Hello g33ks, m33ks, and anyone working for the Aesir Corporation. I was able to sit in on the Press night preview session of the oft delayed Rockstar Games title Max Payne 3. This was the same type of Rockstar preview session as LA Noire, where a group gets to watch a developer play through several pieces of gameplay, and another narrates the details they want you to notice. This is one of the things that I find frustrating about Rockstar previews. I want to play the game, even if the code is still in Alpha, but I understand that this is not possible all the time. I was happy to let it slide for LA Noire as that was a new IP and you needed to see the level of detail and nuance involved in solving a case. When it comes to Max Payne 3, I feel like I need to get my hands on it to know if its real. This is an action shooter, based on a quintessential series that hasn’t been seen since the last console generation. So my feelings based on what I saw come colored through the lens of wanting to actually play the game.

Max Payne 3 is one of those games that should have come out several years ago. We’ve seen a couple of screen shots over that time and the internet has weighed in on the depiction of an older, heavier Max Payne in a very sunny locale. Many people didn’t like what they saw and were worried that the designers had lost what brought Max Payne so many fans. To play Max Payne 1 & 2 was to play an interactive, noire graphic novel. Max spoke to himself, and sometimes the audience, in a way that was unique and really brought you inside his motivations.  That style really set the games apart from other action shooters of the time. Along with that was the innovation of the shoot & dodge / bullet time gameplay mechanic. In a world desperate to play a game that gave them the same feeling they had from seeing the film, The Matrix. This action embedded Max Payne into the hearts of g33ks the world over, especially when games based on The Matrix universe were considerable failures.

In the first two Max Payne games we saw an undercover police officer who was destroyed by the loss of his family and friend. Once Max got vengeance for those he lost, he fell in love again only to lose that new love as well. Now Max has moved from NYC to Hoboken, where he’s looking to drink his life away, when an old friend offers him an opportunity to work as a member of private security for a rich powerful South American family. This is where the first sequence of gameplay was set. They wanted to show us that they remember where Max came from and this is the Max Payne we remember. Black coat, night time, cold weather, gangsters screaming at Max, action sequences with the Manhattan skyline in the background. They even showcased a surreal moment involving an extremely high homeless man and a TNT vest. This was meant to bring back memories of the Valkyr induced craziness of enemies in the first two games.

After, escaping from an ambush in his apartment building they told us this level was incomplete so they could move forward to another level further in the game. This level featured the ‘new’, ‘older’ Max. He has a shaved head, he’s wearing a white tank top, huge beard and looks paunchy. In a storyline inspired by Man on Fire, Max has taken the job in private security and lost his client in a kidnapping. This section of the game was obviously completed some time ago as this is where all the screen shots have come from and the storytelling elements were all being updated according to the spokeman. Instead of the old fashioned still frame graphic novel pages from the original games they’ve moved on to motion comics. These moments are basically the same ones from Man on Fire or the Ang Lee directed Hulk with panels that move into place and then feature independent moving images. Once the motion comic ended they jumped into the combat sequences. In the opening sequence they showed us bullet time like it appears in Red Dead Redemption. This was simply slowing down things to aim quickly as the meter ran down. In this second section of the game we saw not just bullet time but the old Max Payne shoot dodge mechanic. So even though Max is older and heavier he is still moving through time in diving positions allowing you an opportunity to kill multiple enemies in a single instance of bullet time.

New elements to the combat are, in taking an element from other games, the Final Kill Cam and the Last Man Standing. The Final Kill Cam can be controlled for speed and vantage as a signifier that you’ve cleared an area of enemies. Last Man Standing is if an enemy gets a kill shot on Max it gives you an opportunity in bullet time to kill them first. If successful you will recover from the wound with some extra health without dying.

We saw different weapon types, destructible environments, a cover system, improved character animation, and the new enemy search AI which makes each enemy patrol independently without a set pattern. It looks promising but without getting hands on time its still questionable how solid everything is. This game is scheduled for a 2012 release and looks to finally be on track. I don’t know if there is still room for Max Payne in a world where shooters are plentiful. That said I really feel like getting playtime on this game is what will decide how excited I will be for this title when it comes out.

- Mr. Khon

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