Max Payne 3 Preview: Max Is Back

Game On correspondent Alex Rubens spent some time wandering the halls of PAX East this year playing everything he could get his hands on. At some point he managed to corner Rockstar employees long enough to play Max Payne 3, which we expect will be released on PC and home consoles in May 2012. Max Payne 3 is being developed by multiple Rockstar studios instead of former Max Payne developer Remedy Entertainment, leading some to wonder whether this is the same Max Payne we know and love. After spending some hands-on time with the game, Alex filed this report.

Max Payne is back and he’s just as much of a badass as we remember. Diving through windows in slow motion, firing rounds into enemies as they slowly struggle to react to what is happening, Max is right at home. Rockstar Studios kept the emphasis on Max and his beautifully executed combat while adapting it to modern game design standards and it works just as expected; perfectly.

Max is older, he’s a drunk, and he can’t stop popping pills; he’s in pretty rough shape. Despite all this, the character animation does a great job of conveying just how broken Max is through subtle tells during combat and cutscenes. His age factors pretty heavily into the gunplay: he’ll collide with walls and it will take him a split-second to recover, and is aim isn’t as tight as it was when he was younger. These touches really sell just how far Max has fallen.

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Max Payne 3 Preview: Max Is Back