "Max's classic dive move." In Max Payne 3, the maneuver plays as crucial a role as ever. The majority of the time during my demo I spent with Max leaping in slow motion, or shooting in slow motion, or shooting and leaping in slow motion, all the while desperately trying to shoot dudes in their domes. Yes, fans, bullet time is still here, ready for use in tandem with the newly minted "shootdodge."

Max Payne 3 didn't hold my hand during that hour, though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it to given the whole "addicted to painkillers/alcoholism" thing. Like Max's life during the setting of Max Payne 3, my playthrough was all sink or swim. But despite some initial skepticism over the difficulty, I walked away excited about the design choices Rockstar has made, such as taking the safety off of shooting and forcing precision from players conditioned to aim-assisted console offerings. (Which describes me, by the way.)