Max Payne 3 Review

Like it or not, times change. When Max Payne last appeared in a game in 2003, he blasted his way through countless enemies with reckless abandon, aided by his signature ability to slow time and deal graceful death. Today, reflecting modern sensibilities and perhaps his own age, Max takes things slower and makes judicious use of a new cover mechanic. Yet the addition of this contemporary element doesn't mean that Max Payne 3 plays like every other third-person shooter. Far from it. With its gripping narrative, brutal violence, and fantastic implementation of Max Payne's bullet-time ability, this is a distinctive and outstanding game through and through, and it's easily a worthy successor to the Max Payne games that preceded it.

Max Payne may need to play it a bit safer this time around, but he still often leaps fearlessly into action.

Wherever you go, there you are. It's a truth Max Payne knows better than anyone. Fleeing his New York life to take a job working security for a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, the hard-drinkin', pill-poppin' Max finds that his demons come along for the ride. Though the details of the plot add up to your typical story of conspiracy and corruption, of the rich and powerful preying on the poor and helpless to become even more rich and powerful, the writing, acting, and presentation elevate this tale well above a boilerplate video game crime story.

It's hard to stay ambivalent once you see the horrors being suffered by the innocent here, and you'll likely want to see Max's quest for vengeance through to its conclusion just as badly as he does. Max reveals a complexity here not seen in earlier games, as he hits rock bottom and must either stay there or face his demons head-on and make himself anew. Other characters, too, reveal a surprising humanity. You might be tempted to write off Marcelo, the youngest brother in the wealthy Branco dynasty Max is hired to protect, as the shallow playboy he often appears to be. But in moments of disarming honesty, he reveals to Max a depth that lies beneath the facade he presents to the world.

Cutscenes use multiple moving panels to pay homage to the graphic-novel-style storytelling of previous games without feeling beholden to it, and the considered use of blurring and other visual effects echo Max's state of mind, perhaps making you feel as if you're the one who has been hitting the bottle a little too hard. James McCaffrey does an excellent job reprising his role as Max, bringing a wider range of emotions to a character who has previously often been one-note. The writing is terrific; Max's world-weary wit is as bone-dry as ever, and as he ruminates on things like loyalty and loss, much of what he says has the sound of hard-earned wisdom. Subtle touches throughout the game make Max seem convincingly alive, such as the complex look that crosses over his face at the start of one stage when bloodshed seems inevitable; it's as if he dreads what's coming, but does his best to mentally prepare himself for it.

Live by the gun, die by the gun.

Max Payne 3 has far more sunlight and color than earlier Max Payne games, but the menaces Max faces here are at least as dark as those he's faced before. The locales Max has to gun his way into or out of are alive with authenticity and detail. Nightclubs throb with dance music and light shows; children play soccer in the favelas; run-down hotels are packed with leftover junk from their earlier days of luxury. And it's not all tropical locations and bad Hawaiian shirts for Max Payne here; a few great flashbacks that take place in Hoboken, New Jersey, reflect the snowy weather and urban atmosphere of earlier Max Payne games, as well as Max's previous fashion sensibilities, and connect his new life with his old one.

Though some things may have changed for Max Payne, one thing that hasn't changed is his ability to blow bad guys away by the hundreds. Three aiming options for the campaign let you customize the gunplay to your liking: hard lock takes much of the challenge out of things, snapping on to the nearest enemy; soft lock sticks to enemies once you've got them in your sights; and free aim leaves it all up to you. Regardless of the option you choose, shooting in Max Payne 3 feels terrific. This is partially due to the game's unflinching violence. Bullets visibly tear through bodies, leaving holes that spurt blood as your enemies die. Each encounter with a group of enemies ends with a bullet cam, showing your final, fatal bullet soaring through the air and striking its target in grisly detail, and giving you the option to pump excessive, unnecessary ordnance into the poor bastard. It's a cathartic and satisfying way to end each firefight.

Bullet time, the defining mechanic of the Max Payne series, lends gunplay a cinematic intensity that remains exhilarating from the start of the substantial campaign until its finish some 12 hours or so later. When bullet time is enabled, you can see every pellet that bursts forth from a shotgun, every bullet that whizzes past your head. Windows break apart beautifully; concrete shatters to reveal the rebar underneath; and all other sorts of believable destruction to the world around you takes place as you and your enemies try to gun each other down.

Max may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with him.

Bullet time slows your enemies down significantly, letting you aim and fire faster than they can respond. But despite the significant edge this gives you over your foes, they are no pushovers. They make smart use of flanking tactics, so you need to stay aware of what's happening on all sides, and, yes, you need to make effective use of cover. There are still situations aplenty where an old-fashioned head-on approach can get the job done, but by and large, you need to approach combat in Max Payne 3 a bit more defensively than in past games.

Max's vulnerability, and the feeling of danger that accompanies it, makes combat much more nerve-racking than it was in earlier Max Payne games, but it does come with a downside: Max's signature shootdodge has suffered. You can still leap through the air in slow motion like a John Woo action hero, attempting to blow your foes away before you land, but because your enemies also make good use of cover, there's a good chance some of them won't be vulnerable to your airborne assault, and as you get up from the ground after a shootdodge, you're something of a sitting duck. The result is that you may end up using shootdodge from time to time not because it's a particularly effective tactic but because, risks be damned, it just looks so cool.

Source : http://www.gamespot.com/max-payne-3/reviews/max-payne-3-review-6376769/

Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants Review

We tend to think of the Age of Sail as a time of swashbuckling pirates, lusty women, and fortunes to be made in Inca gold, but the truth is that most of the time, it was a pretty basic, scrape-to-survive lifestyle for the people who really lived it. They owned shops, traded stuff with each other, had the occasional setback, and generally woke up every morning to a day that would be substantially similar to the last. In that sense, Port Royale 3 is an accurate simulator of Age of Sail living for most people: not much happens, ever.

If you like maps of the Caribbean, you'll get plenty of looks at one in Port Royale 3.

You're a sea captain, working (at least initially) for Spain. You can choose to play the main campaign as a trader or as an adventurer: the latter option ostensibly makes this a fire-and-brimstone, crossed-cutlasses action game, while the former is for those players who prefer microeconomic challenges. In point of fact, though, you spend most of your time in either game mode simply looking at an overhead map of the Caribbean and aimlessly sailing around. While Port Royale 3 spends a great deal of time on tutorial videos, hand-holding, and tooltips for the control system, it totally fails to give you a sense of context for what you're doing.

For example, there's a complicated popularity system for your alter ego, both with individual cities and the countries that control them, but it comes off feeling like an abstract number that goes up and down based on simple, controlled stimuli. Get your popularity high enough by trading the right goods and avoiding the wrong ones, or by doing missions, and you unlock the ability to construct buildings in a town, or hire more sailors there. If it's really low, well, not a whole lot happen. Your fluctuating popularity, like so many other aspects of Port Royale 3's gameplay, doesn't feel organically integrated to a larger ethos, but instead feels tacked on.

Towns are the game's hubs. Get respected enough, and you can start to build structures in one.

When you're not confused as to why you're doing what you're doing, you find yourself confused as to where you're supposed to be going. Often, combat or search-and-rescue missions have you head to a general area ("southwest of Corpus Christi," for example) to seek out a target. But this target is often himself in a moving ship, and you have a very small circle around your own vessels in which such ships are revealed on the map. This means that you spend far too long sailing in an endless loop, searching for the proverbial needle in the oceanic haystack of the Caribbean, while your money and time drain slowly away. When you do finally get into a fight, you find that combat, like just about everything else in Port Royale 3, is competently handled, but not particularly exciting. It's heavily based on statistics, like how many guns you have in your convoy and how many sailors you have per gun, and has little to do with how you prepare for and control the fight, so you feel very divorced from whatever action there may be.

If you prefer, you can avoid fighting pretty much entirely and simply focus on trading for a living instead. Here, however, Port Royale 3 stumbles in its attempts to create a realistic economic model. Buying high and selling low is the name of this particular game. You can buy a certain number of the two dozen trading good types at any port, and some ports produce certain goods and demand others. However, Port Royale 3 has a ridiculously sensitive supply-and-demand mechanic working in the background: if you start to buy up goods at a particular port, even a port that produces those goods in quantity locally, the purchase price rapidly rises until you cannot possibly sell the goods you're buying at a profit anywhere else (no one in the world of Port Royale 3 has ever heard of futures contracts, apparently).

This means that, because ports have everything in tiny supply compared to your average convoy's cargo capacity, you always find yourself buying very small amounts of goods and then searching desperately to find a port where you can offload them without bringing the sale price down to nothing as the buyer's supply increases. The upshot is that it takes forever to make any kind of serious money by trading, as no matter how big your fleet is, you can never get a decent supply of goods at a decent price. It can take hours of real time to earn mere thousands of gold pieces in a game where tens and hundreds of thousands are necessary to have any real impact.

You can attack towns if you like and annex them for yourself or one of the four empires of the game.

Bottom line: trading in Port Royale 3 is a terrible, slow grind that sees you spending your time moving sliders back and forth ever so slightly so as not to affect the price too much, and getting very little reward for your precision. And since ship-to-ship fighting and treasure hunting are so hit or miss, you spend most of your time in Port Royale 3 trying to decide between being bored selling goods or being bored searching for something interesting to do. Multiplayer, though technically available, will likely serve as cold comfort, as it's all but impossible to find an opponent.

The saddest part of all this is that Port Royale 3 looks good and plays smoothly. It also, at least in theory, has a lot of facets: trading, ship-to-ship combat, ship-to-shore combat, two separate story campaigns, and multiplayer. But none of these offer anything that's much fun to do.


Source : http://www.gamespot.com/port-royale-3/reviews/port-royale-3-pirates-and-merchants-review-6376561/

Max Payne 3 Review

After almost nine years, Max Payne, the pill-popping, bullet dodging, cop with nothing to lose and a penchant for horizontal gunplay has returned in Rockstar Studios’ Max Payne 3. When it was first revealed that MP3 was going to be the next title from Rockstar Games, there was a nearly audible reaction of, "Why?" from a good portion of gamers. After all, it had been nearly a decade since anyone had seen Max in action, and it seemed that it would stay that way, since he wasn’t exactly a character gamers were clamoring to see resurrected.

Thankfully, Rockstar ignored our collective abandonment of Max Payne, and decided to once again put Max at the forefront of the third-person action genre by delivering a bullet-adoring, genre-defining, shooter experience to rival this generation’s best, and the result is Max Payne 3.


When the original Max Payne burst onto the PC scene back in 2001, with its melodramatic, film noir-inspired presentation and Matrix-style bullet time-centric combat, it was definitely a breath of fresh air, and a large number of gamers no doubt still remember sinking countless hours into the game just because the bullet time turned standard shootouts into something completely unique. It also told a twisted and unforgiving tale of corruption, redemption, and desperation, presented in a comic book-panel style in between scenes of explosive violence.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne carried its predecessor’s torch admirably, maintaining the core mechanics, tone, and style fans loved while adding a still impressive layer of physics that took the slowed down action to a whole new level. Watching thugs get spun violently into the air in slow-mo never got old, and it helped make the sequel a worthy successor to one of the most groundbreaking shooters ever, even if it did feature plenty of similar scenarios (the least appealing of which involved navigating window ledges). In short, it felt like a natural, less game-changing next step.

With Max Payne 3, Rockstar once again hits all of the expected series beats, most of which players have come to expect from the genre in general, but it does so with such flair, polish, and focus of vision that what you end up with is a game that has an old-school heart in a next-gen body. You’ll still need to track down painkillers to heal yourself, but you’ll be doing it as a fully motion-captured James McCaffrey who moves at a noticeably slower pace than the much younger Max Payne from the previous games. Max narrates the story in his familiar pseudo-noir wordiness, but now it’s accented with a system that projects choice words and phrases into the scene and turns video into still images that are then used to pull off the comic book panel effect.

This artful balance of old and new is mirrored in the game’s story as well. The narrative jumps between flashback and present day, telling the painful tale of how Max was pulled out of his whiskey-soaked stupor by former policeman-turned-hired gun Raul Passos and thrown (bald) head first into the gang and corruption-fueled madness of the Brazilian criminal underworld via his political powerhouse of a client, the wealthy and supremely connected Branco family.

The story itself has more twists than a Twilight Zone-themed roller coaster (damn you crazy metaphor-laden narration!), some of which are rather obvious, but others that completely caught me off guard. I can already anticipate some players referencing the Mexico portion of Red Dead Redemption when discussing the closing chapters of MP3, but as was the case in RDR, I found myself being pleasantly surprised by the meatiness of the final act, pudge included.

The scope of the story is equally impressive, taking you from the snowy streets of New York City to the sun-baked back alleys of Sao Paulo to the over-the-top decadence of a multimillion dollar yacht under siege in the Panama Canal. Each setting brings with it a unique color pallet, and is crammed with a staggering amount of detail. Imagine all of the effort Rockstar puts into bringing its open worlds to life. Now imagine all of that effort concentrated down to individual set pieces (that are still quite substantial in their own right), and you’ll start to get a sense of how remarkable these place spaces truly are.

But for as slickly told as the story is, it’s the presentation--the stuttery video feed camera effects, the sans-loading screen transitions between gameplay and cutscenes, etc.--that bring MP3’s "cinematic" vision to life. You should know though that while there technically aren’t any load screens, the first half of every cutscene is an unskippable load time. Obviously, being forced to watch a brilliantly directed and well-acted cutscene instead of staring at a load screen is hardly a bad thing, but I figured you should know.

You should also know that those gameplay/cutscene transitions I mentioned before will have you screaming with girlish joy, because they flow so naturally that you honestly won’t even realize they are happening. One second you’re watching Max run at a dude to push him out of a nearby window overlooking a dance floor and the next you’re crashing through said window only now you are aiming at other enemies scattered around the club below, picking them off as you fall towards the ground surrounded by glass and the bracing against the body of the dude you just tackled out the window. There are numerous action-packed transitions like this, but even the standard move from cinematic to gameplay is slick as all hell.

Honestly though, the crowning jewel in Max Payne 3’s multi-jeweled crown is the combat. The animations systems driving Max’s movements are easily the best of any third-person action game I have ever played. The way he shifts his weight when changing directions to the way he is able to roll around while prone, enabling him to blast fools in a full 360 degrees to how he looks popping painkillers with one hand and popping caps with the other are nothing short of extraordinary. And that’s not even taking into account what happens to the poor bastards on the receiving end of Max’s remarkable actions.

Building on the Euphoria-powered AI behaviors established in Grand Theft Auto IV, and then expanded in Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3 brings death to life in more moan-inducing ways than you can imagine. The way bullets impact bodies in the game is cringe worthy enough, but thanks to the new and improved final kill cam--another series staple--you get you watch in slow-mo and, if you hold down A/X, super slow-mo each individually rendered bullet rip through the flesh and bone of your enemies, before their bodies slump to the ground, filled with gaping, blood-spurting wounds. Action doesn’t get more joyously and bloodily balletic than this, and it all plays out without a single hiccup or slowdown even during the most chaotic of shootouts.

For as glorious as MP3’s action and presentation are, the game is not without its missteps, as small and few as they are. Similar to the oddly placed platforming sections in the previous two games, MP3 includes a couple of equally odd quick-time sequences at specific points during the story. Considering that you have to pull them off successfully to progress, these moments could have easily just been part of the cutscenes they appear in and nothing would have been lost.



The golden guns feature introduced in RDR makes its return in MP3, but it feels a bit out of place given the game’s linear design and more narrow narrative, because it means you’ll be spending time scouring every corner of every level to find the various gun pieces needed to unlock the golden weapons. While I do like that it pushes you to take in every inch of the gorgeously designed environments, it defuses the game’s otherwise fantastically frenetic pacing.

The same could be said for the television programs (despite the pertinent info provided by the newscasts detailing your actions) and the returning ability to play a little ditty on various pianos scattered throughout the game. You can also find clues (a picture, news clipping, a character hiding in a bathroom stall, etc.) that can give additional context to the story events, but this at least fits in with Max’s detective past, and therefore feels much more organic than tickling the ivories while someone you’re supposed to be rescuing is somewhere with a gun pressed against their head waiting for you to show up.

Once you’ve finished Max’s lengthy single-player campaign, you can then replay every chapter in the game in either Score Attack (new to the series) or New York Minute (a franchise staple), both of which will have leaderboard fanatics coming back on a daily basis to ensure their name remains at the top. You’ll want to play through the story mode again and again anyway because the combat is just that good, but having the option of doing so while racking up points and/or racing against the clock are welcomed additions.



As was the case with GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3 includes a robust, challenging, and super fun multiplayer component in addition to its substantial single-player offering. The standard deathmatch and team deathmatch are the perfect places to witness/cause massive amounts of fluid death, but Gang War mode is where I found myself having the most fun. Not only does this mode tie directly into Max’s story (you play as members of the gangs Max fights against in New York and Brazil), but it plays out over five chapters, each of which gets a specific voiceover narration setting up the story behind the showdown, and 10 game modes. So one round you might have to grab cash and bring it designated drop off points, and the next you’re trying to stop the other team from blowing up key points around the map. This sort of multiple game type setup is nothing new to multiplayer, but it works beautifully here.

One of the big questions for MP3 mulitplayer was how bullet time was going to work. The answer is remarkably well, because it’s based on line of sight. So when you dive and there’s no one around, you just dive. But if you have an enemy if your crosshairs, time slows for you and the targeted player. If the other player breaks your line of sight, time speeds up again. It’s an elegant solution, and one that rewards quick thinking and map awareness while also letting players enjoy the franchise’s signature gameplay features outside the main campaign.

The multiplayer also features a mega crap ton of challenges to complete and perks/weapons/gear/attachments/characters/outfits to unlock. The perks (Bursts/Sutures) system adds a great deal of strategy to multiplayer, as they offer all sorts of ways to counter opposing perk-based efforts. Having weight impact health regen and movement speed is another nice touch, since it discourages tanking in favor of lean, mean fighters.

Perhaps the most talked about multiplayer feature in MP3 is Crews. These are just clans--complete with fully customizable logos that can be crafted over at Rockstar’s Social Club site--but MP3 crews will eventually be transferable to GTA 5. Initiating vendettas against another player in multiplayer matches is one thing, but being able to start feuds with other crews is just good fun, and it adds an extra layer of camaraderie to the entire multiplayer experience.

Max Payne 3 is a technological tour de force that will have you screaming "Dear lord!" more times than midnight mass. 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.


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/games/xbox-360/61622/max-payne-3/review/

Master Chief, Shepard, 007, Others Go Head-To-Head In Art Of The Instakill Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

There are two important lessons to be learned from CorridorDigital's new mash-up short (via Destructoid): mash-ups are sweet and Nintendo's Mario continues to be the reigning king in all "who's the best?" video game debates. Don't agree? That's fine. Just stand over there. Away from me. I don't want to get any blood or entrails on me when a blue shells squashes you.

Great work on "Art of the Instakill" here from CorridorDigital, the same folks who brought you Repair Tool Hero and a special effects-fueled "Fus Ro Dah" vid. This one rules them all though. I can't think of any better way to kick off the week than with two minutes of senseless, cross-franchise violence.



Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723732/master-chief-shepard-007-others-go-head-to-head-in-art-of-the-instakill/

X-Play Summer Games Preview Week Starts Tonight 6:30/5:30c Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

Tune in tonight 6:30/5:30c as X-Play kicks off Summer Games Preview Week, our ultimate guide to all the season's hottest games. Tonight we'll start it off with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Diablo 3, Max Payne 3, and more. Get full show details below:

Watch the X-Play Summer Games Preview tonight and all week at 6:30/5:30c!


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723725/x-play-summer-games-preview-week-starts-tonight-630530c/