{"id":7905,"date":"2010-05-03T09:31:42","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T14:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=7905"},"modified":"2010-05-03T09:43:50","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T14:43:50","slug":"max-payne-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=7905","title":{"rendered":"“Max Payne” 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This<\/a> is Max Payne 3? This is bald musclebound redneck is supposed to be John Woo<\/a>-inspired bullet-time specialist Max Payne? <\/p>\n

A beefy slob in a dirty wifebeater, gunning down terrorists in a sun-drenched ghetto. Has anyone related with this project ever familiarized themselves with the concept<\/em> of noir<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Hats? Ties? Jackets? Cities at night? Moody lighting? Mobsters? Down on his luck detective? Neon? A protagonist who is NOT a hulking badass? Snappy dialog with clever dames and world-weary cops? Does any of this sound familiar? <\/p>\n

You don’t need all<\/em> of these things to make a noir story. In fact, it’s common to change a couple on purpose. But if you drop all if them, then it sort of defeats the purpose of calling it “noir”. If I made a superhero movie about a guy who doesn’t have any powers, doesn’t dress up, and makes no effort to fight crime or be heroic, then I didn’t actually make a superhero movie, did I? I just made some other movie and then mis-categorized it. Even if it turns out to be a great movie, I shouldn’t call it Spider-Man 4. <\/p>\n

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It’s not like noir is this overcrowded genre where they needed to break away so they could stand out. They took a game which was thematically unique – the one<\/em> active noir franchise – and made it into something else. Now it looks like Kane & Lynch, the poster child for bland and unlikeable. <\/p>\n

The usual explanation when something like this happens (as with Xcom) is that they’re just harvesting the brand name to garner a few sales, but, it’s not like Max Payne is this obscure, struggling series that needed an overhaul to make it more “mainstream”. Metacritic scores:<\/p>\n

Max Payne<\/a>: 89
\nMax Payne 2<\/a>: 86
\nKane & Lynch<\/a>: 65<\/p>\n

Changing a unique series so that it can be more like other, less interesting, less successful titles makes no sense. Rockstar, I will be happy – delighted even – to eat these words<\/em> if this game isn’t a soup of mindless battles, perfunctory boilerplate dialog, and sticky-cover based combat. But from where I sit you’re turning gold into lead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Max Payne 3? This is bald musclebound redneck is supposed to be John Woo-inspired bullet-time specialist Max Payne? A beefy slob in a dirty wifebeater, gunning down terrorists in a sun-drenched ghetto. Has anyone related with this project ever familiarized themselves with the concept of noir? Hats? Ties? Jackets? Cities at night? Moody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}