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Developers: Rockstar
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Release Date: May 15, 2012
 



General Information


For Max Payne, the tragedies that took his loved ones years ago are wounds that refuse to heal. No longer a cop, close to washed up and addicted to pain killers, Max takes a job in S?o Paulo, Brazil, protecting the family of wealthy real estate mogul Rodrigo Branco, in an effort to finally escape his troubled past. But as events spiral out of his control, Max Payne finds himself alone on the streets of an unfamiliar city, desperately searching for the truth and fighting for a way out.
Featuring cutting edge shooting mechanics for precision gunplay, advanced new Bullet Time? and Shootdodge? effects, full integration of Natural Motion?s Euphoria Character Behavior system for lifelike movement and a dark and twisted story, Max Payne 3 is a seamless, highly detailed, cinematic experience from Rockstar Games.
In addition to an expansive single-player campaign, Max Payne 3 will also be the first entry in the series to introduce a thorough and engrossing multiplayer experience. In a unique twist, Max Payne 3 multiplayer delivers a compelling experience that dynamically alters maps and mode progression for all players in a match. Along with traditional multiplayer modes, Max Payne 3 will also include a deep reward and leveling system, persistent clans and multiple strategic load-out options.
Developed across Rockstar Games Studios Worldwide, Max Payne 3 standard and Special Editions (Special Edition is available for pre-order until April 2nd, 2012 and includes a 10" tall collectible Max Payne statue along with much more premium content) will be available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 on May 15, 2012 in North America and May 18, 2012 in Europe, with the PC version launching on May 29th, 2012 in North America and June 1st, 2012 in Europe



Multiplayer


Max Payne 3 introduces an explosive and innovative multiplayer experience, bringing Max Payne's signature Shootdodge? and Bullet Time? gameplay features along with a range of new and expanded special abilities into the arena of competitive online multiplayer.


Screens


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Videos






 

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Max Payne 3: Feeling the Pain

Why you'll be clutching your own ribs in shared agony.

Max Payne is looking haggard. His increasingly creased face has hardened into a permanent grimace and his expanding bulk means there's no way he's fitting into the same suits he wore back in his NYPD days. But it's not just that. The fact that his ageing frame is a lot less suited to being thrown into action than it used to be is compounding matters, sure, but it's more than that right now.

Max Payne is having a bad night.

The blood from the bullet wound he received earlier, before he even had a chance to fire a single shot, has become dark and caked on the bandage his partner Passos tightly wrapped around his left arm. We've been slogging through a S?o Paulo football stadium after-hours with Max for close to 30 minutes. Max is too old to be mixing it up with a bunch of Brazilian gangbangers, and that hole in his arm isn't helping. You can feel every yard. No, really. You can.

The reason you can feel every bit of progress you make is due entirely to the incredibly well-honed animation system at work here. Max is looking haggard because you can see the effort he's making. Max's realistic reactions mean you that things that should hurt look like they hurt. When we have Max crash into a wall his body folds up as he impacts against it; he doesn't just complete the move suspended in mid-air. When we have him leap sideways down a set of concrete grandstand steps and crunch back to earth halfway down he doesn't just pounce back to his feet; his inertia sends him into a sickening slide down the remaining stairs on his ribs, blasting all the way down. This one makes us wince, in particular.

With Max Payne 3 we're seeing the latest marriage between NaturalMotion's Euphoria technology and the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine. NaturalMotion's Euphoria, for those of you who don't know, is an animation system engine based on a full simulation of a 3D character (including body, muscles and a motor nervous system). Instead of using pre-canned animations, actions (and reactions) are synthesised on-the-fly, in real-time. This means they're always different, every time. The tech has already been used to excellent effect in GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption.

However, GTAIV and Red Dead Redemption are large, open-world titles. Max Payne 3 is not. It's a laser-focused, third-person shooter. With the narrower scope the developers have been able to use the additional headroom to really ramp-up the authenticity of the animation and physics.

Max has thousands of animations that blend into one another, working in tandem with Euphoria to craft incredibly realistic on-screen movement. Where you're diving, what's around you at the time, what guns you're holding and so on will all affect how Max performs the move you've demanded of him. Diving sideways, firing one-handed while clutching a long-barrel shotgun in your free hand and thudding into a wall will result in a markedly different outcome than diving sideways in a large room firing pistols in each hand.

The work done here to ensure Max moves as realistically as possible in any situation is seriously impressive. The way he rolls and pivots when prone in order to shoot in any direction. The way his body shifts to fire behind himself while running away from an ambush. The way he picks himself up off the ground, which varies depending on what firearm(s) he's holding at the time. Max Payne 3 is here to fuse the control of a first-person shooter with the character of a third. Rockstar doesn't want you to form a relationship with a reticule. It wants you to see Payne in pain.

The Euphoria integration naturally extends to the enemies too, similar to what you've seen in GTAIV and RDR before. What you get with Euphoria is more than simple rag dolls, or pre-animated location-sensitive death animations. You get enemies reacting accordingly to where they've been struck, and by the calibre of the bullet that struck them. A few quick pistol slugs to the central mass of one goon may see him flop to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut, but a sniper bullet to the shoulder of another will see him spinning into the stadium seating in a flurry of flailing limbs. A shot to the arm should disable it. Don't expect the kind of bullet-sponge enemies you get in the likes of Uncharted 3. Naughty Dog's latest may be world class in many ways but being shot is a serious matter, and Max Payne 3's enemies don't just shake it off.

The action has a supremely visceral quality to it, making Max Payne 3 a shooter where good instincts and luck are rewarded as often as pure skill. On one occasion we had Max shoot-dodge around a corner in order to stitch up two hired guns hiding there in wait. A burst of rounds into each of them saw them despatched. Replaying the same section again, we rounded the corner in real-time, stitching a horizontal line of lead from left to right. The Hail Mary spray caught the first enemy in the head and the second near-enough to it and they both sagged to the mud, dead. Max Payne 3 is as satisfying in real time as it is in slow motion; there's a certain Michael Mann-style abruptness that's been merged here with the series' more famous Hong Kong-esque sensibilities.

If the old Max was a scalpel, darting from firefight to firefight, skating around opponents and springing from the ground like a steel trap, the new Max is a wrecking ball. Heavier, and at the mercy of Newton's Second Law more than ever, but even more devastating. And yet, despite this, it's actually remarkable how familiar it actually feels. Max Payne 3 is a thoroughly modern sequel, built with new technology, and yet at it still fundamentally feels like a Max Payne game.

So if you're worried the Max Payne magic may have gone MIA; don't be.

IGN

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thanks for posting this man, personally can't wait for Max to come back, and that Michelle Rodriguez lady in the poster is defo my kinda girl! Getting it for PC,though I love my 360 and PS3 can't bear the thought of having to play a new Max Payne on them rather than on the Mother Platform.

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This is currently my most anticipated game of the year.

The first 2 games are among my favorite games ever. Literally.

So much so I did something I have never done for any other game, I purchased a Max Payne T-Shirt for my Live Avatar.

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heh heh tHats a new low man, I don't think I ever bought anything for my avatar, even tho he's fun. But I know what you mean, anticipation is half the joy.

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I was late to the game so I only played Max Payne 2. I really hope the PC version of Max Payne 3 performs well. If it's anything like the unoptimized mess that GTA IV was, then I'll be very disappointed.

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I was late to the game so I only played Max Payne 2. I really hope the PC version of Max Payne 3 performs well. If it's anything like the unoptimized mess that GTA IV was, then I'll be very disappointed.

I played it in reverse order. First with Max Payne 2 back in late 2003, then I got the first game in the subsequent year. Do give the first game a whirl as the story is still engaging, even if the animations are terribly poor by today's standards :p

Looking forward to this very much. After the rather huge disappointment of the movie four years ago (remember that?), a sequel nine years later better be amazing. ;)

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I'm impressed. I really liked Mass Effect 3 because it did something similar. A seamless transition between gameplay and cut-scene results in a more immersive experience.

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This series is one of my all time favorite. Max Payne 1 IMO was the best of the two.

true but that is because we got our hand for the first time with bullettime

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Loved the first two Max Payne games, replayed them both a few weeks ago. Even better than I remembered them from 2001/2003! :D

Really looking forward to MP3. Was originally a bit concerned that it'd departed from the New York/noir theme. With Rockstar making it and the gameplay videos released so far, it's looking like it'll be great.

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This looks alot like the engine GTA5 will use.... (2013, if Max Payne is released in May)

Max Payne 3 is using the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE). It's the same engine that was used in GTA IV. It wouldn't make sense for Rockstar to make another engine so they're probably using it with GTA V as well.

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Max Payne 3: Rockstar's Multiplayer Reinvention

Dan Houser talks about the future of multiplayer for Rockstar games, starting with Max Payne 3.

Dan Houser and Rockstar Games firmly believe in the power of the third-person narrative. Set in open-world environments, the single-player campaigns of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption pushed what the form is capable of: both are grand narratives, wherein players consolidated their own story within the confines of predetermined missions. But Rockstar's next game, Max Payne 3, unfolds a very different type of story; it's a much more controlled, linear affair. But how has Rockstar ? a studio much-feted for its sprawling sandbox games? negotiated this potentially-restrictive transition?

"From a structural standpoint, both have advantages and disadvantages ? an open world game has to be looser and have less structure, but that gives you the ability to digress, explore subplots and a wider array of characters," says Houser, co-founder of Rockstar and the co-writer of Max Payne 3. "A more linear game has to be more precise, less meandering, but also lets you structure a plot in a much more precise way than is possible in an open world game. It is, in many ways, the difference between, say, a movie and an entire series of a TV show. However, from a more creative standpoint, both are about the same thing ? making characters interesting and giving as much weight and context as possible to the action. Max Payne is very much a character-drive experience, and always has been."

Houser has co-written many of Rockstar's most successful games, from Grand Theft Auto III to Red Dead Redemption. But it's perhaps revealing that he doesn't consider the writing process in isolation, a kind of rarefied endeavour preceding the game's technical construction. "At Rockstar we don't see writing as particularly separate from game making ? my co-writers, Mike Unsworth and Rupert Humphries and I, are just another part of the process, working with the designers and animators to create a game that flows as smoothly as possible and comes to life as well as possible. So while the game structure changes from game to game, our ability to learn from our mistakes and evolve our processes is ongoing. I would not separate out writing as being independent from animation or game design ? working together, we do our best to build as cohesive and exciting an experience as possible."

With Max Payne 3, Houser is attempting to weave Rockstar's strong narrative sensibilities beyond the single-player campaign and into the fabric of the game's multiplayer experience. So often multiplayer is seen as beyond the reach of the writer ? a forum in which players shape their own private narratives. But through modes like Gang Wars, Houser isn't trying to intrude a narrative upon players having fun with friends; he's trying to advance what people expect from a multiplayer experience: "Ideally it will evolve into something that's both a place for emergent gameplay and for game makers, including writers, animators and designers, to provide some context and structure for that gameplay to make it even more compelling," he admits. "Even in a single-player game, we're not trying to serve the needs of the story so much as make a story that works to make the action more exciting and compelling. And the same is true of multiplayer, or at least, we think it should be."

And when it comes to multiplayer, Houser believes that no one else is really going that extra mile in storytelling. "Multiplayer, particularly in competitive first-person shooters, has almost completely forsaken any kind of story or attachment to character," he says. "We wanted to keep the sense of competition that comes from multiplayer but we wanted to bring back a better sense of character, rather than just being a faceless member of an army, and that was one of the inspirations for Gang Wars. Players can feel attached to their character as an individual, but also feel tied into the universe of the single-player game. Every round of Gang Wars tells you a little more about the world around Max's story ? either what the city's factions were doing before Max arrived, or what happened after the events of the single-player game."

Rockstar is attempting to make the online multiplayer experience a much more welcoming proposition for the inexperienced, without alienating the seasoned player. "With Max Payne 3 we absolutely wanted to make a more competitive experience that lives up to the requirements of a pure shooter ? with as much as possible customisable, persistent and trackable, but also to make it easy for people to jump in and feel comfortable quickly so that the environment is fun for the less competitive as well as for serious players. Jumping into online matches and making friends isn't easy ? often if you're not already playing with friends the entire process can be fairly intimidating, especially in competitive matches."

One of the ways in which Rockstar is overcoming the timidity of the uninitiated is through the integration of Social Club ? the publisher's online service. "We found a way to get around that through the use of Crews in Max Payne 3," says Houser. "Crews are groups of players that you can join up with via the Social Club that go beyond what's possible by using your Xbox or PS3 friends list, and joining crews will have benefits both in-game and out. There are two types of crews ? private crews for you and your friends to create and customise, and public crews open to everyone.

"Performing tasks with crew members ? like avenging a fallen Crew member or killing rival ones during a Feud ? will earn you XP bonuses. As a casual player of multiplayer, it will be easy to quickly reap at least some of the benefits of being in a crew. In addition, there are no member caps on public crews, so thousands of players across the world can join the same crew. Alternatively, Private Crews provide an exclusive group experience for players that want to take it to the next level.

The crew tools are smart too, as Houser explains: "Players who join a crew will automatically be matched up with other crew members if they're in the same lobby, and players can join up to five crews. Crew members will have visible, customizable emblems on their equipment in-game for your crew and your opponents to see, which is one of the great advantages of third-person multiplayer ? but you can also turn that off if you prefer."

Crews provide not only safety in numbers but also a welcoming sense of familiarity. But it isn't just about playing with a regular group of people; the notion behind crews is much more deeply embedded in the narrative of the game's multiplayer modes. "In multiplayer games we have a feature called Vendettas ? if someone kills you twice, you can initiate a vendetta against them, which lets everyone know that you're out to get that person," explains Houser. "For you, a special X marks their blip when they're visible to you on the map. If you take that person down, you get extra XP. If they survive your vendetta though, they get that XP."

But Houser reveals that Feuds also apply to your group of online teammates: "Crew Feuds are essentially Crew Vendettas. Impromptu skirmishes between crews can spring up in multiplayer matches that quickly spawn a first-to-10-kills battle. You can be playing any team-based game with a completely new set of players, but if you spot two or more members of a crew you're feuding with on the opposite team, any kills you get against them will count to the overall feud so rivalries will spring up automatically ? and when they do, you'll be notified and the grudge will come to the forefront of the game."

Importantly, with Social Club integration, this feud isn't quickly forgotten after some cathartic blood-letting. It continues to track who you're feuding with, how long you've been feuding, and who's winning, and taking out players you're at war with will net you extra XP. "We want to create more drama out of the interactions that go down in typical multiplayer matches," says Houser. It's about embellishing the drama that emerges naturally in multiplayer, not foisting upon the player artificially.

This isn't a short-term objective or a nice bonus feature to bolster Max Payne 3's multiplayer. It's a statement of intent by Rockstar. "The beauty of this system is that crews persist over time and across future games. Multiplayer is an ever-more important part of all our games moving forward. And by creating crews through Social Club, the crews that you create in Max Payne 3 will be ready and available for you to play in Grand Theft Auto V from day one. It's all part of our larger approach to make multiplayer deeper and richer than what's currently available, much more easily accessible to the newcomer and rewarding for the hardcore."

The ultimate goal is to nurture the same embittered rivalries across its forthcoming games then? "We made a promise not to talk too much about forthcoming games until a little further down the track but, yes, crews will feature in Grand Theft Auto V multiplayer," reveals Houser. "We are firm believers in the potential of third-person multiplayer and the attachment it can create to character, stories and worlds. This is at the heart of what we're doing with crews, and we think it opens up limitless new possibilities for the future. It's right at the heart of our goal to bring greater weight and context to multiplayer games while still staying true to what competitive multiplayer does so well."

It's fitting that Rockstar's new approach to multiplayer should accompany its entry into the Max Payne franchise, a series celebrated for its focus on character and narrative. But it seems Rockstar's aspirations are much greater; multiplayer isn't being thought of as an added extra, crudely bolted onto the single-player narrative, but an integral and persistent part of its future games.

IGN

Interesting read (Y)

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Why Max Payne 3 Will Rock On PC

In June this year, Max Payne's slow-motion, shoot-diving, beard-sporting self is making a return to our screens in Max Payne 3. And mighty fine it's looking too, if our previous looks at the game are anything to go by. But there's one version that's looking especially sweet, and it's not on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. If you really want to experience Max Payne 3 at its ass-kicking finest, it's all about the PC version--if you've got some suitably beefy hardware to support it.

The sceptical among you might be thinking the PC version is simply a console port. After all, that's a practice that's become commonplace in modern game development. But Max Payne 3 on PC is no mere port, according to Rockstar. It's been developed alongside the console version, and sports a number of PC-specific enhancements that make use of everyone's favourite collection of application programming interfaces, DirectX 11.

That's a boon for anyone with a relatively new graphics card, so you can expect lots of tasty tessellation for smoother, more detailed visuals, as well as support for higher resolutions and frame rates than on console. Also promised are full mouse and keyboard support, customisable controls and visual settings, an absence of any load times, and support for Nvidia's 3D Vision technology.

The proof is in the pudding, though, and thanks to an extended look at the game running on a GTX 680, we found there's plenty to be excited about. In a level set in a huge stadium, Max and his buddy were on the run from a group of rebel soldiers, each of them pretty ****ed off at our hero. As the pair made their way around the stadium, we got a great look at some of the visual enhancements made to the PC version.

The most obvious was the higher resolution of the game. While the console versions look great, on PC the visuals look crisper, rendering the brisk action with a level of detail that made Max's bullet-time shenanigans all the more impressive. The enhanced detail was readily apparent in facial animations too; Max's monologues being full of furrowed brows and menacing grimaces. Those moments were further enhanced with bokeh-heavy text that floated and flashed around the screen, forming part of the game's attempt to blend graphic novel elements with in-game action.

With full DirectX 11 support and tessellation aplenty, Max Payne 3 is looking seriously sexy.

In June this year, Max Payne's slow-motion, shoot-diving, beard-sporting self is making a return to our screens in Max Payne 3. And mighty fine it's looking too, if our previous looks at the game are anything to go by. But there's one version that's looking especially sweet, and it's not on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. If you really want to experience Max Payne 3 at its ass-kicking finest, it's all about the PC version--if you've got some suitably beefy hardware to support it.

The sceptical among you might be thinking the PC version is simply a console port. After all, that's a practice that's become commonplace in modern game development. But Max Payne 3 on PC is no mere port, according to Rockstar. It's been developed alongside the console version, and sports a number of PC-specific enhancements that make use of everyone's favourite collection of application programming interfaces, DirectX 11.

That's a boon for anyone with a relatively new graphics card, so you can expect lots of tasty tessellation for smoother, more detailed visuals, as well as support for higher resolutions and frame rates than on console. Also promised are full mouse and keyboard support, customisable controls and visual settings, an absence of any load times, and support for Nvidia's 3D Vision technology.

The proof is in the pudding, though, and thanks to an extended look at the game running on a GTX 680, we found there's plenty to be excited about. In a level set in a huge stadium, Max and his buddy were on the run from a group of rebel soldiers, each of them pretty ****ed off at our hero. As the pair made their way around the stadium, we got a great look at some of the visual enhancements made to the PC version.

The most obvious was the higher resolution of the game. While the console versions look great, on PC the visuals look crisper, rendering the brisk action with a level of detail that made Max's bullet-time shenanigans all the more impressive. The enhanced detail was readily apparent in facial animations too; Max's monologues being full of furrowed brows and menacing grimaces. Those moments were further enhanced with bokeh-heavy text that floated and flashed around the screen, forming part of the game's attempt to blend graphic novel elements with in-game action.

But the most impressive visuals came during heated firefights. Transitions to Max's bullet-time ability were incredibly smooth, making use of all kinds of neat visual effects like motion blur. The flare from Max's guns was suitably bright and flashy as he laid waste to the many soldiers in his path, picking them off with carefully placed headshots. Stray bullets left puffy trails of smoke behind them, shattering nearby panes of glass, and sending stray shards flying around the screen. Also neat were the many empty bullet shells that fell from Max's gun, creating that always satisfying "clink" sound as they hit the ground.

All that visual loveliness comes at a price, so you'll need a relatively modern graphics card to get in on the action--anything from Nvidia's GTX 400 series or ATI's 5000 series, through to the latest Kepler-powered GTX 680 or ATI's HD7970. Rockstar has promised to support users with less sporty hardware too, though you will miss out on some of the DirectX 11-specific enhancements.

Max Payne 3 is due for release on June 1 in the EU and May 29 in North America, which should give you just enough time to save for that upgrade?

GameSpot

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That's good news but I'm going to take it with a pinch of salt.

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That's good news but I'm going to take it with a pinch of salt.

Same here, first I've heard of it. Mind you I believe it, and I'll love it, but I've seen so many DX9 titles lately I'm still wary.

What sucks is this is pretty much the last thing this year I'm looking forward to at all o.o

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:s

Have you played GTA IV on PC? It doesn't run well at all. That's why I'm taking the news of a proper PC version with a pinch of salt. I won't get my hopes up like I did with GTA IV.

Same here, first I've heard of it. Mind you I believe it, and I'll love it, but I've seen so many DX9 titles lately I'm still wary.

What sucks is this is pretty much the last thing this year I'm looking forward to at all o.o

I'm worried about how it'll perform in DX9 mode. I don't have a DX11 video card so I obviously won't benefit from the DX11 features. One of the features is better memory management and support for multi-threaded rendering. It's something that the DX9 version won't have unless they add it to the engine itself. And the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) isn't exactly known for running well on PC hardware. GTA IV is a good example of that. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. After all, they've had since 2008 to improve the engine.

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Have you played GTA IV on PC? It doesn't run well at all. That's why I'm taking the news of a proper PC version with a pinch of salt. I won't get my hopes up like I did with GTA IV.

Of course I have, and I know what you are talking about.

But we can at least hope. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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Of course I have, and I know what you are talking about.

But we can at least hope. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I meant to say, I won't get my hopes up too much. I'm really looking forward to Max Payne 3 and I'd prefer to play the PC version. :)

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