Max Payne 3 - March 2012

From GAF.
For those wondering about the Gamestop conference footage, here's a quick rundown of impressions and info of those who saw it and what went down:

Rockstar presented the game during a stage demonstration last Wednesday night with a dev demoing a certain level from the game.
The demo had all the staples of a Max Payne game including Bullet Time shoot outs(duh), painkillers to recover health and Max's inner monologues.
Yes, they got hear James McCaffery as the burned out, old grizzled Max Payne. Sounded great.

Visually, looks great. In fact one attendee couldn't believe it was possibly the same RAGE engine that ran RDR and GTAIV that's how good it looked. Then again, RDR and GTAIV are open world games and MP3 is just a linear level shooter.

Rockstar also had a booth set up on the conference floor that had a viewing tent set up that looped a couple of gameplay videos with commentary. The security for this booth though was actually the most intense and guarded out of all the games that were there in video and playable form, as in only a small number of people were allowed in the viewing tent while security watched to make sure no photos or video was taken.

One of the gameplay clips showed multiplayer and a player engaging in bullet time during the MP session but the commentary didn't explain how that would work in MP.

Overall, talking to those who saw the video and demo said the game looked "amazing" and commented how it looks to be Rockstar's next big hit. Hopefully we'll get more info and the first video in less than a month!
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Those shots...they don't seem to be bullshots,looks pretty damn good.
 
So it's a generic cover based shooter coated in fashionable shades of brown, set in a South American shit hole, entirely bereft of the series' trademark noir aesthetics, and starring a drunken fat guy who quickly gets rid of his hair to join the ranks of creatively bankrupt protagonists. This is sooo exciting.
 
Oh lets hope its not that. Would be a shame if Rockstar decided to drop the film noir and comic book atmosphere first parts so well assembled.. Today I checked some Max Payne 1 and 2 trailers plus listened to the tunes. Gotta play them again! Very enjoyable games dripping with atmosphere.
 
I don't like at all where they're going with this. Doesn't look like a Max Payne game. It may still be decent, but not what I was hoping for in a sequel to the Max Payne games.
 
After Remedy ruined the good thing they had going by wrecking bullet time in Max Payne 2, there's not more Rockstar can do to defile its corpse.
 
Yeah MP2 was a truly incredible game, still one of my all time highest points in gaming.

As for MP3, I'm not too hopeful about it. It was the film noir/comic strip atmosphere that made MP what it is. Thislooks closer to that new splintercell game or Uncharted. Not bad games in their own right but they've already been done.
 
Just want to point out that there's really nothing in the trailer, visually, that betrays film noir as a genre. Film noir is defined more by subject matter, melodrama etc. Visually it comes in many flavours. To be honest, I was never a big fan of the comic book sequences in Max Payne, so I'm not disappointed if they aren't there. Not that they couldn't work, but I thought they were somewhat poorly done, and I didn't like the photorealism vs comic book contrast. What I'm more worried about is the actual gameplay. If it isn't fast, furious and over the top, then they'll really have lost me. From the trailer, it looks like the action might deliver, but the mechanics is what I'm worried about.
 
Another interview from IGN and some nice tidbits. The comic cutscenes are back, but different. This is the best part of the interview:

Max's signature Bullet Time moves are back, but upgraded with the level of sophistication and detail that we can bring to an action game in 2011. A combination of our RAGE engine, blended animations and Natural Motion's Euphoria system control Max's movements, making him react to the world around him realistically, bracing for impact from a diving shoot-dodge or transferring his weight from foot-to-foot while in Bullet Time – the player has an amazing amount of control over the player when running and targeting.

Bullets are individually modeled, and hits register dynamically and individually on every enemy. Every gun is modeled as accurately as possible, with the hammer and slide cocking back after each shot. There are also some additional new features to gunplay in Bullet Time that we'll reveal soon. Our goal is to set a new benchmark for sophistication and feel in a 3rd-person shooter – we've really tried to make the experience as intense and focused as possible.
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http://pc.ign.com/articles/119/1197638p1.html
 
Will Max be a stumbly hero like Nico, or will he be fluid and agile like himself?

Yes – to clarify, Max Payne 3 is powered by our new updated version of RAGE which includes our updated physics engine and graphics engine – while Euphoria is its behavior system. We’ve worked together with Natural Motion to build on behaviors used in GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption and then have further expanded on them specifically for Max Payne 3 with new behaviors like Shootdodge. This specially customized version of Euphoria’s behavior system works in close conjunction with our RAGE engine and is a huge part of Max Payne 3’s gameplay technology. The results are really amazing and build on Max Payne’s tradition of spectacular, balletic gun play.
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That and more:
http://www.rockstargames.com/newswi...d-max-payne-3-la-noire-red-dead-and-more.html
 
Go here for links to previews from IGN, Kotaku, Destructoid etc:

http://www.rockstargames.com/newswi...he-first-max-payne-3-previews-from-ign-k.html

Looks like Rockstar is ramping up the PR. (I am apparently also ramping up the PR. Give me some money, Rockstar!)

From Kotaku
The Rockstar people think that it's great that first-person shooters let you swing your targeting reticule in 360-degrees without any hitches and recognize that third-person shooters often fail to meet the same standard. They promise and showed me that theirs does. While they didn't let me play the game, they showed me that you can point Max's gun(s) anywhere you want with no resistance in the controls and no hiccups in Max's animation. The hero convincingly adjusts the stretch of his arm, the lean of his back, and the turn of his hips to accommodate wherever you are pointing no matter where you have him moving.

The Rockstar folks also think it's cool that Max can and will roll and dive wherever you need him to and shoot from wherever he lands. One of Max's key moves is the slow-mo dodge, which is great to use when you see bullets streaking at you in slow-mo, enemy projectiles trailed by white lines back to smoking barrels. I got to see Max leap to his left, like a man in a road going airborne to avoid the bus bearing down on him. Max braced his arm as he landed on the ground on his side... and could still shoot from there. A combination of tons of animation and blending tech (the Rockstar people will happily talk about it a lot) boils down to: Max moves like an idealized person would, not like some hitchy video game character. He doesn't ice-skate on the ground when he runs. He doesn't stutter or flop limply when he dives or lands. Enemies are supposed to be similarly empowered with great animations, and for the most part they seemed to be, though some did flop in a video-gamey way when hit by Max's bullets.
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From Destructoid
This section of the demo ends with Max exchanging fire through the windows of a hallway with gangsters on a roof across the street. Here I see both the cover mechanics in play and get a small taste of the game's destructibility. First off, don't worry about the game turning into some sort of cover-focused shooter. While you can shoot using cover by poking your head out or blind-firing, the focus is still on the run-and-gun mentality you would expect from Max Payne. Plus, the destructibility will prevent you from any sort of cover abuse -- cover will get torn to shreds as more and more bullets are laid into it.
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CNET
After the lights went up, my impression of Max Payne 3 had gone from "totally different direction" to "true sequel." The only thing missing was a trippy dream sequence where Max tip-toes along a trail of blood. When I asked the Rockstar rep about there being such a section in Max Payne 3 he smiled, but refused to comment.
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From CVG
You can't stay in cover all the time because of that destruction engine and a particularly smart AI, which we're told will never acts the same way twice in multiple play throughs - and definitely won't sit around waiting for you to pop them one by one.

...

Still lying prone our player twists 360 degrees taking out a few more NPCs while horizontal. It's a level of manoeuvrability we've never seen in that kind of position before and Payne's body movements remain solid and fluid throughout as he adjusts his weight.
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It's all coming together. I just want to know more about destructibility and AI. Seems like they've made some good additions there.

They are promising no loading times and seamless transition between cinematic and gameplay a la Uncharted.
 
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