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Alhazred posted:The airport was amazing. "Here's some cool music and a bunch of guys to shoot. Go nuts." The airport shootout is great because it's the last, and biggest shootout in Max Payne games yet. And the song is about letting go of... the dead basically. Max Payne is, since the beginning, avenging deaths, consumed by grief. That's who he is. That's what Noir is. And in all three games there's this sequence; In the first one it's the drug trip. His family calling out to him to save them from beyond the grave, after which there's that moment where he felt like he was a character in a videogame, the most horrible thing he could think of. In the second one, it's the haunted house which taunts Max unable to find happiness. He's a character and he's sentenced to be Max Paine. Mona dies so he can avenge her. In the third one though, Max is an alcoholic wreck. He can't control himself. He's old, he's unable to move on from that grief, and he starts shooting. But as the story progresses, people Max was supposed to protect die, and Max realizes he was being played and he was too drunk, addicted to painkillers, too trigger happy to realize that. He's someone's fool, a pawn to their own goals. That's when Max Payne, the character, starts taking control. He shaves his head (upsetting the gamers worldwide) and quits drinking. Now paynfully sober, he does some actual detective poo poo to figure out who's behind all of it. Things get even worse when he finds out, and as the game reaches its explosive crescendo, he does it. For the first time he saves someone. But something's missing, we didn't get the sequence. And Max has one more thing to do: Get rid of the guys who are causing all this suffering. Plotwise, he shoots up the paramilitary police station. There's only the last pathetic rear end in a top hat that's fleeing to the airport... Finally we get the sequence. Cue Tears by Health the biggest shootout in Max Payne games begins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iJRgGn2-s0 The song is a haunting, dazed, gritty, distorted plea. But this time it's different. This time it's pleading for Max to let go. Let go, because clinging to it will kill him. It's telling Max to accept the grief, let go of the pain, the painkillers, the alcohol, and everything that's controlling him because it's gonna kill him. And that includes the player. The song ends, the bad guy dies. We see Max on beautiful beach drinking sodypop in a dumb straw hat, then literally walking into a beautiful sunset. Noir as a genre is cynical, fatalistic and morally grey. People complained about Max Payne 3 for being the franchise killer, the one not taking place during the night, the stereotypical dudebro shooter and whatnot. But in fact it's a great deconstruction of the Noir genre, conclusion to the meta-narrative arc Remedy started of Max Payne's character, a political commentary, and a simple reassurance that people can get better. It's also a very good and satisfying shooter game. I thought that's neat.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:07
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drat I need to play MP3 again. Just finishing up Alan Wake and thinking about what to play next, so that seems like good timing.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:10
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Yeah, Max Payne 3 was the one that I had the hardest time really getting into at first (both thematically as well as in terms of gameplay), but at this point it's easily my favourite of the series. Also, very surprisingly, it came with a really pretty good multiplayer mode.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:17
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Vic posted:The airport shootout is great because it's the last, and biggest shootout in Max Payne games yet. And the song is about letting go of... the dead basically. Something I especially liked about it was how they handled Mona. The way MP3 is written, it doesn’t matter if she lived or died at the end of Max Payne 2. No matter the outcome, they make it clear that Max hosed up and she’s not in his life anymore, which honestly would have been the inevitable conclusion even if she lived. They don’t expand on it, so if you see it as she died then it’s just the normal ending of Max Payne 2, but if she lived then it’s a nice touch that he’s obviously dealing with something that never really gets expanded on. The man’s a trainwreck, through and through, and it makes both endings of MP2 completely plausible.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:28
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Dewgy posted:Something I especially liked about it was how they handled Mona. The way MP3 is written, it doesn’t matter if she lived or died at the end of Max Payne 2. No matter the outcome, they make it clear that Max hosed up and she’s not in his life anymore, which honestly would have been the inevitable conclusion even if she lived. They don’t expand on it, so if you see it as she died then it’s just the normal ending of Max Payne 2, but if she lived then it’s a nice touch that he’s obviously dealing with something that never really gets expanded on. The man’s a trainwreck, through and through, and it makes both endings of MP2 completely plausible. Isn't Mona alive at the end of Max Payne 2? Gosh I haven't played it since it came out, but if I remember right there's a line at the very end of the credits, like an audio blip of a cop saying something like, "Hey we got one more alive in here!" But -- eee this is a 20 year-old memory now.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:34
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credburn posted:Isn't Mona alive at the end of Max Payne 2? Gosh I haven't played it since it came out, but if I remember right there's a line at the very end of the credits, like an audio blip of a cop saying something like, "Hey we got one more alive in here!" She lives if you beat it on the hardest difficulty. IIRC Remedy considered the sad ending to be canon, but I'm not sure.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:51
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Been a while too, but I read it as Mona Sax in Max Payne 2 being just a figment of Max's grief and painkiller addled brain/alter ego. There are few hints in MP2 and 3 that Mona Sax.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:53
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Kennel posted:She lives if you beat it on the hardest difficulty. IIRC Remedy considered the sad ending to be canon, but I'm not sure. Makes sense considering they had nothing to do with the series since. MP3 was all Rockstar, which is where a lot of the issue people have with it comes from.
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Apr 27, 2022 16:55
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Kennel posted:She lives if you beat it on the hardest difficulty. IIRC Remedy considered the sad ending to be canon, but I'm not sure. The latter is what I've always heard as the true ending. For the next comment, I actually don't remember it getting into that much detail about her actually being in Max's head, I just remembered that as being more a weird idea of the narrative basically loving with Max. I'll have to go back and see how it's all presented I guess.
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Apr 27, 2022 17:04
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I played through about half of Max Payne 2 recently and there are definitely times where Mona actually impacts the real world and there was that whole sequence where she was locked up at the police station as people try to find and kill her.
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Apr 27, 2022 17:24
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Hel posted:Makes sense considering they had nothing to do with the series since. MP3 was all Rockstar, which is where a lot of the issue people have with it comes from. Sam Lake co-wrote (with Rockstar's Dan Houser) the comic that had some between the games content. I haven't read it.
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Apr 27, 2022 17:31
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moosecow333 posted:I played through about half of Max Payne 2 recently and there are definitely times where Mona actually impacts the real world and there was that whole sequence where she was locked up at the police station as people try to find and kill her. Yeah I don't get where the Mona Sax isn't real comes from, she's been a character since the first game, where she's clearly hinted to be alive at the end. Kennel posted:Sam Lake co-wrote (with Rockstar's Dan Houser) the comic that had some between the games content. I haven't read it. Honestly didn't know those existed until now, and seems to be set during and before the orignal games as well, which is probably where Sam Lakes notes come in, with Houser doing the connecting to MP3 stuff. I can't actually read them myself since the official page seems broken for me. Edit: found a link to the official download of one of them and could find/replace the others from there, wow they are kind of bad and don't really do anything to set things up for MP3. It's basically the intro to the New York mission in the game interspersed with flash backs of moments from the original games plus some extra ones featuring characters from those games. Unless Sam Lake got credit for that level in the game he had nothing to do with connecting them and seems to have mostly been there for notes on the original stories. But they really highlight how much of the story of Max Payne only really works because of how it's told rather than what it actually is, generic cop revenge stuff. Hel has a new favorite as of 18:02 on Apr 27, 2022 |
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Apr 27, 2022 17:43
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moosecow333 posted:I played through about half of Max Payne 2 recently and there are definitely times where Mona actually impacts the real world and there was that whole sequence where she was locked up at the police station as people try to find and kill her. the entire conflict kicks off because she walks into Max’s apartment and draws him into her grudge with Vlad, she’s definitely real
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Apr 27, 2022 18:01
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Sam Lake tweeted that the hardest difficulty of Max Payne 2 is canon! ...Only on Valentine's day, and no other day. https://twitter.com/samlakermd/status/434276587836432384
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Apr 27, 2022 18:04
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Mona is real but Sam Lake is extremely in love with the Lynchian duplicates, doubles, twins, mirrors, etc. motif so conflating Max and Mona together is just par for the course.
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Apr 27, 2022 18:23
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Vic posted:The airport shootout is great because it's the last, and biggest shootout in Max Payne games yet. And the song is about letting go of... the dead basically. Great write-up! Thanks for this.
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Apr 27, 2022 19:18
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Max Payne on gba was a surprisingly good game
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Apr 27, 2022 22:56
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I love the Max Payne series although it’s always an adjustment going from 1/2 to 3 just because it plays so differently. I love the overwrought 40s detective dialogue and I don’t even mind the blood maze which everyone seems to abhor. But most of all I love the person reading this post.
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Apr 27, 2022 23:37
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John Murdoch posted:Mona is real but Sam Lake is extremely in love with the Lynchian duplicates, doubles, twins, mirrors, etc. motif so conflating Max and Mona together is just par for the course. Wasn't Mona the twin of a wife of a gangster that was killed in Max Payne 1, and they meet because Max killed the guy she had been hunting for revenge?
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Apr 28, 2022 02:10
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Yes.
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Apr 28, 2022 02:25
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Man I forgot just how directly MP3 transitioned into being a cover shooter. It works fine, but it plays out more differently than I remembered from the first two. I wonder how much that contributed to the game's divisiveness (I stopped at 2 and never played this one until a couple years ago).
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Apr 28, 2022 02:32
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Captain Hygiene posted:Man I forgot just how directly MP3 transitioned into being a cover shooter. It works fine, but it plays out more differently than I remembered from the first two. I wonder how much that contributed to the game's divisiveness (I stopped at 2 and never played this one until a couple years ago). Iirc at the time it was a huge talking point as to why it wasn't a 'real' max Payne game, and a lot of people were turned off by that aspect in particular. E: needless to say tho, I still enjoyed the gently caress out of it.  Still have the shirt. 😎 Breetai has a new favorite as of 05:01 on Apr 28, 2022 |
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Apr 28, 2022 04:49
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oldpainless posted:I love the Max Payne series although it’s always an adjustment going from 1/2 to 3 just because it plays so differently. I love the overwrought 40s detective dialogue and I don’t even mind the blood maze which everyone seems to abhor. But most of all I love the person reading this post. I will read every post about Max Payne and thank you, do not let anyone call you oldheartless
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Apr 28, 2022 05:09
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Breetai posted:
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Apr 28, 2022 05:13
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oldpainless posted:I love the Max Payne series although it’s always an adjustment going from 1/2 to 3 just because it plays so differently. I love the overwrought 40s detective dialogue and I don’t even mind the blood maze which everyone seems to abhor. But most of all I love the person reading this post. More like oldpayneless
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Apr 28, 2022 05:16
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Wait, more like oldpaynemore
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Apr 28, 2022 05:16
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Breetai posted:Iirc at the time it was a huge talking point as to why it wasn't a 'real' max Payne game, and a lot of people were turned off by that aspect in particular. Incredibly rad edit: I hope you managed to use it as an excuse to get sloshed in public like the man himself would want
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Apr 28, 2022 05:25
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Too bad chugging a bunch of painkillers and diving on the floor has very different results in real life
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Apr 28, 2022 06:25
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I owe half my racquetball skill to Max Payne.
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Apr 28, 2022 07:37
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Captain Hygiene posted:Man I forgot just how directly MP3 transitioned into being a cover shooter. It works fine, but it plays out more differently than I remembered from the first two. I wonder how much that contributed to the game's divisiveness (I stopped at 2 and never played this one until a couple years ago). That's one of the things that threw me off when I played it first: It looks like a cover shooter, but it doesn't really want you to play it as one. It's not communicated very well, but enemies get much less accurate while you're moving around and especially when you're diving. Conversely they are very accurate when you're stationary in cover, which can easily give you the wrong impression that leaving cover will get you annihilated instantly. But a lot of the time you really can play it pretty much like MP2 in a very mobile style and only really use cover to reload or reorient yourself, which tends to be quite a bit more fun.
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Apr 28, 2022 08:11
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Perestroika posted:That's one of the things that threw me off when I played it first: It looks like a cover shooter, but it doesn't really want you to play it as one. It's not communicated very well, but enemies get much less accurate while you're moving around and especially when you're diving. Conversely they are very accurate when you're stationary in cover, which can easily give you the wrong impression that leaving cover will get you annihilated instantly. But a lot of the time you really can play it pretty much like MP2 in a very mobile style and only really use cover to reload or reorient yourself, which tends to be quite a bit more fun.  Cover in Max Payne 3 is a bit of a trap. The mechanic of snapping to cover is really useful in terms of keeping up momentum, but you’re not really meant to stay there.
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Apr 28, 2022 08:58
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Max Payne 3 is one of my favorite third person shooters control-wise, it is all fat trimmed with tons of love still given to making the animations realistic and smooth to look at. You can bullet time dive into cover if you hit the button as Max lands, and then roll out of cover by tapping the dodge roll button and a direction. Legit Max Payne 3 plays like Uncharted with bullet time diving. I've seen tons of people say Uncharted's gameplay is boring but it's because they stick to one wall and only pop up when the laser starts waving. Get out there, you have blind fire and a dodge roll button! Beat up a guy and pick up his gun out of the air! Elbow from the top rope onto some poor idiot who stood below Nathan Drake! Steel fist STEEL FIST STEEL FIST CJacobs has a new favorite as of 09:16 on Apr 28, 2022 |
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Apr 28, 2022 09:14
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Uncharted: Steel Fist, Steal Treasure
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Apr 28, 2022 09:20
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CJacobs posted:I've seen tons of people say Uncharted's gameplay is boring but it's because they stick to one wall and only pop up when the laser starts waving. Get out there, you have blind fire and a dodge roll button! Beat up a guy and pick up his gun out of the air! Elbow from the top rope onto some poor idiot who stood below Nathan Drake! Steel fist STEEL FIST STEEL FIST
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Apr 28, 2022 13:20
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That’s the best way to play Alpha Protocol as well.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:01
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I dunno, I started dying less when I started sticking to cover more. That could easily be on me though, just being rusty at the classic Max Payne style run and gunning.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:30
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A lot of games have a tendency to teach you how to play them wrong, and you gotta un-learn the conservative playstyle to actually figure out what works. Doesn't help that we've spend a decade and change being taught to cling to cover like your actual irl life depends on it.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:55
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muscles like this! posted:Wait, more like oldpaynemore more like maxpaynemore
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Apr 29, 2022 01:38
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Playing the new The Stanley Parable and I laughed pretty hard at the part after you jump off the moving platform and the Narrator starts putting you into other games.
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Apr 29, 2022 01:44
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the new stanley parable managed to meet my expectations and go above and beyond in increasingly amazing ways 'not only did they think of that, but they also thought of it and added variants and new content and New Content to a thing you thought they'd entirely overlook'
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Apr 29, 2022 01:53
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