Max Payne 3 Review

The shooting is the argument. Bullet time is preserved and refined, but the real achievement is the animation: Max stumbles, catches himself on walls, lands badly, and stays in whatever physical predicament the dive left him in rather than snapping to a clean pose. No shooter before it made falling over feel like a decision with consequences, and almost none since have matched the weight of it.

The Sao Paulo setting is used well, and the visual language of blown out light and stuttering title cards conveys a man whose perception cannot be trusted. Where it stumbles is structure. Cutscenes are frequent, unskippable on a first run, and often interrupt exactly when the shooting has found its rhythm, which is a strange choice in the game whose shooting is its best feature. The turn toward organ trafficking is grim without being illuminating, and the tourist gaze on Brazilian poverty has aged poorly.