Max Payne 3

I've been playing Max Payne 3 on hard for a couple hours now, and I say this: I am disappoint. I may not have finished the game so far, but I think I've seen enough to make that pronouncement. Ultimately, Max Payne 3 plays exactly like an interactive movie: You interact for 3 minutes, watch 10 minutes of movie. It seems unfortunate that the developers have somehow managed to create a rather cinematic gameplay experience yet seem reluctant to let the player get more playtime to truly appreciate it. Perhaps I've been spoiled from playing the likes of Half Life 2, where every single cutscene is interactive at least in some way. I don't think so, however. It just seems like a rather overblown attempt at forcing a cinematic experience through taking control away from the player, instead of getting the player engaged in the narrative. There are many ways to cue the player to approach certain areas so that they enter a dramatic part of a story of their own accord, and allowing gameplay to continue while characters jaw one another to death. The other major problem with the game is the narrative itself. Where Max Payne 1 had memorable characters and a rather fine parallel with Ragnarok mythology, Max Payne 3 has characters that are forgotten as quickly as they stop gabbing, and the Noir style monologues seem to go on for their own sake. The way the story flows somehow manages to talk about urgency without showing any. There never was a point where the game got my pulse racing. Overall I'd say that my single player experience so far is 4/10 at most. Graphically, the game's fairly pleasing, but gameplay and narrative wise, it is just quite the flop.