We haven’t had a finer example of great style over not-so-great substance since the risky Kane and Lynch: Dog Days – a game Max Payne 3 resembles in a number of ways. And the presentation? Well some might say that it’s all trying a bit too hard, with split-screen, double-vision and weird video artefacts everywhere you look, but it makes all that blasting and leaping look amazing. The dialogue comes close to Ellroy/Chandler-parody at times, but it’s engaging, smart and rich in pitch-black humour. Where everyone else is content to do another story about space marines or special forces troops on the trail of terrorists, here’s an honest-to-goodness thriller with a flawed hero (Max is an alcoholic and distinctly past his prime), a great setting (Brazil’s Sao Paolo) and a story you can believe in. In terms of storyline and style, however, it’s fantastic. But it can leave you feeling: surely, there must be something more than this. It worked in Remedy’s original Max Payne and it works just as well here. For the most part, Max Payne has just three variations on combat: the bit where you cower behind something and take potshots, the bit where you press the right thumbstick, engage slowmo, and blast everything you can before the guage runs out, and the bit where you press the right bumper to hurl yourself into the air and blast everything before you hit the ground. That’s because it’s all built around cover-based, third-person shooting and a slowmo mechanic that was all very new back in 2001, but which has since seen action in everything from FEAR to Rockstar’s own Red Dead Redemption.
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