"Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off." (Raymond Chandler)

Max Payne 3 is fair, straight, high-intence action game with the huge emphasis on the cinematographic scenery and "bullet time" rapid shooting effects. A bit of noir and drama, the whole pint of bitterness and self-misery... gallons of splattered blood and tons of flying lead.

In short, Rockstar made a very good work with their RAGE engine, and the game looks and plays quite fine. A nice addition to the Max Payne series, by all gameplay aspects.

On the dark side, Sam Houser's "vision" of Max Payne character is annoyingly superficial and primitive, and his whole-time satiety with filth of all kinds surely not make things better. Combined with the unskippable "seamless" cutscenes every now and then... The scenes where Max Payne is usually drinking badly, showing his bad temper or doing other things people usually feel bad about... I don't know, guys.

Well, I Do Know that that wasn't the intended effort to ruin Max Payne's "image", to cut the strings of empathy between the hero and the player. No. It's just the way Sam Houser see things. We've witnessed it perfectly in the GTA IV and V, with all those grim and hopelessly miserable characters like Nico Bellic, Johnny Klebitz, Michael, Trevor... Jeez, even the "Bully" is full of those wretched and agonizing freaks! But, in cases of the open-world games, the dejection is splattered across 30-40, maybe more, hours of gameplay, along with other, stabilizing moments. In the 8-10 hours of Max Payne 3 gameplay time, however, the only "stabilizing" moments are those when Max is performing another long fall, shooting with automatic weapons from the both hands in the process. Therefore, I pity Rockstar's version of Max Payne. Without Houser's "special", it could have been a much better game.

I have to repeat: the cutscenes are unskippable, and that's basically the main game's itch. You can't turn it off even if you play the game for the 4th or 5th time, on the highest difficulty, with the timer included! How fares, Rockstar? Where were your beta-testers when you implemented all those really hard game modes and forget to make a switch off for boring Houser-inspired Max's drinking sessions? Everyone can live safer without them, you know?

Speaking for the game again, it is classy. Top-notch stuff. Visuals are quite good, effects are frighteningly realistic, the levels are well-made. The sounds and music - on the level with the second game (except Poets of the Fall, but with its own fine addition of "Tears" at the airport level). The shooting mechanic is arguably the best for third-view shooters up to this very moment. And all this runs smoothly even on the low-grade decks: the optimization is another top-notch point of the game.

With all the damage Houser's style done, on the basic level, Rockstar took and finely implemented all of the noticeable game features from the first games. With the houses and nerves on fire, with the smart-tongue short comments about every new hole in the Payne's body, new painkiller found and the switch button pushed. The atmosphere is there, and it's still has good old noir scent. It's not "the Maltese Falcon" or "Sunset Boulevard", "Max Payne 3" is closer to the "Film Soleil" sub-genre... but it's there. If only that feeling wasn't contested by the very stupid cutscenes, like where Max is rushing in the room full of armed bandits and hostages, with only the pistol and without any cover...

Oh, well. Think I'll stop right there. Max Payne 3 is a typical deal of "take the good thing and pay for the bad as well". It's still a good Max Payne game, there are enough of challenging game modes to test skills even of the fittest... But "seamless" Sam Houser's alcostatic crud is not the reason I've paid two prices for this game. I'll mark it as 7.2/10. For a single, casual walk-through time, it's fair 9/10, but I've invested in this game more, and had the higher expectations than "a single run". Well, life is harsh. And even love is like the alcohol - you just get used to it until you're unconsciousness.