Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I have fond memories of the first two Max Payne games and even fonder ones of the Matrix mod for the first one, which I believe is one of the earliest mods I’d ever played. I even enjoyed the cheesy, overwritten purple prose. I was disappointed when I learned much later that the writers apparently meant for the story and dialogue to be played straight. Still when Max Payne 3 was released in 2012, nearly 10 years after the last game, I was hesitant. The games were great back in the day, but the thoroughly conventional game mechanics and limited scope seemed dated now. It’s a corridor shooter, after all, and surely we’ve long moved past those games? Also, I was unsure if I wanted to see the continuation of Max Payne’s personal story. It was always bound to be more angsty stuff. Do we really need that?

But I gave in when it went on sale and thinking these games tend to be rather short experiences, bought it thinking that, good or bad, at least it wouldn’t take up too much of my time. Overall, I’d say that despite a weak start, it managed to exceed my expectations.

• This game loves its cutscenes way too much. I have to admit that they are pretty good cutscenes, but what really gets me is that most of them are not skippable. Some are, and they show you that option in the bottom right corner when you can do so, but a lot of time it’ll just say that the game is still loading. You can’t even quit out of the game when this happens. Also, chapters segue into each other seamlessly and since there tends to be lengthy cutscenes connecting chapters, it’s extra annoying when you just want to play through one chapter and stop right there.

• There are cutscenes within chapters too and this is really why I started this list with them. Its especially egregious in the opening chapter. Cutscene ends and you’re given control. You finish killing baddies and walk to a spot and unexpectedly trigger another cutscene. This repeats over and over again. In my opinion, this really hurts the sense of player agency. You just don’t feel in control of Max Payne since you’re just passively watching the story, interspersed with shooting gallery sequences. This eases up over the course of the game as the interactive parts become longer but it never completely goes away.
• Despite some issues with the controls (I remember rolling around all the time in the first two games, but found it difficult to pull off and not really necessary here, not sure why), I found the gameplay to be solid and surprisingly fun. I think it’s best to think of the fights as little self-contained puzzles. This is especially evident with the way the game likes to reset all your weapons at key points. It’s very useful to replay these to memorize the positions of enemies and where and when more come in to plan your movements and use of Bullet Time. I had a hard time on a couple of levels on Hard difficulty, especially the invisible timer in Rooftop Tremors, but on the whole the gunplay is fun in an old-fashioned, surrounded by enemies on all sides, sort of way.
• I wasn’t too fond of the animations at first, especially the silly wave-arms-in-the-arm to show that we’re having fun at a party movements at the beginning, but I guess they’re adequate. What really stands out in the graphics department is the incredible attention to detail in everything, especially in Max Payne’s model. He sweats, his clothes become wrinkly, he gets wounds, etc. It is worth noting that this game is a hefty 20+ Gb download on Steam. Must be all those textures and models.

• As for level design, hotels and nightclubs are boring locales to me, so I was once again unimpressed in the beginning. But I really dug it when the game moved you into a soccer stadium and out in Brazil. Its depiction of a favela is visually fantastic (its stereotypical depiction of the people living there less so). I even enjoyed the flashback levels in New York. It wouldn’t really be Max Payne without some of that noir palette. Of course everything is linear to a fault but that’s the nature of this particular beast. More games need to be set in these relatively exotic real world locations.
• The writing isn’t fantastic by any means and they’ve sadly toned down the purple prose in favour of more realism, but I was impressed that the writers resisted tying the events in this game back to the previous ones. The older events of course continue to influence Max Payne and define who he is but the villains, plot and situation in Brazil is completely separate from what happened in the earlier games. It’s a serviceable story I guess but what this means to Max Payne and how he reacts to events is much more interesting than the plot itself.
• There are collectible golden gun parts and clues as optional activities. As a completionist, I had to get them all and liked how the clues add a lot of detail to the story. I’m not pleased however that some parts of the game rush you through a level, even inducing a fail state if you’re not fast enough, so you can’t really take your time to explore every level. Plus, as I’ve mentioned, going to specific spots in a level can trigger a cutscene that cuts off access to that area and you can’t always predict when a cutscene will trigger. This pretty much means that to get everything, you really do need to play every level twice. Since I enjoyed the combat feedback cycle enough I didn’t mind this and actually looked forward to doing better against the enemies with prior knowledge of their locations and force composition, but I guess it can be annoying to some people.

Due to my insistence on collecting everything, Steam records my time spent in this game as a respectable 20 hours, significantly longer than I thought it would entertain me for. It’s not a great game by any means but it does successfully scratch the old-school shooter itch.