Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Max Payne 3: Bullet Gargles finally has a PC release date. I thought I’d be cool and mark the June 1st release on my calendar by shooting at the date, marking the special occasion with a bullet hole, but then I realised it’s out on the 29th of May in North America. I tried to flip the calendar over with another bullet, but things got out of hand. If they want to follow my gunspree release schedule, Rockstar will just have to release it on June 12th, The Corner of My Monitor, My Foot, and Next Door’s Housekeeper. While I bandage up and shop online for a new identity, distract yourselves with the new trailer they released.
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Good morning! I became sick and (didn’t) almost perish but now I’m back and, my, what tumultuous events I missed in my absence. When I saw the news that Max Payne 3 had been delayed I fell backwards out of my chair in slow motion, pumping round after round of screaming lead through my monitor in anguish and fury while simultaneously having and not having a beard. In the distinctly Woo-less land of drizzle and pies, that action looks a lot more like a gray-faced man going ‘tsk’ and running his hand down his face. Delay or not, the media barrage continues with a new video that highlights animation and targeting. The last one seemed to cover a bit of that as well but here’s more.

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Plain old videogame industry news time, folks. The game known only as Max Payne 3 has been delayed by two months, and will now land in May rather than April. Only it’s worse than that for us – the console version is due on May 15 in the US but not until May 18 everywhere, which is pointlessly insulting enough in itself. But on top of that, the PC version isn’t due until May 29 in the US and flippin’ bloody June 1 in the UK and elsewhere. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
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Can digital information really constitute a barrage? I don’t know, but I’m scared. Barrages sound nasty to me, but Rockstar have pledged to send a barrage of Max Payne 3 info at us over “the coming weeks and months.” I’ve looked at the first missive from their asset-cannon, and it’s only some screenshots rather than gunshot or a disease-riddled corpse, so I think we’re safe for now. They’ve also included some captions on these screenshots, which I shall quote verbatim* below.
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Marketing! What can’t/won’t it do? One thing it can and will do is promote a videogame on Twitter with the sweet promise of having your face be transplanted onto an in-game character model. Specifically, a character model in Max Payne 3, which might well mean that the winners will be gunned down by Max on one of his righteous rampages. Let’s just hope it’s suave Max rather than fat Max, eh?
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Want you to know about the multiplayer contents of Max Payne 3? Oh, what’s wrong with you? And them? Max Payne shouldn’t be multiplayer! There’s him versus the world! And I’m him! But shush John, this is Rockstar, and they don’t exactly rush into multiplayer do they? No, I suppose not. So are you going to actually find out what it is before making a big fuss? Oh, okay then. Good.

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Gamespot have bagged a huge video interview with Max Payne 3′s art director, Rob Nelson, and you can see that below. Nelson starts out talking about the style of the game, with reference to the series’ inspiration in Hong Kong cinema, but also touching on the choice to set the new game in South America. The goes on to discuss some of the choices in physics and animation, and what that means for how the team are developing Max Payne’s gunplay potential for the new game. The interview clip also features a bunch of in-game footage.

Max Payne 3 will glide slowly into our reticules in March of 2012.
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“Rockstar – forever counting down to the next trailer”, observes our Adam wryly. Indeed, this does appear to be their current MO – declaring a trailer’s arrival in advance, and hoping to cause internet frenzy during the wait. So, this one, which I believe is our first substantial look at the game in action, will unlock at 5pm UK time. I’ll leave it below for you – feel free to spend the next 15 minutes staring at a black box, or why not go and have a jog or plant a tree in the meantime? This four minutes of narrative video is, by the way, billed as “a first look at the targeting mechanics, movement and animation, enemy intelligence and other technical design innovations going into building an advanced, intense and immersive action-shooter with Max Payne 3.”

Hands up who’s hot for targeting mechanics?
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New shots of Max Payne 3 are always a welcome sight. Not due until March next year, we’re obviously still a way off from actually seeing anything useful, so clearly dripping out the odd picture here an there is the usual tedious PR game we all have to put up with for some reason. Still, by February we’ll be sick of the sight of it, so let’s make the most of still feeling that frisson of early excitement? I don’t know. I’m confused about what to be cross about. I’ll just be cross about everything.

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How long we have waited for another date with a boy named Max. Hardly fair to call him a boy any more, of course – he’s thick of waist, hirsute of chin and, after a time, shaved of head. The New York City cop has moved to Brazil, times are hard and his body is soft. Of course, he still has his best friends by his side – his best friends being an assortment of military-grade weaponry.

This is Max Payne 3, and this is its first-ever trailer – composed entirely of in-engine footage, apparently.
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