Max Payne 3 Message Board older than one year ago

#maxpayne Just when he thought he could lose his tragic past in a booze and pill-addled haze, Rockstar Games drags Max Payne out of retirement for a third series of unfortunate events. If I were him, I'd go after them first. More »

Max, dearest of all my friends. So good to have you back. You look a little tired, friend. Is it all that leaping and shooting, or is it something more? Sit down, sip a little vodka and look at what they're saying about you. Joystiq feels you make "people die real good." What about everyone else? Take a look...

• G4 (100/100): "The performances are top notch, the action plays out with unrivaled fluidity, and the multiplayer is deep and rewarding. Silly distractions aside, Max Payne 3 is an action lover's wet dream that also happens to employ some of the slickest direction and transitional trickery this side of a David Fincher box set. Lock and load. It's bullet time...time."
• Game Informer (93/100): "The same great gunplay from the campaign is replicated in the multiplayer modes, and immense depth is tied to the ranking system (with a level cap of 50) and slew of unlockable guns, skins, and items. Rockstar also provides a crew system that tracks world ranks, kill-to-death ratios, and first place finishes for ­each ­crew."
• Giant Bomb (4/5): "Rockstar has taken a lot of risks in the ways it has reshaped the series with Max Payne 3, and there's something to be said for opting out of the easy route. The aesthetic overhaul is certainly the most noticeable, though there's no understating the impact that certain gameplay modernizations have had on the experience. While fans might have a hard time processing the dramatic change in tone, it's approached with a seriousness and conviction that I respect, and frankly, have come to expect from Rockstar."
• Edge (70/100): "Max Payne 3 might solve the problem of how you manage to reload when carrying more than one gun, but detailing alone can't change the fact that this is a surprisingly conservative game from Rockstar. Its absorption of cover mechanics makes Payne feel more familiar than he should, but even then his signature tricks are over a decade old. This is a game about a world-weary killer doing the only thing he knows how to, and for all its spectacular action beats there's something apt about Max's fatigue."

The newest installment in the Max Payne series hits tomorrow, and with all those new features, altered characters and updated graphics, some players may crave the explosive stability of the original cast. The Max Payne 3 Classic Multiplayer Character pack allows players to control eight beloved killers in the online Deathmatch mode, and comes standard in the Special Edition. The pack will be available for stand-alone purchase later on.

The Classic Multiplayer Character pack includes Vladimir "Vlad" Lem, Vincent "Vinnie" Gognitti, Jack Lupino, Alfred Woden, Mona Sax, Valerie Winterson, Nicole Horne and Max Payne 2's NYPD detective version of Max Payne.

Ryan and Jeff spend some quality time with everyone's favorite pilled-up alcoholic bullet-time enthusiast.

#review "This isn't going to end well." More »

Max Payne can't even find peace in a graveyard. A quiet moment of remembrance, dour and dusted in snow, is soon buried beneath the sound of gunfire. This man exists to kill, and the tombstone that names his murdered wife and daughter is there to provide cover.

The transition from emotionally tinged burial ground to functional battleground is at once touching and tasteless, presented in that kind of awkward, bittersweet combination that video games have gotten down to an art form. Can you really argue with the outcome? The cemetery perfectly recalls the birth of Max, the cynical, disheveled vigilante - and what better playground for Max, the cover-based shooter, than a plot of land filled with upright granite slabs? Rockstar can't outrun the nature of the game, no more than its wrecked anti-hero can escape his nature as problem solver via midair shooting.

#watchthis If you're planning on picking up Max Payne 3 when it releases tomorrow, Max will be urging you to hurry the hell up while playing the game. Sometimes it's to give you clues as to where to go next. Other times he just wants you to get on with it. More »

A harder Max for harder times.

Rockstar Games faced no small feat in taking on Max Payne. With nearly a decade since Finnish developer Remedy--long since busy exploring the dark wilderness of the subconscious with Alan Wake--parted ways with the series, the challenges were manifold. After that much time, did the John-Woo-inspired gun ballet still play? And what of the comic-book-noir aesthetic, which leavened Max’s blackstrap pathos with fleets of self-reference and absurdity? Rockstar, of course, addresses both of these issues with no small amount of its own usual panache, discarding large swaths of Max’s established aesthetic and asserting its own set of influences in the process.

Rockstar held publishing duties on the first two Max Payne games, but Max Payne 3 really feels like a modern Rockstar game, with the grimy creative fingerprints of the creators of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption all over it. To trot out a hoary old line that Max Payne himself would probably mutter to himself and then sneer at, this ain’t your grandaddy’s Max Payne. And in a way, that’s kind of a shame, since there hasn’t really been anything quite like Max Payne since Max Payne. Max Payne 3 is definitely a different kind of cocktail, but it still packs a pretty good wallop.

Even for Max, a lot of time has passed since Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, to the point that the dramatic, traumatic events of the first two games are little more than old scar tissue now. Having long since ruined anything worth ruining in New York with booze and pills, Max has retreated from his own life and taken up reluctant employment as a personal bodyguard for the wealthy, powerful, and treacherous Branco family in São Paulo, Brazil. For as comfortably as Max and his black jacket fit into the shadows of New York’s underworld, he’s a stranger in a strange land here. His leathery American frame sticks out like a sore thumb in the washed-out sunlight of both São Paulo’s rich playgrounds of privilege and its rusted favelas, which he fumbles through with as little grasp on the local language as to why he’s really in São Paulo. Max has never been a particularly sunny soul, but here he regards his idle rich clients with about as much simmering contempt as he does for his own half-drunk, careless ineptitude as family members get kidnapped and his bad situation continues to find new ways to get worse.

Max on Fire.

Rockstar has never been particularly shy about its specific influences, which are often cinematic in origin. With Max Payne 3, the setting, character situations, and overall look of the game make comparisons to the Tony Scott movie Man on Fire inevitable, and apt, though there are strains of director Michael Mann’s slick latter-day crime dramas in there as well, all of it spiked with a spare synthesizer score and shocking moments of extreme violence. Though it’s not couched in the caricatured satire of GTAIV or the bleak revisionist period trappings of Red Dead, that same authorial voice still rings like a gunshot.

There’s still plenty of internal monologue from Max, but like the rest of the game, the language is less flowery and more nihilistic than Remedy’s work with the character. It’s still every bit as stylish, but in a completely different way, replacing Max’s old static comic-panel storytelling devices with flashy multi-frame cutscenes that are jumpy and dynamic, often popping up key bits of dialogue on screen for added punch. It’s a distinct look and feel that, in some ways, reminded me more of the blown-out neon and cheap digital noise of IO Interactive’s Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days than the previous Max Payne games, but there are times that it overindulges in its own sense of style, distracting from the plot’s serpentine double-crossing and Max’s near-constant self-flagellation.

Max may be greyer at the temples than when we last left him, and far more emotionally handicapped by drink and drugs, but he’s no less capable than he ever was when leaping through the air in slow-motion with a pair of guns while facing down armies of thugs, crooked cops, and worse. Tapping into Max’s hallmark ability to drop the action into slow-motion for fleeting moments of time is still fundamental to the game’s third-person gunplay, and he still relies on found painkillers to manage his health--a grim fact he’ll regularly make glib reference to--but both have been tweaked in significant ways.

When nothing else makes sense, open fire.

There’s no on-screen indication other than the silhouetted life meter in the corner of the screen to let you know when Max is near death--a point that feels oddly archaic--though should you take one too many bullets, you can cheat that last gasp by targeting the enemy that got you, provided you’re holding onto at least one painkiller. Max’s basic shoot-dodging abilities remain intact, though now when you clear a room of enemies, you’re given the opportunity to continue pumping the last man standing full of lead for no apparent reasons beyond gory style and a vicious vindictiveness. The experience is also punctuated throughout with orchestrated slow-mo gameplay set-pieces that usually involve Max leaping through the air while killing as many men as possible.

In bringing the action of Max Payne into 2012, the addition of a cover mechanic is perhaps both the most subtle and significant change in Max Payne 3. Being able to slide into cover to control the tempo of the action is almost a given in a post-Gears-of-War third-person shooter. Combining that with Max’s literal ability to control the tempo by slowing down time might make him seem invincible. Instead, Max is made more fragile to make up the difference, a choice that makes it more challenging to use the slow-mo in a cool, stylish way and undercuts one of the fundamental things that has defined Max Payne in the past. Aside from the addition of some hard- and soft-lock targeting options, the actual gunplay doesn't feel too radically different, and yet for all of the chaos around you, it's an experience that feels much more controlled.

As in GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3 features a competitive multiplayer mode that runs parallel to the single-player; it takes place in the same world, with familiar locations and players, but it’s a very different experience. You can trigger the slow-motion effect in multiplayer, and though it’s in more limited quantities than in the single-player, it has the added impact of affecting everyone in the game. Beyond that ability, though, there are few surprises to be had in the multiplayer. There are deathmatch and team deathmatch variants, as well as an objective-based Gang War mode, and you’ll earn money and experience that you can use to unlock new weapons, gear, and abilities. Adding to the persistent side of the multiplayer, you can choose to join a crew, which can provide additional bonuses. It’s all pretty well thought-out as far as these types of modes go, but it feels kind of common, watering down the elements that make Max Payne cool.

Rockstar has taken a lot of risks in the ways it has reshaped the series with Max Payne 3, and there’s something to be said for opting out of the easy route. The aesthetic overhaul is certainly the most noticeable, though there's no understating the impact that certain gameplay modernizations have had on the experience. While fans might have a hard time processing the dramatic change in tone, it’s approached with a seriousness and conviction that I respect, and frankly, have come to expect from Rockstar.

Despite Max Payne 3 not launching at retail until next Tuesday, Rockstar went ahead and released the "launch" trailer this afternoon. And despite Max's crippling addiction to painkillers and booze, he seems to be moving forward with his life, as seen in the clip. Where he's going ... that's another story entirely.

Maybe the launch trailer arrived before the game because Max Payne 3, like it’s titular bearded/cleanshaven renegade cop/angry vest, is currently diving toward its release date in slow motion. It really wants to be on your hard drive, honest it does, but it wants to arrive in style and preferably while shooting sixteen guns simultaneously into every other game you have installed in order to make room for itself. Whatever the case, the video should be filed under ‘portentous’ and ‘containing admirable discussions of the nature of healing and time’.

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#watchthis Max Payne is so very emo. Or is that noir? Is noir just emo with more smoking, drinking, and guns? The answers to these questions and more will probably not be revealed on May 15. I'll be too busy playing Max Payne 3 anyway. More »

The way I see it, there are two kinds of people in this world. The kind of person who's Max Payne, and the kind of person who isn't.

To support the much-hyped launch of Max Payne 3, and attendant multiplayer facets, the clever bees of Rockstar have reworked their Social Club functionality, overhauling the whole thing for Max players. They report that their new outing will include “custom personal Social Club user profiles, an all-new Friends system with public and direct messaging, the ability to link in and login with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, Newswire activity and reply notifications.” And other stuff too, including the ability to be able to register your Max Payne 3 clan, should you wish to do such a thing. Rather more immediate gratification can be found in the free Marvel-produced comic, which details more backstory, and allows me to post amusing out-of-context leader images.

#rockstargames In preparation for next week's release of Max Payne 3 and the launch of the Crews system, Rockstar Games has given its Social Club site a complete overhaul, complete with user profiles, a new friends system, and integration with Facebook and Twitter. In short, this time it's social. More »

#maxpayne Bullet time! The supernatural act of slowing down time as you either shoot a gun or dodge the bullets of someone shooting at you! It was in Max Payne. It was in The Matrix. More »

The gangs of Max Payne 3's multiplayer setting make us forget all about the balding alcoholic star of Rockstar's upcoming game. Instead, they're more reminiscent of a film classic from 2002 set in Rio de Janeiro's poorest neighborhood, City of God. Take a look at the new multiplayer trailer above, then compare with a trailer for the film below the break. We think you'll see more than a few similarities.

#maxpayne Max Payne doesn't wear tights. But, if insanely fast reflexes, deadly marksmanship and an ability to swill the worst whisky around count, you could argue that the gritty NYPD detective of Rockstar Games' shooters has superpowers. Powers or not, he'll be appearing in a new series from Marvel Comics which is being written by Rockstar's Dan Houser and Remedy's Sam Lake. More »

Vendettas! Gang wars! Crews! And, of course, bullet time.

#watchthis The latest installment of Rockstar's Max Payne 3 Design and Technology video series covers everything you need to know about participating in online multiplayer so engaging you might forget the single-player game exists. More »

If you're anything like us, you've had this song from Max Payne 3's TV spot stuck in your head. You can purchase that track on iTunes on May 15th, along with full soundtrack on May 23.

The soundtrack comes from Health - the band, not the state of being that comes from eating right and exercising. Health is an LA-based collective formed in 2006. "Health have created hundreds of hours of amazing music for the game's score, and distilled it into a devastatingly moody and atmospheric soundtrack album," says Rockstar's soundtrack supervisor, Ivan Pavlovich. "By using a band instead of a traditional composer, we've created a soundtrack that sounds completely unique."

Max Payne 3 launches on May 15 on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Yes, there are multiple implications in that headline. You may read into them how ever you please. See, if you take a moment to consider the current state of your life and the world around you, you’ll probably come to a shocking realization: Max Payne 3′s gun-calloused caress has yet to gleefully clasp hands with your itchy trigger finger. You are painfully aware of your Payne-less-ness. And yet, Rockstar’s already seen fit to announce multiplayer DLC. For basically the entire year. Beginning with the Local Justice map pack in June, bullet-time (and, you know, bullets) will fly with seven packs in possibly less than as many months.

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Rockstar has announced its plans for Max Payne 3's downloadable content. According to a post on Rockstar's official site, seven DLC packs are currently planned for the game's multiplayer, and players will be able to purchase a Rockstar Pass for 2400 Microsoft Points or $29.99 that will offer access...

I'm sure you're all crestfallen at the lack of an announced zombie mode.

Among life's many inevitables, "video games having DLC" is beginning to rank pretty highly on the list. It's not quite in that upper echelon with death, taxes, and disappointment in your fellow man, but it's getting there. Given this inevitability, it should come as no surprise that Rockstar Games today announced the upcoming slate of DLC packs for its forthcoming action sequel, Max Payne 3. What might be surprising is just how much of it Rockstar has in the pipes.

Starting today, eventual Max Payne 3 players will have the option to pre-order the Rockstar Pass, a season pass designed to give you an overall 35% discount, should you want to own all of the DLC. The pass itself costs 2400 MS Points, or $29.99 on PSN.

The first pack will arrive in June. Titled the Local Justice map pack, which includes the "Police Precinct" map, as well as a couple of others, available for use in Max Payne 3's various multiplayer mode.

The rest of the packs don't have details yet, but they do have titles and timeframes for release. They are as follows:

Summer 2012

• Disorganized Crime Map Pack
• Deathmatch Made In Heaven Mode Pack
• Hostage Negotiation Map Pack
• New York Minute Co-Op Pack

Fall 2012

• Painful Memories Map Pack
• Trickle Down Economics Map Pack

As you can see, this DLC slate is perhaps a little heavy on the map packs, but there is at least one co-op pack planned (which is interesting, since we haven't really seen any co-op options in this game before), as well as the curious-sounding "Deathmatch Made In Heaven" mode pack. The game already has a deathmatch mode, so this is...what?

For those immediately scoffing at all of this, believe me, I understand. However, I will say I've heard from a variety of different people that Max Payne 3's multiplayer is actually pretty good. So, while I don't necessarily recommend running out and pre-ordering that season pass, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, either. And for those who just want the single-player, at least it doesn't look like you'll have to buy a bunch of extra content just to flesh out the story properly. Lord knows there's been a lot of that going around lately.

Max Payne 3's multiplayer and co-op offerings won't thin as quickly as Max's hair. Rockstar today announced plans for seven separate DLC packs spanning June through next fall, following the game's launch in May. June's "Local Justice Map Pack" kicks off the content expansions, adding three new multi maps, including one that works with the game's "Gang Wars" mode (Police Precinct), as well as the others (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Payne Killer).

This summer will see four additional map pack dropping, and the fall will bring two more. Should all of this be conflicting with your good budget sense, Rockstar's season pass is returning from LA Noire, this time offering a 35 percent discount over buying each pack individually. The pass costs $30.

#maxpayne The full run of downloadable content for Max Payne 3 is available for pre-order starting today, two weeks before the game's console release (and about a month before it's PC release). All of it is multiplayer, and all of it can be bought in one $30 gulp if you don't want to buy it all a la carte. That's a savings of 35%, the game's creators at Rockstar revealed today. More »

#maxpayne It's been previously announced that Rockstar Games, Remedy Entertainment and Marvel Comics are teaming up to bring iconic cop to comics. Now, Kotaku can share an exclusive first look at the first issue's cover, drawn by fan-favorite Greg Horn. We're pretty sure that bottle of whisky is not standard-issue equipment for members of the NYPD. More »

Max Payne 3 is a Rockstar Games production, which means it was originally supposed to be released a long time ago, and it's still not out. First, late 2009. Then, 2010. Later, 2011. Finally, March 2012. Wait, no, May 2012.

It now seems like the return of Max Payne is just a few weeks away, but with Rockstar Games, you never know. Unless there’s an unexpected twist, Max Payne 3 will arrive on store shelves on May 15.

“Max Payne 3 required us to apply the same kind of focus and attention to detail that we’d use on an open world to the design challenges of more linear, more precise action-shooter,” said lead gameplay designer Sergei Kuprejanov recently over email. “Everything has to withstand scrutiny in real time and Bullet Time.”

Max Payne 3 is largely set in Brazil, but not entirely. The game opens in New York.

The world assumed Max Payne was over when Remedy Entertainment moved onto Alan Wake. Max Payne 2 was a sales disappointment for parent company Take-Two Interactive, but as early as 2004, it promised another game. Max Payne 3 was formally announced in March 2009, where it was revealed that Rockstar Vancouver, the studio behind the excellent Bully, would make it.

A few months later, Max Payne 3 showed up on the cover of Game Informer. Max’s new, beard-laden, wife beater-enhanced look was revealed, and fans weren’t universally happy with the new direction. It was clear Rockstar Vancouver was putting their stamp on the series, but it wasn’t necessarily a stamp series fans wanted.

Rockstar had experience taking over an existing series before. Red Dead Redemption was technically the follow-up to Red Dead Revolver, remember? The difference here, however, was that people really cared about Max Payne.

Kuprejanov told me the reaction didn’t prompt Rockstar to alter the direction of Max Payne 3. It was patient.

“To be honest, we didn't change anything design wise,” he said. “Our plans were already pretty tight and we knew that we would give people plenty of what they were asking for. We did, however, hurry up our contract discussions with James McCaffrey, as that wasn't quite finalized at that point, which is why we kept that under wraps.”

McCaffrey was the original voice of Max, and remains the voice of Max in the new game. His involvement was a question mark when the Game Informer story ran, causing fans to question Rockstar's commitment to the past.

One positive sign about the game is the former creatives steering Max have given the thumbs up. Rockstar started showing Remedy builds of Max Payne 3 in 2011, and Kuprejanov described the relationship as one in which Remedy provides feedback to “ensure we got the right overall tone.” Rockstar "didn't want to disturb" Remedy while Alan Wake finished up, and looped them in when that project was complete.

It's not like Remedy's support is a tepid endorsement, either.

"It’s [Max Payne 3] f***ing brilliant," said Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. "I’ve had a chance to play it and we’ve worked with Rockstar a little bit--obviously, they’re doing the heavy lifting. They’re doing the development. But they wanted our input on a couple of occasions and we’ve had loads of our people, our core group, who worked on the first two games, give input and it’s awesome."

A running theme behind Kuprejanov’s answers was a desire to maintain secrecy to protect the player experience, even when it seemed like my questions weren’t particularly prying. There's a general sense that much of Max Payne 3 is being purposely kept from us, and it's a refreshing feeling. It's hard to predict what will happen when it boots up.

When I asked, for example, about balancing the fourth wall-breaking tone of the previous games:

“It’s hard to convey every aspect of the game pre-launch without ruining parts of it that we’d rather leave for players to discover,” he said. “Max has always been a wry character, struggling to gain some kind of self-awareness, and that hasn’t changed at all. In terms of tone, we wanted something that worked well with modern body and facial animation and still felt very much like Max Payne. I think when you first hear McCaffrey start speaking in one of the early scene-setting monologues, you know you're back in Max's painful psyche.”

It's unclear how far Rockstar will to walk down that road, but I'm guessing no dream scenes with babies crying.

Perhaps the most important question is this next one: will Address Unknown be back? Address Unknown was a fake TV show set in "New Noir City" that players came across in Max Payne 2. Kuprejanov was coy in a very good way.

“We’re going to let fans discover the answer when they play the game for themselves,” he said.

Good enough for me.

Normally, those of us imbued with the strange power to manipulate RPS’ frontpage into whatever form we see fit (usually PC gaming articles, but sometimes, a giraffe!) don’t go all starry-eyed over system requirements. Nowadays, all the nitty gritty bits and bobs generally add up to “Yes, it will run decently on a mid-range PC or better; no, it will not run on a toaster, abacus, or cloud that looks like a PC if you squint.” Max Payne 3, however, is kind of a special exception, seeing as it’s demanding a 35GB space on your hard drive. I’ve met MMOs that made less of a craterous impact on my hard drive. But, to take the edge off that slow-mo download, here’s a possibly even slower-mo trailer. Damn it, Max, how can I stay mad at that ruggedly handsome, perma-grimacing face?

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Do you have a really powerful system and 35 GB of free space? Then you'll be able to take advantage of advanced graphics options in Max Payne 3 including DX11 tessellation. Rockstar has outlined the system requirements for its upcoming shooter, scheduled to launch on May 29 for PC. You'll find system specs listed below alongside a few new screenshots pulled from the PC version...

#maxpayne Now, PC gamers, you might be mad that you'll have to wait a few weeks after the console release to get Max Payne 3 on your screens. But, as is often the case, Rockstar's noir threequel finds its most beauteous iteration on the personal computing platform. More »