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There is just something special about a Rockstar game that no other game has, no matter what genre or setting they tackle. They have this amazing gift of capturing the perfect atmosphere for their games, you feel like you are actually standing in the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil or its other beautiful and dark settings. The place’s this twisted noir tale takes you is even more interesting than the last. It’s all bought wonderfully together by our lovable messy anti-hero, Max Payne.

It’s been a while Max and boy how I’ve missed your funny melodramatic one liners, your such a wonderful mess and you do mean well but damn, you do more harm than good here. Honestly that’s the true beauty behind Max Payne, he is far from perfect, honestly if there’s one thing he is good at, it’s killing people. Backed by Rockstar Games beautiful Rage Engine, every fire fight is your own Matrix lobby scene, bullets destroy everything they hit with realistic detail. Once you see your first slow motion kill cam of enemy eating your bullets, you will be hooked. God I missed slow-mo diving, it’s such an easy basic mechanic but damn it’s so much fun to do in this game. Max even reacts to bad dives, like if you dive head first into wall he bumps of it and falls down badly. Enemies are pretty damn tough and smart in this game; they will flank you, throw grenades and take cover till you stop firing. Pain killers are your best friend in this game and even bring you back from near death, say an enemy lands a fatal shot, if you have one pain killer left you will slowly fall down and have the chance to kill them and come back to life. One of my pet peeves is that in certain levels you might have a partner helping you but I swear they are no help, do not rely on them to give you cover fire. Also I played the entire game on free aim and I’ve got to admit it feels kind of off, like it’s too twitchy for me.  I’ve messed with the settings but have yet to fine tune it to my preference, maybe it’s just me but this is the closet to perfect free aiming in a Rockstar title so far. You can play with soft lock, but online it just helps people get way too easy kills.

Max Payne 3’s multiplayer is a damn fine welcome addition to this franchise, a lot of thought and heart went into making this a fun and deep multiplayer experience. You can level up, unlock and edit loud outs from how many guns your guy caries to what Bursts he has. Bursts are like perks that you use online, they all do different things, once you fill up your adrenaline bar, you click R3 and bam you might have stronger bullets. Or the other team see’s everyone around them as an enemy, it really helps balance out the online because that same adrenaline bar controls your bullet time dives. Yes that’s right you can slow-mo dive online and it slows down everyone that see’s you do it. It’s a damn blast to do and makes you think should you dive? Or save that adrenaline to build up your burst?

Online you have your typical Death match, Team Death match but you also have Payne Killer, which has every one trying to kill two players who are Max and his friend Passos. Also there is the very excellent Gang Wars, each match is tied behind a loose story line based on the factions and locations there are fighting at. Each round changes up the objective; one round you might be planting bombs while another round you’re trying to kill a VIP player on the other team. I really love playing this mode and just wish there were more maps for it. The maps are well designed and have a lot of cover and spots for you to jump off and do your best Max Payne impression. I also must mention the Rockstars Crew system, which is pretty much a clan system that you can make on their Social Club site. On there you can make a name and emblem for your crew, what’s even more awesome is every one see’s your emblem when you kill them online. You can tell Rockstar put a lot of thought into this because the crew system will follow you into their next game….GTA V.

Everything you love about Max Payne is here and so much more, it’s another lovely noir tale, with amazing presentation in gameplay and story. A deep and fun Multiplayer that will have you hooked for months to come, pop some pain killer’s folks because Max Payne 3 is going to hurt you in all the right ways.

9/10