Squee!

"When had I ever needed to invite trouble in? It always found me, no matter where I hid."

The latest installment by Rockstar. Written by Dan Houser of GTA and Red Dead fame. Max is older and more world weary (if that's possible), looks amazing. Supposed to be out this summer.

I got mine pre-ordered.

Not really interested. I liked the way the first game looked/played. This one just looks different. Not bad necessarily I guess but doesn't seem like the same series.

Yeah, I pre-ordered through Steam and got 1 and 2 with it, pretty good deal.

I saw the preview and thought it looked ridiculous. It looks like a completely different setting. Haven't they taken away everything that makes Max Payne Max Payne? I mean the story started in New Jersey for crying out loud.

I saw some previews and interviews, and in response to Max Payne being removed from its roots, the developers said basically "yeah, well, kids today weren't alive when Max Payne came out, so what's the point?" Yeah, I guess we're at that point. I mean, it's not Max Payne like we knew it, so I just look at it like a brand new, random Rockstar game. When has Rockstar ever failed us? Just don't think of it as Max Payne.

Im waiting on it. I loved Max Payne. I loved the self deprecating humor, and the bad acting, and the comic cut scenes. Im not convinced this is going to be anything good 'enough'.

LOL, alternate history fan fiction Max Payne.

I could buy that. Except they went out and got the Max Payne property to market this games AS Max Payne 3. It's not. So they can't be really 100% behind the idea that they are after all these new kids that have never heard of Max Payne. They are cashing in a bit on the name in the hopes they get some series fans.

Which is perfectly fine of course, but the game they are pushing isn't Max Payne.

We don't know it isn't Max Payne. Honestly, the major difference we've seen so far is that it's not in Noir York City. Whoopy-doo. After Max Payne 2, he wasn't going back to the NYPD anyhow, so a chance of scene was going to be needed anyhow.

So, where else would we put him? How about a reeking hellhole in which he doesn't even need to be a cop to have a death score in the triple digits? A place where that only makes him one of the more professional shooters, rather than just some piker.

Wow, things sure looked grim in those early previews but I'm almost entirely sure they were never that blatent in flipping off any naysaying fans. Got a source for that specific part?

For the rest of this post, I think I'll go ahead and play devil's advocate for a bit and say that while I was as disbelieving as everyone else here when it was first announced, all the recent previews and trailers... They don't give me the same vibe, it really seems to me like after going into a short spat of development hell in 2009-2010, they turned around and said to themselves they should probably rethink the game. In most of what I've seen lately, they do seem to be addressing a lot of complaints that immediately came up when it was first announced.

For those of you who, like me, can't be arsed to check the Rockstar site itself, I got the youtube links to some of the more recent trailers:

Official Trailer #2

Design & Technology: Creating A Cutting Edge Action Shooter

Design & Technology: Targeting & Weapons

Design & Technology: Visual Effects & Cinematics

Design & Technology: Bullet Time

I dunno, maybe I'm just naive but the biggest departures I can see right now is the following: He's not in New York(outside of flashbacks), he's shooting people in sunlight(utter madness), he'll shave himself bald at some point later in the game, you can stick to cover instead of strafing in and out(I hope the AI is good about flushing you out), you won't be able to carry two dozen different weapons with enough ammo for each to murder a city block; just two pistols of any combination, a longarm, and maybe grenades, and no washed out graphic novel comics that feature Max making the stupidest faces possible by a human being. Only the last one really seems like true heresy to me, as the ones in the first game were mostly just edited photographs, so those goofy faces were made by a real person.

Well okay, that last one and the fact that the PC version might suck because lawl rockstar, but you can't win it all.



Oh, and Wounded Ronin? This gif is just for you.

http://i.imgur.com/vJEci.gif

At least this game will treat it's guns slightly better than Farcry 2, no?

Honestly, as long as you get the feel right, you can put Noir anywhere.

I mean, hell, they had it in AFRICA at one time.

Sam Lake is still involved. This is good news to me.

Holy shit, the possibility of artistic integrity? That makes me open my mind again to the game possibly being worth playing.

Find out a week Tuesday I guess.

I really can't express how much I am looking forward to this game. I have a great amount of faith in the people involved in the project.

I want to find out what happens when you mix Interfectum with Whiskey.

It'll be a powerup. It will cause Max to get temporary invunerability on account of going numb, but at the cost of making his aim shakey as hell.

Also, there's some sort of comic that's up.

If that is really a powerup that boosts my faith in them. Thanks for the heads up on the comic I couldn't really check their site from the field.

Wow, Alan is really hitting the vitamins!

And by vitamins, I mean booze.

Well lookie here, we got us a nice Launch Trailer. It even uses the old theme tune from the last game.

Ol' Max has had happier days, guess two massacres, a dead family, dead love interest, and betrayal by friends(twice!) has kinda worn thin on the man. Can't wait to see how much worse things are about to get!