This isn't a failure of the game, as such – it's an astonishingly entertaining thrill ride that I've heartily recommended. Somehow this shadow of a man is able to fly across a room with two machine pistols wiping out lowlife gangsters as though swatting flies. But at the end of every action sequence, we return to the anguished Payne of the narrative, slamming back bourbon and regretting everything that has led him here. Through the course of the game he takes out hundreds of people with a variety of weapons, stopping only to pop painkillers and reload.
#MAX PAYNE 3 DIFFICULTY FULL#
Yet he is also an accomplished killer, capable of gunning down a room full of "enemies" in a matter of seconds. He desperately seeks some form of salvation. When the game begins he's effectively drinking himself to death in his filthy New Jersey apartment. Throughout the game's beautifully constructed narrative sequences, we see Payne going through agonies of recrimination and remorse he's still haunted by the murder of his wife and baby by junkies he questions his own motives as a DEA agent and then as a glorified bodyguard he is disgusted by himself and his life. There is a lot of blood, a lot of pain.īut here's a problem. There, he becomes mired in a complex plot involving the wealthy clients he is protecting, a gang of paramilitary vigilantes and a shady special forces arm of the local police force. The latest instalment in his dark tale of loss and revenge sees the ex-New York cop taking on a job as a personal security contractor in Sau Paulo, Brazil.