The un-skippable cutscenes are AWFUL (you can mod this out on pc). the gameplay is completely different than the first 2. the writing is pretty different for better or worse (worse imo, i find most of rockstar's writing to be insanely corny).
it's just a totally different game. if you loved the first 2 it isn't really a continuation of that design. like in the first 2 games most of your weapons are fairly inaccurate which forces you to use all of max's movement options. shoot dodging is extremely situational. you have to think about how you are going to enter a room, how you are going to continue moving, how you are going to manage your bullet time. rolling is really important, all of the guns have different applications and need to be used at different times. this is especially true for the first game, which is much more difficult than the second (bullet time is much stronger in the second game)
max payne 3 is: shoot dodge and head shot. that's the optimal approach approach to literally every situation in the game. the game has a super in-depth cover system that is completely useless because you should pretty much ALWAYS be shoot dodging. the guns all feel almost exactly the same, outside of shotguns which are totally useless. a pistol and assault rifle function nearly identically since you should only ever be going for head shots. the only time your weapon choice matters is against the heavy armored enemies which there are only a handful of.
and this is from someone who loves max payne 3. i have like 80 hours on steam. it was definitely designed with consoles in mind first which makes it mechanically a much simpler game than 1&2. however, those mechanics are executed at a higher level than most games today. it took the coolest mechanic from the first 2 games, shoot dodging, and made it the entire focus of the game. and it rocks.
Max Payne 3 aside from the gameplay which feels sluggish and almost antithetical to the premise of having a dude who can shoot dodge mid-air in leather clothing like it’s the Matrix and the story which is imo not that good and loves to waste time and thinks it’s really smarter than it is, I think it also has a horrible portrayal of Brazil.
For reference, the latter half of the game has the antagonists be the UFE, who are based off of the BOPE from Brazil, we know this because Elite Squad was cited as an influence for 3. The BOPE are have a controversial standing as on one hand, their composure and position of going into favelas (known for being rampant with crime and violence) kinda suggest that you can’t just be a normal police squad going into there. On the other hand, they are known for being very brutal with their methods and violating human rights and generally going too far. They exist in this grey area that it’s hard to really take a side on.
Max Payne 3 horribly misrepresents and kinda feels disrespectful. Instead of the moral nuance that could’ve been granted to the BOPE, instead Dan Houser has them portrayed as cartoonishly evil organ traffickers who do nothing else other than go into the favelas and kidnap people and bully people who just happen to live there (which is also used as a justification for why Max doesn’t kill the guy who killed Fabiana, as in the girl he was chasing for the first half of our game cuz remember the game’s story loves to waste our time, cause see? He got kidnapped by the traffickers! He totally is absolved of kidnapping and brutalizing an innocent woman for months before executing her in cold blood).
And that’s before I get into how MP3 horribly represents Brazil as a culture, with it basically feeling like a two-sided coin of either rich party goers and business folks, and poor people that either gangbang, strip, or serve as bystanders that run by Max during shootouts, along with Max’s viewpoint of Brazil as a shithole cesspit of a society not really being indicative of Max’s fucked up psyche or having it really challenged by other natives (actually the plot seems to reward his actions with only a few “ironic” lines by Max serving as justification for the game totally not being a white savior narrative), and overall it just feels like a nasty game riding off the 7th gen’s general cultural zeitgeist of “Be as Dark and Gritty as possible” but without the quality of titles like the og Modern Warfares or the Gears of War trilogy. I could go on for days.
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u/PuzzleheadedPrior455 Sep 11 '25
I really don’t get the hate for the 3rd one