Max Payne 3 PC evaluation & FXAA vs. MSAA shootout

The Story & the Gameplay

Max Payne starts a new chapter of his life completely addicted to painkillers and booze and deeply depressed and ultimately suicidal. Since the game is largely viewed from Max’ eyes, the screen will often blur and move slightly out of focus even during the cutscenes – much like using painkillers and long term alcohol abuse cause.

It is a very gritty game, ultra-violent, and it deserves its M rating for its subject matter and look at life in the raw in the poorest areas of Brazil. This is in stark contrast with the wasteful life of Max’ ultra-rich employers who look down from their towering penthouses on the huge sprawling slums where many tens of thousands live crammed together in abject poverty.  The slums are called ‘favelas’ where lawlessness and crime is a way of life for many of the residents.

Max begins working in the private security sector for a wealthy local family and especially for the ultra-wealthy businessman Rodrigo Branco and his two brothers: the politician Victor and the youngest brother Marcelo, whose “business” appears to be making deals for cocaine. When a street gang kidnaps Rodrigo’s wife, Max is pulled into a conspiracy of warring factions involving every aspect of the society that surrounds him.

The game’s backstory is excellent as Max is drawn into a web of deceit that involves the family he is employed to protect; viscious warring gangs, corupt Brazilian police and government officials, and a sinister plot that preys on the very poorest citizens of SãoPaulo. During this time, the game tells the story in a series of narration and cutscenes, followed by the action scenes, where the player directs Max usually in shooting a gang of thugs.  Only his extraordinary abilities to speed up his reflexes to the point of appearing to slow down time, give Max a fighting chance against otherwise impossible odds.

Much of the time, Max is involved in attempting to save the members of the family – especially the younger sisters. The story is so well written, that the player begins to actually care for some of the characters and, like Max, feels a sense of real loss when you fail to protect one or more of them. And if you really don’t care, the game puts you on a timer anyway, and a failure means you must replay from the checkpoint.

Sometimes Max is successful and sometimes he loses someone in his charge. During this time, Max realizes that alcohol has contributed to his negligence and he goes on the wagon and gives up alcohol cold turkey, although he still needs painkillers to survive when he is wounded. The story is deep and delves into philosophy while the mechanism is one of pure survival.

The screenshot below shows Max sniping would-be hired killers from the family’s private helicopter as one of the younger sisters, “the good one”, is fleeing in sheer terror from them. Notice the golden rifle that Max carries. You can find parts of these enhanced weapons well-hidden in many places and they are very useful for subsequent play-throughs on higher difficulty.

Max actually works toward a kind of “redemption” where he ultimately learns to not blame himself, which is in contrast to the very depressing Max Payne 2. This game story actually ties up all of the storylines started in the earlier two games and sets itself up for a probable expansion, DLC and continuation of a hopefully a very successful series with the further adventures of a much more mature Max Payne.

Best of all, unlike the first two games, the settings are varied and expanded beyond New York/New Jersey and even São Paulo. You will also find your self in Panama on a Yacht; shoot from a helicopter, from an out-of-control bus, from a speeding boat, in an office building under attack and also find yourself under intense sniper fire in São Paulo’s football stadium trying to help your partner.

If that is not enough action, Max will battle multiple well-armed gangs and corrupt police in a disco and a broken-down hotel, as well as inside a police station where a major riot of his making breaks out.  There are also other interesting and varied situations that pay homage to the earlier games and try to improve on them.

The game also uses flashbacks to show Max and Passos in the Panama Canal protecting Marcelo on a yacht party that is raided by guerrilla pirates.  Max later finds Marcelo and Passos trying to drive away with unknown cargo which allows him to begin to piece a bigger picture together.  And of course, Max’ Sao Paulo counterpart – an honest cop – is there to help him from time to time.

We also get to see Max and Passos in New Jersey in another flashback and to relive their original meeting and the intense gunbattles with a mob bosses’ men after Max kills his son.

This game is intensely exciting as the player gets to chase a plane with a grenade launcher, as well as hanging from a helicopter with one hand while shooting RPGs down with the other hand that are being launched at you, as well as many other intense action scenes where it seems impossible that Max will survive.

Fortunately, the cutscenes are reasonably placed so the player usually does not have to go back too far when Max dies. However, there is often real frustration in nearly clearing a section, only to get shot in the back to then replay the entire sequence all over again. And this can happen pretty often.  There is one other obvious bit of “consolitis” where you must follow a certain sequence exactly in response to on screen prompts or you see your own grisly death, over-and-over.  Fortunately, the game works perfectly with a keyboard plus mouse, especially after the patch.

Ducking for cover and having the new ablity to Shootdodge as well as shoot from the ground in any direction, gives Max new strategy and abilities to deal with multiple AI-controlled NPCs. The game’s AI is not bad as the enemies use varied methods to try and outflank the player while others rush him using varied dodging tactics.

Graphics and Widescreen

Max Payne 3 has excellent graphics. It is perhaps not quite up to the level of Crysis 2 or Battlefield 3, but it is sufficient to give excellent visuals when everything is maxed out. We played the entire game at 2560×1600 using a single GTX 680 and Core i7-3770K at their stock settings as chosen below.

The implementation of FXAA in Max Payne 3 is very good and the text is not blurred. MSAA can be used but the performance hit is high and 8xAA actually does not look as good as FXAA on Very High. Please check the FXAA vs. MSAA Shootout on the following page. Since we could not use Fraps, we cannot comment on framerates except to say that it was “fluid”.

Max Payne 3 is also designed for super-widescreen resolutions and we played at 5760×1080 using a GTX 690. There were no issues whatsoever and the gaming experience was superb. The only issue that we found is that the cutscenes are not set up to display over 3-panels and will only display on the center screen.

We actually preferred to play Max Payne 3 on a single display at 2560×1600 for best immersion even though we lost the widescreen tactical advantage of being able to see enemy NPCs attempting to outflank Max on the sides. We also enjoyed playing Max Payne 3 in Stereoscopic 3D even though it is “Not recommended” for 3D Vision 2 yet by Nvidia. Please see the 3D Vision 2 section.

These are 5760×1080 outdoor widescreen shots.

The above shot is of a night scene with Max wearing a flak jacket. This extra protection is only employed for one particularly intense chapter. However, nothing is really lost by playing on a single screen as often the action is confined to indoors or to narrow street scenes.

Max Payne 3 gets the series exactly right and improves on it. There is an awesome balance of story-telling from the hero’s view, coupled with intense action that is somewhat relieved by very dark humor and sometimes insightful observations. Max actually grows as a hero and as a person in this game and it is a great story on many levels.

The over-the-top violence is to be noted as absolutely not for the squeamish and although it is graphically violent, it does not glorify it for the sake of violence. Rather it is a condemnation of the conscienceless who do not value it – these are the thugs that Max guns down and executes without mercy. During his growth, Max searches his own conscience for his motives. Max Payne 3 is very much like a ten-hour non-stop interactive action movie, and this editor felt that he got his sixty dollars’ worth just from a single playthrough. It is that good!

Max Payne is not super-human and he cannot take on armed NPCs directly except during bullet time. Multiple gunshot wounds will quickly end his new career as private security.  His health does not regenerate although Painkillers are the equivalent of a healing “med pack”.  As Max, the player will need to adopt tactics depending on which enemies they are facing.

As in the original game, it is always wise to survey your surroundings and plan out your attack beforehand. And if you do not successfuly complete your objective, pay careful attention to where your enemies were shooting from so that you can go into the replay with foreknowledge.

Make sure you look carefully for both clues, golden gun parts and for painkillers.  They are often quite cleverly hidden and the painkillers can make the difference between breeezing through a section or repeating it over-and-over.

Next up, we look at Tessellation, Image Quality and especially MSAA vs. FXAA as well as playing with 3D Vision 2.