Played: Max Payne 3
Observations:
- Man, this sure was a video game.
- My problem with Rockstar has always been how they’ve seized great concepts - The American Dream, the mob, and (here) a sort of B-movie-esque postmodernist’s wet dream - and held them at arm’s length, then thrown them into the dirt and laughed like idiots rather than do something inspired. There are a shitload of quips in this game, and some really exciting fuzzy, scanlined visuals, as well as a plot that verges on the ridiculous, but they don’t bring it together.
- I reckon this is why they’re at their best when they make open-world games, because where they’re at their most interesting is in building worlds. Liberty City still feels thriving and wry a few years on; the story of Niko Bellic, on the other hand, is hopelessly shit.
- With that in mind, at its peak, this felt like a really well-executed trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, and its worst it felt like I was shooting waves of men in police uniforms for six hours straight. There were these interesting narrative arcs that were cut short prematurely because the game wanted me to shoot some more men.
- Basically, this is a shining example of what’s wrong with video games - it’s understandable that Max Payne would have to shoot a few people in taking down a corrupt government unit, but not in excess of a thousand (the game tracks your kills, slightly absurdly). Here the gameplay mechanics are shoehorned in awkwardly at the expense of any meaningful development. When the interesting parts of your game are cutscenes (and holy shit there are a lot of cutscenes in this game) and one brief sequence where you walk around and don’t interact with anything, there’s something wrong with your game.
- Still. Pretty. This sure had a lot of graphics. Thousands of them.
- Also, Walter White’s bald head has a trademark lawsuit waiting to be issued. No, really.
