icemann on 1/11/2019 at 01:57
Quote Posted by Brethren
Missed this from a week ago. What's the beef with EYE? I've heard it's unconventional, but I figured that might be a good thing.
Its a mod for Half-life 2 that they had the balls to charge you for. Quality level is quite poor, level design is average. You've missed nothing from having not played it.
Tomi on 2/11/2019 at 19:21
So I started with Max Payne 3, like I said, and boy do I regret that I never played this before? It's really good, but I have a feeling that seven years ago when it was released I would have loved it. Some aspects of the game haven't aged that well, the controls for example feel a bit clunky when you compare them to some modern games. MP3 still looks surprisingly good though, and most importantly it feels like a Max Payne game. Gameplay-wise, that is. I'll never get tired of some well-made bullet-time action.
However, it doesn't have the same special charm that the previous two Max Payne games did. Max is still Max, just an old fart now, but still Max enough with his trademark dark humour and everything. Just about everything else feels a bit off though. It's hard to imagine Max Payne in some samba carnival environment or some techno party, but I suppose that that "contrast" is what they've tried to do here. Don't get me wrong, the levels are nicely built and quite well-designed for the non-stop action set pieces, but I dunno, the Rockstar style just doesn't feel right to me. There are long cutscenes every couple of minutes (I miss the old noir-style comics), and then there's basically one action set piece after another, but I gotta admit that they've really let their imagination fly because there's so much variation in the scenes. I'd say that the action often gets too over the top though, even by Max Payne standards, and I also think that the game is a bit too brutal at times - not that I mind that sort of thing usually, it's just yet another thing that doesn't feel right in a Max Payne game.
The core gameplay is where Max Payne 3 excels though, even if it takes a while to get used to the kinda old school controls - just running around feels like a bit of a nostalgia trip. The cover system is a nice addition, as is the "blind fire" ability. One of the new gameplay features that I don't like is the "last chance bullet" - you get one last chance (in slow motion of course) to shoot the guy who's just about to kill you, and in theory it sounds like a cool feature, but it just ruins the flow of the combat, and it often feels like a very cheap way to survive a tough situation. There are no grenades or molotovs or any other special gadgets which is a shame, all the weapons are fairly basic but every one of them feels like a proper gun with some punch in it, unlike the pistol in DOOM that feels like a stupid pew-pew toy. (I've wanted to complain about that for the last 25 years, so excuse me if it feels a bit out of place in here :p)
Sometimes it's nice to play such a straightforward action game such as Max Payne 3, and it only took around ten hours to finish the game, so it felt like a time well spent. I don't think I'll be playing this one for a second time though - when/if I feel like playing Max Payne again, I think it'll be one of the older games. One last tip for anyone who's planning to play Max Payne 3: play it with the Hard difficulty - it's not that hard, you just can't run around like a headless chicken all the time which makes the game a lot more exciting and more rewarding.
Coming next: Alan Wake. In fact I've even started it already and it's been quite an experience so far! :)
Starker on 3/11/2019 at 18:36
Quote Posted by Tomi
I'd say that the action often gets too over the top though, even by Max Payne standards, and I also think that the game is a bit too brutal at times - not that I mind that sort of thing usually, it's just yet another thing that doesn't feel right in a Max Payne game.
Yup, and if you add the jumpy camera, all that visual noise, and 24-style split screen, it felt more like some gritty action movie with a wise-cracking protagonist rather than something with the film noir style and tone of the original games.
icemann on 4/11/2019 at 02:30
I hated the excessive use typography in MP3.
Starker on 4/11/2019 at 07:06
That was an exceptionally poor artistic choice. And I didn't care much for stuff like achievements and collectables either. Hey, look at all these slums and abject poverty. And now go collect golden guns and chuckle at the latest punny achievement of having shot enemies in the groin a few hundred times.
Oh, and of course they had to shove in turret sections into the game. Damn, the more I think back on the game the more unpleasant stuff I remember.
zajazd on 4/11/2019 at 21:27
Quote Posted by Tomi
Some aspects of the game haven't aged that well, the controls for example feel a bit clunky when you compare them to some modern games.
I played it on release and the controls felt as clunky then as they feel now, I guess it is a signature of Rockstar games?
Sulphur on 5/11/2019 at 05:53
One interesting thing about MP3 and its clunky mechanisms is that at least half of the issues arise from Euphoria, which makes old tricks you took for granted disappear. If you go prone near a balcony, for example, the game will not let you aim through the balustrades because the muzzle of the rifle you're holding won't go through it, so Max will just fold the gun towards his body and not fire. You have to actually back up and ensure that the bounding boxes don't collide.
While impressive, someone forget to tell R* that this is actually a bad thing in video games, because none of our standard input mechanisms allow for fine-grained control to quickly deal with that.
Shadowcat on 5/11/2019 at 07:55
I kinda loved that sort of thing in Trespasser. Sure, in one sense it was clunky as all heck that you could accidentally catch the end of your gun on the ground and have it pulled out of your hand -- but I developed habits to avoid those accidents, which generally prevented this from being annoying -- and what happened *then* was that I felt grounded in a real place in a way that no other game before (and maybe since) had ever managed. What was clunky just became an additional reflection of the physical simulation at work, and that was genuinely cool.
SubJeff on 5/11/2019 at 20:50
MP3 was kind of grim and brutal compared to MP1 and 2, wasn't it? I still enjoyed the contrast between it and the original 2 though - all of it; style, cutscenes, setting, plot. I got it on release too and I didn't find the controls clunky at all. I especially liked the Portuguese, which isn't a common language in film and definitely not games, if you're playing with English language on anyway.
Oh, I thought the theme tune was great too.
icemann on 5/11/2019 at 21:55
Biggest thing missing was the comic book style intermissions. Loved those in the first 2 games.