This game is more fun with soft-lock on consoles, aiming is too sluggish with the controller. I did beat the game with free aim, but it was a frustrating experience. I'm not playing with soft-lock and it is way less annoying when battling multiple foes.
Ok, I have to take back what I said. It was too easy and boring with soft lock. I'm playing on hard now with free aim and it's a lot more fun than my first playthrough on medium. I think on medium I wasn't ever really worried about the enemies when I was in cover (even if I got shot a few times peaking out of cover), so I basically just popped out with bullet time and got a bunch of headshots as they gave you ample bullettime, err, time. I barely used shoot dodge my first playthough as a result. Now on hard I worry when enemies rush and I don't get a lot of bullet time, so I have to be strategic with cover and use shootdodge a lot more since it still works even if you have zero bullettime left. Also just popping out of cover to shoot is really risky on hard considering how much damage the enemy bullets do. The game is far more fun this way because you're constantly switching up your playstyle based on your health, bullettime and enemy agressiveness. I now understand what makes this game so special, it took hard mode to get me out of my pussy cover tactics that I've grown used to from other games (Uncharted in particular).
I think after you get used to the aiming (or find aim settings that work for you), hard is the way to go, you'll approach the game in a completely different way.
The way they feel it actually makes a lot of sense. It's harder to aim and steady an assault rifle at short range than it is a pistol. A pistol is a much more maneuverable weapon at short range to mid, pistols are damn near useless at long range in this game, they seem to have bullet drop off or something. I tried shooting a guy from across Docks and it was like my bullets just didn't reach, while with a AK or that single shot scout gun I never have problems with range.
Plus, anyone who plays Max Payne should know it's about Pistols and SMG's. When you play Payne Killer, does Max spawn with an Assault Rifle? Fuck no, he spawns with 2 ass kicking SMG's.
With how fast you die in this game, it's all about speed & maneuverability VS range, this isn't CoD where an M4 is useful in every and all situations.
Finito'd this sucker last night. Final (and extensive) impressions incoming:
The Max Paynositive:
> It's a nice looking game. The lighting is great and everything else is very decent.
> Presentation and production values are as you'd expect from a R* game: top-notch.
> Dat animation. Euphoria is awesome and there's no denying that. Max's animations are also stellar, with a few jarring exceptions here and there (moving into cover, rounding cover, etc).
> Gunplay is very solid and punchy for the most part; weapon models and accompanying animations are great. The bread and butter of MP3 - shoot-dodging in slow-motion - is fun and satisfying. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat "one noted" and does wane with extensive use.
> Now, here are two things that have really stayed with me throughout the entirety of the game: bullet-wound rendering and the final kill-cam; uncompromisingly violent and just fucking great, really. Nailing someone in the mouth and seeing them turn into what basically looks like a Necromorph from Dead Space never gets old. As far as I'm concerned, every shooter would benefit from having these features + Euphoria implemented in some fashion.
The Max Paynegative:
> Fucking cut-scenes. There are too many. I'm all for "opinions" and "subjectivity", but I'm taking a stand here; I'm calling this out as an objective truth. They are either too long, too boring or completely unnecessary, e.g. we do not need a cut-scene showing Max walking 15 metres and helping someone through a window everytime it happens. This really shat me during the second half of the game.
> That inescapable "R* Jank". Ah, R*. You've still a few things to learn, haven't you? It's actually a damn shame that the controls are plagued as they are, because it really is quite the negative when you contrast it with wholly polished nature of the game. I've never had such little faith/confidence in a mechanic than I have the cover mechanic in this game. Then you have the wobbly run, the redundant sprint, the bipolar vault...
> Aiming is strange. The fact that you have to jack the sensitivities up to their maximum in order for the game to resemble a competent TPS is pretty indicative of an inherently mediocre function.
> Checkpoints and difficulty spikes are a big issue. My desire to jump into a second play-through sits near 0% right now, which is also largely due to...
> A completely forgettable story with major disconnect between the beginning and the end. To me, it felt as if the opening set up a grand (and ultimately wasted) narrative and the ending resolved an out-of-nowhere sub-plot. I just didn't give a shit in the end. And to be honest, Max's motivations are fairly spurious and baseless throughout the game, so I kinda never gave a shit.
> The 'Last Stand' mechanic can be annoying as all hell for a number of reasons: no ammo, object obstruction, Max not even facing in the enemy's direction/taking a ridiculous amount of time to spin around, NOT BEING ABLE TO RESTART THE CHECKPOINT DURING THIS SEQUENCE (I hated that), etc.
> The
C4 collapse segment
was bullshit and poorly thought-out. The gaul of R* to take control away from the player in such an infuriating way. Who play-tested that dross? Also of note: the
graveyard sniper showdown
; extremely unclear in what you had to do.
> The final shoot-out was completely antithetical to what makes this game fun. Super dumb move, R*.
Best part of the game bar none for me. A wide open, uninterrupted, free form, player-(and Max)-unleashed music video that encapsulates just about everything the mechanics have to offer. Its too bad it was just that one area in the game.
Nope. It's telling me new game or nothing. Fuck my life, I know every intricacy of the story except how it ends. Will pick it up in a few days again when I'm not angry.
Giving up multiplayer for now. Didn't take long for the playerbase to lame it up.
Why people insist on getting on rooftops and spraying assault rifles at ant-sized people on their screen when they could be doing awesome dives through windows in slow motion while shooting people in the head is beyond me.
Just played some multiplayer again and I have a big problem with the guns now. Mainly a reason on why I died so easily by a pistol while I was shooting fine with an AK. I didn't get it and I died so many times by the same guy who still had a pistol, it was really annoying.
Could be accuracy, the AK is only any good in single bursts. I was doing better with the pistol than with the machine guns. But then that said, I really despise the DS3 analogue sticks and generally only buy shopoters for the PC or 360 but I don't want to renew my Gold anymore.
That's why MMaRsu is almost at the top, no one else can join.
In all seriousness, MMaRsu sent me an invite yesterday as well and it failed to connect. I even went out and bought a CAT5 cable just incase my wifi was interferring with my NAT. No excuses now. Just finished my first session. 4 rounds of TDM, 4th round I finished 3rd with 13 Kills 3 Deaths. =D
How do you get into the Gaf Crew? Do you need an invite?
I thought I heard someone say the crew was capped @ 300, but I'm seeing crews on the Social site with 20000+ members. Is that a special R* created crew or something? See: http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/crew/payne_killers
I thought I heard someone say the crew was capped @ 300, but I'm seeing crews on the Social site with 20000+ members. Is that a special R* created crew or something? See: http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/crew/payne_killers
I liked it. A few seconds were just bastards, though. Starting in the Baggage area....die die die.
Anyone else try to watch all the TV chances? The TV in the stadium had some Brazilian Soap Opera on, that ended with a lady giving birth to a red haired demon baby.
Nice working bringing back Max's voice actor. Still, once the hair came off, all I kept hearing was Bruce Willis :lol
Only people who are balding have those kinds of mid life crises. When you have hair like Max Payne, you do not shave it off. Shame. He was practically a hair model.
Could be accuracy, the AK is only any good in single bursts. I was doing better with the pistol than with the machine guns. But then that said, I really despise the DS3 analogue sticks and generally only buy shopoters for the PC or 360 but I don't want to renew my Gold anymore.
How do you get into the Gaf Crew? Do you need an invite?[/QUOTE]
Game is pretty great so far but just by the nature of the gameplay and how long it is, I could never see myself replaying it unless the second half (which I'm at in one sitting) is just amazing and delivers.
Right now I would call it "the best rental ever" but my $60 hasn't been justified. That's not really a dig at the game because I feel that most solid games aren't even worth that much money, but I've been paying that much money for lesser games this gen so I'm not regretful.
It's really good. The story has been fucking hilarious especially the character of Max who is just laughably broken -- but it's amusing the hell out of me so far.
I dunno - multiplayer feels like every other multiplayer out there. Lots of people running around with their heads cut off, getting killed from people who spawned behind you, wondering if lag made some of your bullets disappear or if you have the gun that takes several bursts to kill while everybody else can kill you from a single kidney shot a mile away.
Its impossible these days to tell what part is my accuracy, what part is my perks (or lack thereof) and what part network conditions, and with everybody running and jumping and spraying mad SMG fire everywhere its even worse here. All I know is that it doesn't have that smooth realism that the campaign does, nor does it have slowmo killcams.
Yeah, I've got to finish my second run-through of the story maybe, but not sure if I'll come back to this game, even through I'd truly, truly love to. The focus though seems to be entirely on multiplayer and leaderboards, and arcade mode is not nearly what I thought it was going to be.
This seems like the type of game that could totally use Naughty Dog's touch of unlockable goofiness to dink around with in the world. Fat Max, zero gravity on dead bodies, etc.
You complete the whole game without dying in a single session. You are also under time pressure but there is a catch. You take the time and the painkillers you had left from the previous level with you to the next, so time is not really an issue.
Over the weekend I got up to Chapter XIII, Absolutely loving the style of the game and the satisfying gunplay. Have to admit that cutscenes can take too long sometimes; there were definitely certain bits that I felt would have been more effective if it had happened while playing. I dunno, maybe Uncharted spoilt me in that regard.
Also, I can't play this game in more than 2-3 hour bursts. After that, total fatigue sets in and I need to turn it off. Maybe that's due to the story not being as interesting as I would have liked it to be, or that the gameplay actually does get kinda repetitive. Am definitely going for a 2nd playthrough though, just to explore the environments a bit more and generally play a bit more stylish. Right now, I mostly employ a "bullet-time-while-in-cover" tactic, because shoot-dodging gets me killed a bit too much atm.
Finito'd this sucker last night. Final (and extensive) impressions incoming:
The Max Paynositive:
> It's a nice looking game. The lighting is great and everything else is very decent.
> Presentation and production values are as you'd expect from a R* game: top-notch.
> Dat animation. Euphoria is awesome and there's no denying that. Max's animations are also stellar, with a few jarring exceptions here and there (moving into cover, rounding cover, etc).
> Gunplay is very solid and punchy for the most part; weapon models and accompanying animations are great. The bread and butter of MP3 - shoot-dodging in slow-motion - is fun and satisfying. Unfortunately, it is also somewhat "one noted" and does wane with extensive use.
> Now, here are two things that have really stayed with me throughout the entirety of the game: bullet-wound rendering and the final kill-cam; uncompromisingly violent and just fucking great, really. Nailing someone in the mouth and seeing them turn into what basically looks like a Necromorph from Dead Space never gets old. As far as I'm concerned, every shooter would benefit from having these features + Euphoria implemented in some fashion.
The Max Paynegative:
> Fucking cut-scenes. There are too many. I'm all for "opinions" and "subjectivity", but I'm taking a stand here; I'm calling this out as an objective truth. They are either too long, too boring or completely unnecessary, e.g. we do not need a cut-scene showing Max walking 15 metres and helping someone through a window everytime it happens. This really shat me during the second half of the game.
> That inescapable "R* Jank". Ah, R*. You've still a few things to learn, haven't you? It's actually a damn shame that the controls are plagued as they are, because it really is quite the negative when you contrast it with wholly polished nature of the game. I've never had such little faith/confidence in a mechanic than I have the cover mechanic in this game. Then you have the wobbly run, the redundant sprint, the bipolar vault...
> Aiming is strange. The fact that you have to jack the sensitivities up to their maximum in order for the game to resemble a competent TPS is pretty indicative of an inherently mediocre function.
> Checkpoints and difficulty spikes are a big issue. My desire to jump into a second play-through sits near 0% right now, which is also largely due to...
> A completely forgettable story with major disconnect between the beginning and the end. To me, it felt as if the opening set up a grand (and ultimately wasted) narrative and the ending resolved an out-of-nowhere sub-plot. I just didn't give a shit in the end. And to be honest, Max's motivations are fairly spurious and baseless throughout the game, so I kinda never gave a shit.
> The 'Last Stand' mechanic can be annoying as all hell for a number of reasons: no ammo, object obstruction, Max not even facing in the enemy's direction/taking a ridiculous amount of time to spin around, NOT BEING ABLE TO RESTART THE CHECKPOINT DURING THIS SEQUENCE (I hated that), etc.
> The
C4 collapse segment
was bullshit and poorly thought-out. The gaul of R* to take control away from the player in such an infuriating way. Who play-tested that dross? Also of note: the
graveyard sniper showdown
; extremely unclear in what you had to do.
> The final shoot-out was completely antithetical to what makes this game fun. Super dumb move, R*.
So who thought dual wielding being that powerful and accurate would be a good idea in multiplayer? In fact there are numerous things in multiplayer that are borderline fucking awful.
Max Payne is on a completely different level as a shooter. Uncharted 3, IMO, was awful in and after Chapter 11 or whatever it was when they started throwing tons of enemies at you all of which barely react to getting shot until they've taken enough damage to die. The encounter design is also way more intense in MP3. Character movement isn't as tight or fluid, but I still really enjoy controlling Max in combat situations and the shooting more than makes up for it.
But of course, you might feel differently, and maybe even managed to enjoy Uncharted 3. Rent it and see, I guess.
So who thought dual wielding being that powerful and accurate would be a good idea in multiplayer? In fact there are numerous things in multiplayer that are borderline fucking awful.
So who thought dual wielding being that powerful and accurate would be a good idea in multiplayer? In fact there are numerous things in multiplayer that are borderline fucking awful.
Shotgun losing to dual pistols in CQB is frustrating. But not as frustrating as dying with helmet+body armor from an elbow. The multiplayer is the worst offering, in Max Payne 3.
Which is fine in single player. However in multiplayer it's one of the most overpowered mechanics I have ever seen in an online game. How on earth it made it through testing is actually crazy.
Which is fine in single player. However in multiplayer it's one of the most overpowered mechanics I have ever seen in an online game. How on earth it made it through testing is actually crazy.
I think I get killed by grenades, the Mini-30, melee, and bullet time shenanigans just as much. Dual wielding hasn't bothered me to the point I want to rage. Mini-30 deaths from people perched 9 years away are way more frustrating.
I liked it. A few seconds were just bastards, though. Starting in the Baggage area....die die die.
Anyone else try to watch all the TV chances? The TV in the stadium had some Brazilian Soap Opera on, that ended with a lady giving birth to a red haired demon baby.
Nice working bringing back Max's voice actor. Still, once the hair came off, all I kept hearing was Bruce Willis :lol
