And yet it is. This video by Michael Shanks (the same man behind that great Box-Art Brawl video from last week) depicts the high's and lows, mostly lows, of Mr. Max Payne's day-to-day life.
Yes, it's a joke that's been done before. Perhaps too many times. And yet the execution here is pretty damned funny.
(See what I did there, with the "Execution?" Oh, yeah.)
Welcome to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of super pissed-off user reviews from people just like you! Whoa, whoa, don't take that personal.
Released: June 19.
Critic: JabbaTheSlush (Metacritic)
• "[T]his is a solid one out of ten."
Score: 1 (out of 10).
Critic: Kadeemluvmusic (Metacritic)
• "... [a] bad flavor of a chocolate Call of Duty mud cake."
Score: 0.
Critic: somebody worried (Amazon)
• "This review is based off of 4 youtube reviews, and about 8 magazine reviews as I do not own a Kinect."
Score: 1 star.
Released: June 1.
Critic: diesbildnis (Metacritic)
• "[E]ssentially Duck Hunt 2012 with swearing and long cut scenes."
Score: 1.
Released: June 12
Critic: ilikeeverything (Metacritic)
• "I really like this game because it feels French and I kinda like French things every now and then like French fries. "
Score: 0.
In addition to my job here at Kotaku, I work very hard on a bestselling, fictional series of video game novelizations. Last year, I published a gripping, lusty novel based on The Witcher 2. This year, I've been hard at work putting the finishing touches on my next novel based on Max Payne 3, tentatively titled Max Payne 3: The Flesh of Fallen Angels: The Novel.
Would you like to read an excerpt? You would? Okay! Here you go, an excerpt from chapter 9 of the book, in which one New Jersey mob boss hatches an insanely ambitious plan to kill Max. I hope you enjoy it.
"They killed my son! They killed my boy!"
Boss Anthony DeMarco was furious, inconsolable. His son Tony was dead at the hands of some ex-cop deadbeat named Payne. In one instant, the DeMarco family line had been snuffed out, and Anthony had lost a son. Payback was going to be a bitch.
"We are gonna get this guy, this... Payne," DeMarco fumed. "We are going to make him pay, Tommy!"
Tommy Marcotti looked his boss. In his fifteen years serving as the DeMarco's top lieutenant, he'd never seen the old man like this. Boss DeMarco was so furious he was drooling on himself, so mad his hands were shaking.
"Okay, boss," Marcotti said. "We'll put all our boys on it. Let's come up with a battle plan. We've got some intelligence that Payne is visiting his dead wife's grave at a graveyard in Jersey." Marcotti pulled out a overhead map of the vast Jersey graveyard that the DeMarcos kept on hand.
"There may be another guy with him, some guy named Passos. So, two of them. We'll send out Bobby and those two boneheads he hangs out with to take Payne out at his wife's grave."
"What about if he gets past them?" DeMarco asked, his voice still edging into a scream. "Then what?"
"Take it easy, boss," Marcotti said. "We've got all kinds of contingency plans." He pointed to a spot on the map. "We'll have five guys backing up Bobby's three guys, so there'll be eight guys at the first part of the cemetery. Then we'll have five more guys backing them up, and Tony B. will be on triple-backup in a car, in case they get through those first guys."
"Okay," DeMarco said, "but what if they get by all of those guys?"
"Past the grave is a rotunda," Marcotti explained, tapping a circular shape on the graveyard map. "So, we'll stack up Benny and his boys near stairs leading up to it. Benny's got a huge grenade launcher, and he's got six guys with him with four more for backup. So in addition to the fourteen guys we first sent after Payne, we'll have eleven guys with Benny at the rotunda."
"Twenty-five guys.," DeMarco said, his shoulders loosening a bit. "Keep going."
"We'll have ten more guys pull up behind the rotunda and fan out from there, with five more guys behind them."
"So, a total of forty guys so far?"
"Yeah, give or take."
"I don't want you to underestimate this fucker," said DeMarco, standing up. "He's pretty dangerous."
"We ain't gonna underestimate him," said Marcotti, reassuringly.
"I do have one question," said DeMarco, who seemed reassured. "What's to stop Payne from just running out of the graveyard in a different direction?"
"That won't happen," said Marcotti.
"Okay," said DeMarco, lost in thought. "You've convinced me. Go on."
"There's another rotunda after the first one," Marcotti explained, "So we'll send Junior and his boys there. He's got eight guys, all armed to the teeth, so between the nine of them they can probably hold the rotunda. We'll have a backup team of five in place, though, in case something goes wrong."
"After that," he continued, pointing to a building on the map, "there's an approach to a mausoleum. I'm gonna plant Frankie up top with a high-powered sniper rifle, so he can take Payne out if he gets past the fourteen guys at the second rotunda. But just in case, we'll put eight of his boys down in the building below."
"But what if Payne gets past them?" asked DeMarco.
"Well, we'll have three more guys hiding inside the building in case Payne and his friend go inside. Which brings me to the next part of the plan. We'll catch 'em at the Mausoleum and bring them to you, just like you wanted. Piece of cake."
"Good," said DeMarco, his eyes widening. "This is the good part. I wanna watch those fuckers beg."
"So," continued Marcotti, "while all our guys were fighting at the grave, and the first rotunda, and the parking lot, and the second rotunda, and the mausoleum, you and me set up the gravesite like you wanted. It'll be real dramatic. Once the boys at the mausoleum capture them, they'll bring them to us there, and you can make them dig their own graves."
Marcotti laughed. "It's gonna be some poetic justice, boss." DeMarco looked pleased.
"Just in case you leave them alone and they somehow escape," Marcotti continued, "we've got another contingency plan." He drew his finger down the map towards the southern end. "We'll have five guys stationed in the parking lot outside of the main building, which is where they'll come if they escape the gravesite. Then, we'll plant some guys in the Morgue beneath the main graveyard building. Seems fittin', no?"
"What seems fittin'?" asked DeMarco.
"The morgue. It's fittin' because if they go to the morgue, they'll die there. Geddit?"
"Wait," said DeMarco. "Why would they go into the morgue? Why wouldn't they just run for it?"
"Stop overthinking this, boss," said Marcotti.
"Once they're in the morgue," Marcotti said, "we'll have three guys try to head them off in the operating room. If they make it past those three, they'll probably head into the chapel to make a phone call. That's when we hit 'em with the big guns—we'll send in about fifteen to twenty more guys to take them out."
"So, ninety-four wiseguys to take down these assholes, then," concluded DeMarco, counting on his fingers.
"Yeah, boss," said Marcotti. "It seems like a solid plan to me."
"Maybe," said DeMarco, standing up. "Maybe. Don't forget: This is Max Payne we're talkin' about. He's one tough sonovabitch."
"We pull this off," Marcotti said, allowing a smile onto his face, "and there'll be nothing standing between us and the Punchinellos."
"Easy now," said DeMarco. "We're just one family. We ain't the goddam National Guard."
Will the DeMarcos emerge victorious? Will Max and Passos somehow survive the attack and live to fight (and fight, and fight) another day? Will Max Payne's enemies ever run out of dudes for him to shoot? Fine out in the next chapter of Max Payne 3: The Flesh of Fallen Angels: The Novel. Maybe. Or maybe not.
Ever since reviewing Max Payne 3 a while back, I've heard from commenters and others that Max "feels" different than he used to in his older games, which were made by Remedy Entertainment.
The series so far represents a blend of both men's sensibilities, which feel less disparate than some would say. It's a bit of Lake's quirkier, more literary Max as he becomes the rundown wreck he appears as in Houser's more cinematically-minded Max Payne 3. It's a great use of comics as an interstitial tie-in.
Comics based on video games can be really, really bad. Sure, they might be able to replicate the look or expand on the worlds seen in titles like Gears of War, Mass Effect But it's a hard proposition to recapture the appeal of those games in a static medium.
It's great, then, that the art by Fernando Blanco manages to make Max's shoot-dodge look like it does in that games, but slightly more toned down. Blanco also recreates the gritty, smoky noir-inflected feel of the games, but pays special attention to the emotions on these game characters' faces.
These comics actually serve as pretty good primers for Max Payne 3, if you're coming in cold. Readers who haven't played the first two Remedy-developed Max titles get the basics: Max was a tough-guy cop who busted sellers of a drug called Valkyr but lost loved ones along the way. But, the best possible reading experience here comes after finishing the story mode of Max Payne 3 and seeing where the panels fit in with the gameplay.
You see one character from the Hoboken flashback levels of Max Payne 3 in some less explosive moments, which retroactively adds a nice bit of tension to what eventually happens in the game. And some sequences get lifted wholesale from the games, too. But it doesn't feel lazy. Instead, Max's depressing solo drinking feels even weightier
I liked Max Payne 3 mostly it felt like a character study of a man in deep decline desperately clinging to the only thing he's ever been good at: shooting. (Mind you, I don't love the game's story.)
After the Fall and Hoboken Blues feel like part of a larger whole and prove to be vital parts of a portrait of what it looks like when a man falls into the worst pats of himself. They're free so definitely take a look.
Max Payne 3 developers Rockstar have come up with a tidy solution to the problem of dealing with online cheaters: throw them in the same room together and let them kill (or at least annoy) each other.
Here's Rockstar's explanation:
Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a "Cheaters Pool", where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants.
The sight of cheaters trying to out-cheat other cheaters is something Rockstar should film then distribute. I know I'd watch it.
I know Battlefield 3 is too big a game to do the same, but boy, in my dreams this is something nearly all developers could implement.
Taking Aim at Cheaters in Max Payne 3 [Rockstar]
Except he does it in slow, bullet-time motion.
Max Payne 3: Dramatic Chilling Simulator [YouTube via Reddit]
Rockstar's take on the character is much more gritty and dark, and often feels weighed down by over-seriousness. But occasionally, the game will toss a nod to the series' roots by making an absurd reference.
My favorite of these is the moment in the video above, when Max discovers a trashed, out-of-tune piano in a run-down building in Brazil. The piano could be a metaphor for Max—beat up, broken, but still playing that same old tune. I particularly love how the game's actual soundtrack (which is astonishingly good in its own right) plays a lead-in chord to the piano solo, with Max resolving the unresolved cadence.
And what does he choose to play? Why, what else but the classic theme from the original game.
"And, for a few seconds, came harmony. Finally."
Max does a lot, in Max Payne 3. He shoots guys, tries not to be shot by guys, shoots other guys... you know, like you do.
But behind all of the action, making Max Payne tick, are dedicated voice and motion capture actors whose performances, with digital skins on, make the game. Rockstar has posted a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a piece of the process, showing how Max Payne came to be.
Actor James McCaffrey performed both the voice and the body work for the titular antihero. And when Rockstar needed to fill a virtual São Paulo with plausible Brazilians, they went to Brazil to cast and record the roles. Over a number of extensive voice acting and body-scanning sessions, Rockstar recorded everyone from a Ju-Jitsu world champion to a pageant queen to a local rapper.
It's a neat look at just how much work it can be to fill a video game with the wide cast of extras you'd expect to find on a normal city street. When every aspect of your story's world has to be crated from scratch, assembling your actors can be an ordeal indeed.
From NYC to São Paulo: Behind the Scenes of Max Payne 3's Voiceover, Mo-Cap & Scanning Sessions [Rockstar blog, via Game Informer]
Yesterday, I listed 5 things that Rockstar should carry over from Max Payne 3 into Grand Theft Auto V. Today, I'll list 5 things that I hope they leave behind forever.
Some of these things are new to Max Payne 3, some are bad habits that have developed over time. A couple are story-related, a couple are gameplay-related. But if Rockstar is going to continue to make games that are at the cutting edge of both pop culture and gaming, all of them have gotta go.
Here now, 5 bad habits that Rockstar should leave behind forever.
There's always been a discrepancy between the cutscene snippets that we see in Rockstar's trailers and the actual cutscenes in their games. The trailers are all hyper-edited, super exciting, with bouncing music and lots of quick-cut one-liners. The cutscenes in the games themselves are much more traditionally composed, consisting of carefully framed or slowly tracking shots that keep the action and dialogue clear and in focus.
This is a good thing. But Max Payne 3 ditches that approach, and the game's hyper-stylish cinematics often feel more like a trailer than they do a coherent scene. The early scenes hold promise—their portrayal of a man silently drinking himself to death are intense and troubling. But it all starts to feel self-indulgent with remarkable quickness—by the third or fourth cutscene, I was already tired of the splashing text, the forced double-vision, the extreme camera angles. Rockstar wears its cinematic ambitions on its sleeve, but Max Payne 3 is, all things considered, an overindulgence in the shallower end of that ambition.
Grand Theft Auto V most likely won't adopt Max Payne 3's melodramatic flavor. But I do worry that as it becomes technologically easier for the Housers to create more elaborate, showy cinematics, their work will become shallower despite the fact that I don't believe them to be shallow storytellers.
This one's a broader complaint, but in Max Payne 3 I believe that I finally reached my quota for Rockstar's favorite archetype—the deluded cokefiend, specifically. It's something we've seen in most if not all of their games—these doofy guys (and occasionally gals) who upon introduction appear to be lord of their tiny fiefdom. (We usually meet them at a party, and they're usually doing cocaine.) They welcome the taciturn protagonist, and give him a job. Eventually, they are revealed to be a sad phony, and they usually end up dead.
This archetype is fine on its own, but I felt as though Grand Theft Auto IV more or less hit all of the riff's possible variations. We had Brucie, we had Playboy; we had Ray and Manny, Elizabeta and Derrick, Faustin and Vlad. In Max Payne 3, we got another variation in the Branco family, but most of those characters weren't explored any more meaningfully than the smallest sidequest-givers in GTA IV.
It's certainly not beyond the Housers and their writing team's ability to create distinctive, interesting characters. The opening act of Red Dead Redemption was populated almost entirely with real-feeling folk (with the exception of Irish), and it was also the best extended bit of storytelling that a Rockstar game has managed. Driven largely by its setting and the age of its protagonists, the fabulous high-school-based game Bully had nothing but interesting characters. The archetype was almost non-existant in the (largely not-Rockstar-written) L.A. Noire and in the GTA IV episodes, both partner/antagonists Billy Grey and Gay Tony were nuanced and ambiguous.
But none of the characters in Max Payne 3 feel fresh or interesting, including Max himself. This is at least in part because they were working with an established character—but if that's the case, why did I feel like I got to know Max better in the earlier games? For all the talking Max does in the new game, we gain almost no insight into his character or history over the course of the game. Given how diverse Rockstar's casts tend to be, it's frustrating that they're still able to make a game this shallow. Hopefully Grand Theft Auto V will show them pushing in the other direction, eschewing their over-reliance on entertaining but ultimately shallow character archetypes.
With Max Payne 3, Rockstar seems to have made huge leaps in the field of ghastly bullet-wound technology. Shooting an enemy in the game leads to all manner of disgusting, pulpy entry wounds and juicy exit wounds as mouths are eviscerated, torsos perforated, and neck-wounds blast arterial spray in every direction.
It's a choice with cinematic influences—we've seen violence like this in the gritty action films from which Max Payne draws inspiration. And violence can be just fine, or even welcomely shocking—heck, just this week, we saw some thrilling ultraviolence in the medieval TV show Game of Thrones. If that was cool enough to post Gifs, why isn't it cool in Max Payne 3?
Games suffer from a "repetition factor" that films and TV shows don't. Something that we see once or twice in a film we'll see dozens of times in a game, and the effect is therefore dramatically different. (This same thing happens with dialogue, see Arkham City and Splinter Cell's Fisher-Fest 2010.)
When playing Max Payne 3, I see new, horrific blasts of violence every few seconds. After a while, I can't help but start to feel weird about it—how much extreme blood-spray can a guy watch before the whole thing starts to feel a bit psychotic?
It seems unlikely that this level of gore will make its way into Grand Theft Auto V, mainly because it will be more mainstream-oriented. All the same, I want to voice the hope that GTA V chooses to focus more on great action and storytelling and less on realistically depicting the effect of a hollow-point on a jawbone.
As much as Rockstar has tweaked and improved their cover-based third-person shooting over the years, it has a fundamental problem—it often feels less cover-based and more cover—locked.
This feels especially true in the back half of Max Payne 3, where most encounters wind up playing out just like action sequences in Red Dead Redemption or GTA IV. You run into a new room, take cover, and shoot guys from that cover until they're all dead. Max Payne 3 doesn't have any good options for rushing from cover to cover or cornering, meaning that you're generally even more rooted.
Going back to Max Payne 2 on PC, it's remarkable how much has been changed. That game had no cover system, and as a result Max was propelled forwards. Each room became something of a fast-paced physics puzzle:
I need to leap to the right to get that pillar between me and the two guys over there, while shooting the guy who still has a line on me. Then, once I land, leap back to the left and take out the other two guys...
I'm in Max Payne 3's 12th act, and I no longer use shoot-dodging at all. I relish the odd moment when I'm running through an open space and two guys burst out from the side—finally, I can do some acrobatics! That is what Max Payne is all about for me—leaping through the air and blowing away bad guys. It's not really about crouching behind a pillar and leaning out to take potshots. For this reason, I do look forward to playing Max Payne 3 on the PC, with a mouse and keyboard and free-aiming enabled, but I also think the game could have freed things up a little regardless of the player's control scheme.
Every game Rockstar has made since GTA IV has featured more or less the same heavy, slow-moving cover-based combat. It seems highly unlikely that GTA V will deviate from that. All the same, it would be great to play a game that gave players reason to exit cover and engage in combat that felt a bit less constipated.
The cover issue, however, is directly tied to Max Payne 3's biggest problem, something that I truly hope GTA V can remedy...
Max Payne 3 has a number of problems with difficulty and balance. The issues tend to stack on top of one another, and one problem leads to multiple problematic player-side situations, at least for me. For example:
The issues continue: Bullet-sponge "boss" enemies are placed at the ends of combat sections, sometimes with no checkpoint before them. Not fun. Enemies are allowed to use grenades, but Max isn't. (Why?)
The best bullet-time moments are scripted, with an unlimited-ammo Max leaping from a building or a higher level while firing down on enemies below. The difference between these moments and the rare times when you recreate them on your own is quite large. Particularly in an open-world game like GTA, I want to make more of my own cinema and rely less on setpieces to really wow me.
Despite all that, Rockstar's combat system is largely fine, usually fun and occasionally even truly great. Its feel can be supremely satisfying, and as I talked about yesterday, Max Payne 3 contains some brilliant touches that I hope to see in future Rockstar games.
But its flaws still feel frustrating, and I would love to see a Rockstar game finally feel as good to play as Gears of War or Vanquish or hell, the recently-released Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
In GTA IV and Red Dead, I found myself saying, "It's this huge open world game and the combat is decent!" In Max Payne 3, the open world is removed, but the combat isn't as fine-tuned as I would have expected. Wouldn't it be lovely if GTA V could have it all?
I get the sense that we'll see more of GTA V in the near future, and hopefully begin to discern whether Rockstar has made a riff on their already grand open-world formula or decided to blow things wide open yet again. Here's hoping it's the latter.
It can be difficult to view Max Payne 3 on its own terms. It's a fine game in its own right, but it will always exist at least partly in the shadow of Rockstar's other, much bigger looming release-Grand Theft Auto V.
Since Rockstar released GTA IV four years ago, both Red Dead Redemption and... More »
It can be difficult to view Max Payne 3 on its own terms. It's a fine game in its own right, but it will always exist at least partly in the shadow of Rockstar's other, much bigger looming release—Grand Theft Auto V.
Since Rockstar released GTA IV four years ago, both Red Dead Redemption and now Max Payne 3 have brought enough tweaks and changes to the studio's brand of cover-based gunplay that GTA IV's action feels crusty and clunky by comparison. Max Payne 3 in particular refines Rockstar's third-person manshooting to a new and occasionally truly exhilarating degree. It's impossible not to want to see some of this stuff make it into GTA V.
Today, I'll be talking about five things I'd like to see carry over from Max Payne 3 into Grand Theft Auto V. And in a shocking twist, tomorrow I'll list five things that I hope don't make the cut. Here goes!
This is one that I've been on the record about for a while now—I love playing GTA IV without a minimap. Thing is, that's an extreme way to play the game—it can be difficult to navigate without some sort of map to view. But the biggest problem with the minimap is that it shows all of your enemies as big red dots, and combat becomes an exercise in whack-a-dot. "Where's the last guy? Oh, he's hiding over here. Better kill him."
Max Payne 3 has no minimap, and therefore you're never quite sure where danger lies. That makes every combat encounter a supremely tense affair, particularly when you're near the end but aren't sure where that last man is waiting for you.
While I don't think GTA V should do away with the minimap, I would love an option to have only the minimap visible and not be able to see enemy locations.
I don't like this one for the reasons you may think - I'm not actually a huge fan of the more provocative aspects of Max Payne 3's gory slow-mo killshots. But we'll get to that in the "Things I hope aren't in GTA V" article tomorrow. For now: The thing I like about the slow-mo kill-cam is that it signals a checkpoint—rather than popping some intrusive text into your face, you know the fight is over because you're watching a cinematic, slow-mo shot.
Due to the lack of a minimap, there needs to be some signifier for when Max has cleared a room of baddies. I really like this method, as it allows a singular sort of catharsis at the end of a tense shootout and lets you breathe a sigh of relief (while blowing away that last enemy in slow motion).
Victory! At least, until the next gunfight starts.
In Max Payne 3, you can be killed quite easily, but if you're carrying pain killers, you're allowed a "last-minute save." If you are killed while holding pills, everything goes slow-mo and you have a chance to shoot your killer. If you do so, Max downs a painkiller and keeps on going. This is a very smart method of keeping the game from being too punishing without making it too easy. You're not out of the woods, and you just used one of your precious painkillers, but all the same, you've pulled it out and will live to fight another day. Or, another five seconds.
Its implementation in GTA V might require a bit of a reimagining of that game's health system, but it could also just function as a sort of "saving throw" anytime you get killed in a gunfight. You get one shot to take down your killer, and if so you get back 40% of your health. If your health reaches zero again… it's back to the checkpoint for you.
But if that does happen...
Max Payne 3 is a difficult game, but it mitigates that difficulty in smart, subtle ways. If you die once, you'll reload the last checkpoint with full health (small comfort in such a lethal game) and the same guns and ammo you had last time. Die a couple more times, and it gives you a bottle of painkillers and some extra ammo. Die even more times and you get two bottles of painkillers and even more ammo. The enemies remain just as numerous and difficult, but you're a bit more powerful and therefore more likely to succeed.
I love this method of balancing—it allows the game to be very difficult while keeping players from getting truly stuck. Yes, there are difficulty spikes and some really frustrating sequences (more on that in tomorrow's post), but in general, I'm a fan of Max Payne 3's brand of player assistance and would love to see something like that in GTA V.
This one is the easiest sell, I think, particularly given the success of Deadeye-Mode in Red Dead Redemption. Max Payne 3 may represent the best shooting Rockstar has done in a game yet, but it's still not as smooth as it could be. Cover is weird and overly sticky, and movement is still a bit too heavy and slow.
However, the addition of bullet-time and the shoot-dodge go a long way towards making the game more balanced and fun, and they leave Max Payne 3's shooting feeling exciting and distinctive. I can think of no earthly reason why these features shouldn't be included in Grand Theft Auto V as baseline gameplay mechanics. There's a stylistic argument to be made against this: Max Payne has always been the John Woo-influenced slow-mo shooter, while GTA has embraced a more realistic vibe.
But who cares? Seriously—bullet time makes Max Payne more fun, playable, and distinctive than other action games including Rockstar's other games. I really can't come up with a reason that Rockstar shouldn't just carry the entire system over into GTA V.
So there you have it: Five things that I'd love to see carry over from Max Payne 3 to Grand Theft Auto V. Tune in tomorrow, when I'll talk about 5 things that I hope don't turn up again.
