MAX PAYNE 3
Max Payne has been through hell over the last decade; losing his family, fighting the mob, and apparently throwing his career away for the bandaid of addiction. MAX PAYNE 3 finds our anti-hero living on the fringes with his head shaved, a bottle of jack in one hand and a pistol in the other.
This is a new Max Payne, but it’s also the same old Max Payne, still a neo-noir third person shooter but smoother, with a motion-comic storytelling device and no load times. Yeah, you read that right.
The game looks fantastic, with gameplay scenes almost indistinguishable from cut scenes. The two levels I saw at NYCC thanks to the guys over at Rockstar gave a taste of the games ambition, stretching the story out beyond the classic single night to a grander two week timeline, with plenty of play during the day and night.
The movement of the characters was fluid, with minimal slippage during the characters running stops and pivots. The sound quality matches the visual feast with James McCaffrey aboard to voice Max again.
MAX PAYNE 3 isn’t a Nukem style shoot-em-up, more grounded in a very realistic world. Max can only carry one two handed weapon (say a shotgun) and two one handed weapons. Unlike most games, the weapons will be visible on Max’s body during gameplay and cut scenes.
The game will feature multi-player, a destructible world with shattering glass and splintering wood. The biggest plus, in my view is the promised enemy reactions, where every angle and type of weapon draws a different response from the wounded. Think that shell you put in a drug lord is enough? Be sure, because enemies can shoot while prone, meaning you will have to be damn certain that they are dead.
Bullet time remains and looks good though I’ve always thought it takes away from the games authenticity.
The Rockstar guys were eager to pimp the RAGE engine, and the elements that had been lifted from GTA, but while the game has some GTA DNA in its own gene pool it won’t allow players the same level of exploration or interactivity with their environment. Does that make sense for this series? Sure, but as a gamer who loves that kind of experience I was a little shoulder slumped about the inability to take this fine looking game out on the highway.
MAX PAYNE 3 will be available on Xbox 360 and PS3 in the first quarter next year. Is it buy even if you have to sell your blood to get the money good? No, but its pretty damn close.
GOLDENEYE RELOADED
I didn’t get a chance to go hands on, or see more than a bit of others playing GOLDENEYE RELOADED but I did snag one of the Activision guys and get some details on the game.
First off let me say that my first addiction was a GOLDENEYE 64 addiction and I can right now navigate through the Dam level with a blindfold. Yeah PERFECT DARK was nice and FPS new classics like HALO, MODERN WARFARE, and others have raised the bar impossibly high, but you always remember your first.
If you don't have a rumble pack your Mom is poor.
Speaking of MODERN WARFARE, that influence is clear with Bond (Daniel Craig not the guy from MAMA MIA) zipping smoothly through levels, perhaps too smoothly. In fact if you want to compare MAX PAYNE 3 to GOLDENEYE (and I do, I really do) the PAYNE movements lean more towards smooth realism where GOLDENEYE lives in a land of real smoothism (also what I called my lady getting techniques back in the day).
As for GOLDENEYE’s proximity to the original, it seems to be closer than last years Wii version, but a spiritual successor, not a shot for shot remake. Which is what I wanted, (still hoping for a XBLA port of the original, still…hoping.) Still the original GOLDENEYE writer and some ex-RARE staff are on hand and this is better than nothing.
GOLDENEYE RELOADED is set to drop (do people say that still?) on November 1st. It will be available on Xbox 360 and PS3, not N64. You feel free to plop down $60 bucks, I’m going to Redbox to rent mine first.
