On this day 14 years ago, Max Payne 3 was played, the long-awaited third part of the grumpy detective series, but also significantly different from the previous games.
Max Payne was a popular guy in the early 21st century. But when its creators turned a new page and devoted themselves to Alan Wake, Payne fell into the hands of Rockstar Games, which took a long time to exploit the franchise. Max Payne 3 came with a longer time gap after the two, exactly on this day in 2012.
The triplet was designed as a fresh start for Max. At Rockstar, they decided on big changes in order to resurrect the series in a commercial sense. Max Payne thus discarded his famous leather jacket, shaved his head and grew a beard. A new actor was even considered, but the role ended up being the late James McCaffrey. The change in the appearance of the character did not sit well with all fans, but it was integrated into the story itself.
In the third part, we not only saw a different protagonist, but also the place of action. After the previous two games took place in New York City, mostly in rainy weather and nighttime environment, the third game was the complete opposite of that. It’s Max moved to Brazilwhere in sun-drenched Sao Paulo he worked as a security guard for a family that became a victim of the local mafia.
Major changes were introduced in gameplay. Although the first two games were also played in such a way that cover had to be used, in the trio this system was elaborated so that Max could shoot without leaving cover. New were the mechanics of shooting in a prone position, as well as the possibility of avoiding death if the player defeats the opponent who wounded him in a short period of time.
Although Max Payne still had you throwing yourself through the air and targeting opponents while slowing down time, Rockstar wanted to make the game more grounded. For this purpose, the possibility of the player carrying a wide arsenal of weapons disappeared from the previous parts. Instead, only three weapons could be carried at a time.
In the trio, the possibility of carrying a larger number of weapons disappeared, and a maximum of three weapons could be used at the same time.
He was introduced for the first time in the series multiplayer mod in the network version. It supported matches of up to 16 players, but never managed to establish itself as something popular. Servers for that multiplayer they went out in the fall of 2021.
Max Payne 3 was first released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and two weeks later for PC. Although the game received very good reviews and sold better than the previous two parts, the publisher Take-Two Interactive had higher expectations. The development costs for this game were too high to be covered by four million copies sold. For this reason, this was the last Max Payne we saw. It was also the last Rockstar game outside of the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series.
Unfortunately, Max Payne 3 never received PS4 and XBO versions, although the game can be run on today’s Xbox One and Series consoles. The PC version is still available for sale.