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Wield those weapons

AI has dramatically improved as well, and while enemies still run out in droves to attack, they don't do so in the same mindless fashion as before. Instead, they now take better cover behind walls themselves and throw grenades more strategically as they flush you out at every opportunity.

Max Payne 3

Diving with wails

A new feature, 'Last Man Standing', sees a face-off with an enemy close to taking Max's remaining life capacity. If you shoot down the guy before he kills you first, you take a painkiller and continue. This can happen quite a lot if you're not careful, especially in a room brimming with gunfire. Wipe out all your enemies and you're rewarded with a prolonged, follow-the-bullet shot of your final kill.

Gamers can even slow this down further, watching ammo pierce enemies at snail speed. It soon loses its novelty, but for the sadistic Payne killer players (possibly all of them) they'll be sure get their money's worth of gore.

Max Payne 3

Banging stuff

As with the previous Max Payne epic, when the campaign mode ends, you're desperate for more – yearning to engage in fresh levels without another decade of waiting.

Fortunately, multiplayer is a whole new game in itself. Usually on-line modes are thrown into games like this as a means of necessity, but with Max Payne 3, the on-line multiplayer is ridiculously addictive and stands on its own. It incorporates the bullet time feature ingeniously and offers the ability to build your own gang of mates to play Payne, as well as future Rockstar games together, through the publisher's Social Club feature.

Max Payne 3

Payne in the gang

Verdict

RH Recommended Medal

The single player campaign doesn't quite match up to the more varied experience of Uncharted 3, but as interactive movie-like shooters go, Max Payne still takes some beating. The man himself may have aged but his bullet-time antics feel as newfangled as ever. Max Payne 3 is a seriously awesome game that you'll keep playing until both your favourite drinking arms ache. ®

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3

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

90%
Max Payne 3

Max Payne 3

The king of slow-motion shooters returns in style. Available on Xbox 360 (tested), PS3 and PC (coming soon)
Price: £40 RRP

That's not Max Payne!

Max Payne looks more (or less) exactly like Sam Lake.

Max Payne was your average looking guy with a lean, even skinny, physique. That was part of the charm of the character, he wasn't the typical muscle bound, square jawed meat head of your typical action hero. The guy pictured in those screenshots looks nothing like Max. That's just lame.

4
1

Looking forward to the PC version

I pre-ordered the PC version on Steam last weekend, since they're throwing in MP1 and 2 as well, all for £29.99. I haven't played the first two in ages, so I think that will make a nice appetizer while we wait for 3. Hopefully the PC version will be even better than the console version.

2
0

No PC version at release? Did you forget which market gave this game its success? Or are you making sure we don't get another day-1 patch for the game as we did with Max Payne 1? (Which couldn't save games at release - no, really!)

2
0

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