Video game actor James McCaffrey, whose roles included the iconic voice of Max Payne and Alex Casey in this year’s Alan Wake 2, has passed away.
]]>Fresh from the release of Alan Wake 2 - and apparently with a view to driving me nuts, because I haven't had a chance to play Alan Wake 2 yet - Remedy have shared some titbits about future projects. These include the modestly-known about Control 2, a sequel to the paranormal Brutalist telekinet 'em up that is seeing "good progress", and the forthcoming remakes of Max Payne 1 and 2, on which Remedy are collaborating with GTA and Max Payne 3 developer Rockstar.
Further afield, there's the mysterious Condor project, a co-op multiplayer Control spin-off (pictured above) that builds on Remedy's experience crafting the single-player component for wayward service-based shooter CrossfireX. And at the very edge of sight, there's the faint outline of something called Codename Vanguard, about which naff-all is known. Could it be that "crazy, huge budget, dark gothic fantasy" Remedy's creative director Sam Lake would like one day to make?
]]>Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind several wonderfully odd shooters, have a fun trend where they put writer turned creative director Sam Lake on-screen in many of their projects. He’s playing an FBI agent in the upcoming Alan Wake 2, but the trend started with the studio’s breakout hit Max Payne, where the titular tortured man’s face was modelled after Lake’s. One new mod now brings back his grimacing face in the bullet time threequel Max Payne 3.
]]>Welcome to the latest edition of The RPS Time Capsule, where members of the RPS Treehouse each pick one game from a given year to save from extinction while all other games fizzle and die on the big digital griddle in the sky before blinking out of existence. This time, we're turning our preservation mitts on the year 2012, a year absolutely stacked with some pretty stellar releases. But which ones will make the cut and be safely ensconced inside our cosy capsule for future generations? Come on down to find out.
]]>Grab your dual Berettas and scrunch your face up real hard, because oh me oh my Remedy have announced they're going to remake Max Payne and Max Payne 2. The remakes are still extremely early in development, so Remedy have little to say and even less to show, but all I need to know is: Max Payne, baby!
]]>It sure has been a week for the Rockstar games vault. After accidentally pulling a bunch of their games off Steam on Monday, then bringing them back, some other older Rockstar games got a treat. The PC versions of Max Payne 3 and L.A. Noire now include all their DLCs for free. A nice little treat for the back catalogue.
]]>After 21 years as a Rockstar Games big cheese, Dan Houser will leave the company in March. He's co-written almost every Rockstar game since 1999, including Grand Theft Auto from London through to V, Bully, Max Payne 3, and the Red Dead Redemptions. That's made him a big influence on the tone of Rockstar's games. I wonder how that might change once he's moved on. Where he's going and what he'll do next, we don't know. He can probably afford to eat pizza while watching Heat on loop the rest of his life, to be honest.
]]>Just when the Epic Games Launcher seemed like it might have been the final salvo in the launcher wars, along come Rockstar Games with a launcher of their own. The imaginatively-named Rockstar Games Launcher lets you launch Rockstar Games games, and also buy them. Okay? And? Why would I want that? Well, Rockstar are hoping to tempt people to install it by initially offering 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a freebie.
]]>I felt the rise of that old familiar feeling. I hated it. I welcomed it. We're going back to Max Payne 2. With Control out now and putting Remedy back on the map, we're diving into their 2003 hit, and back into a world of slow-motion gunplay, over-the-top twirling reloads and mods absolutely obsessed with The Matrix and early 2000s action movie soundtracks. In fairness, the Max Payne 2 mod scene has been largely stagnant for the past few years, but that doesn't mean dead. Let's take a look at some of the more interesting scrapes Max and pals have shot themselves out of.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
The farther time drifts away from the release of Max Payne 3 [official site] the more I appreciate what Rockstar tried to do with it. I hated the idea when it was announced. “Max in Brazil? BALD?!? WITH A BEARD?!?!?!” I don't think I've ever been so angry at a beard before. Games do funny things to the old noggin sponge, don't they?
]]>An exploration of addiction in gaming, whether as a mechanical device or something more.
“Looking for a fix, man?” asked the unscrupulous dealer who met The Courier at the gates of Freeside. “I got what you need.”
]]>[Scene: a darkened alleyway. MAX PAYNE struggles to stand, clearly dazed and more-than-slightly drunk.] Ugh, what happened? How did it get his bad? One moment, I was riding high in Brazil and taking the nearest highway exit onto easy street. And the next...? My sales had gone south, and I'd swerved into the seedy gutter of an industry where three million shipped units is barely even good for a pack of cigarettes and a cheap bottle of booze. And now I'm practically bleeding DLC, digging my way out of one grave and right into another. Hah, I guess the joke's on me - like a seagull with two fully cooked turkeys for wings flying against the crashing waves of inevitability. You know what I mean?
]]>Apparently, the ability to slow the passage of time - perhaps mankind's most potent enemy of all - wasn't enough for some Max Payne 3 players. They needed more an edge. An upper hand. A fool-proof means of killing you and your fun. So, of course, they added the requisite loadout of cheats and hacks to their arsenals, and now honest players are getting quite Mad Max over Max Payne. Happily, however, Rockstar has proposed a rather unique solution.
]]>Max Payne 3's dive on to PC was in such slow motion that it took a few weeks longer to land than it did in augmented-televisionland. But it's here now, and the critical shell-casings are beginning to chime on the concrete floor. Here's how I heard them ring out.
]]>Max Payne 3 is coming to PC today! (Jim's review should turn up next week.) If your consolebox-owning friends are incredibly dedicated to taunting you, they may have already beaten it somewhere in the realm of 22.4 times by now - assuming they're playing in shifts. But I don't imagine the image they have irreparably seared into their retinas looks anywhere near this nice. Rockstar's assembled a new trailer "entirely from in-game PC footage," and it does, in fact, look fairly snazzy. Admittedly, it's nothing mind-blowing, and the trailer itself is oddly stilted and awkward given Rockstar's usual eye for style, but still: good game, better on PC. All is right in the world.
]]>'Cinematic' should rightfully be a dirty word when discussing games and yet Max Payne 3's marketing wears it proudly, like a sweat-stained vest or an inappropriately jaunty tie. A cutscene is cinematic, every detail and angle just so, no room for accident or deviation, but to aspire to a ‘cinematic’ experience during play is to ignore so much of what makes experiences within a game unique to the form. We run, gun and react in worlds that rely, for the enjoyment they bring, on the accidental and the curious as much as they require adherence to a plan. Here’s to the unexpected, the unplanned and the unforgettable.
]]>Maybe the launch trailer arrived before the game because Max Payne 3, like it's titular bearded/cleanshaven renegade cop/angry vest, is currently diving toward its release date in slow motion. It really wants to be on your hard drive, honest it does, but it wants to arrive in style and preferably while shooting sixteen guns simultaneously into every other game you have installed in order to make room for itself. Whatever the case, the video should be filed under 'portentous' and 'containing admirable discussions of the nature of healing and time'.
]]>To support the much-hyped launch of Max Payne 3, and attendant multiplayer facets, the clever bees of Rockstar have reworked their Social Club functionality, overhauling the whole thing for Max players. They report that their new outing will include "custom personal Social Club user profiles, an all-new Friends system with public and direct messaging, the ability to link in and login with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, Newswire activity and reply notifications." And other stuff too, including the ability to be able to register your Max Payne 3 clan, should you wish to do such a thing. Rather more immediate gratification can be found in the free Marvel-produced comic, which details more backstory, and allows me to post amusing out-of-context leader images.
]]>Yes, there are multiple implications in that headline. You may read into them how ever you please. See, if you take a moment to consider the current state of your life and the world around you, you'll probably come to a shocking realization: Max Payne 3's gun-calloused caress has yet to gleefully clasp hands with your itchy trigger finger. You are painfully aware of your Payne-less-ness. And yet, Rockstar's already seen fit to announce multiplayer DLC. For basically the entire year. Beginning with the Local Justice map pack in June, bullet-time (and, you know, bullets) will fly with seven packs in possibly less than as many months.
]]>Normally, those of us imbued with the strange power to manipulate RPS' frontpage into whatever form we see fit (usually PC gaming articles, but sometimes, a giraffe!) don't go all starry-eyed over system requirements. Nowadays, all the nitty gritty bits and bobs generally add up to "Yes, it will run decently on a mid-range PC or better; no, it will not run on a toaster, abacus, or cloud that looks like a PC if you squint." Max Payne 3, however, is kind of a special exception, seeing as it's demanding a 35GB space on your hard drive. I've met MMOs that made less of a craterous impact on my hard drive. But, to take the edge off that slow-mo download, here's a possibly even slower-mo trailer. Damn it, Max, how can I stay mad at that ruggedly handsome, perma-grimacing face?
]]>Oh to be a bullet. To exist in a momentary, frequently black-and-white world free of complications or petty concerns. Point A to point B. That'd be my entire lightning-quick existence, but I'd get to savor ever slow-mo second - probably while shouting "wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" Max Payne 3, at least, offers a glimpse into this hot leaden utopia, but at what cost? Pretty much none, as it turns out. The gore-spattered kill cam, especially, looks like a barrel of kitten giggles - which is to say, it's a mix between Fallout 3's VATS meets Arkham City's end-of-brawl slobber-knockers, except you have full control over speed. Those are the things I think of when kittens giggle. Is that weird? Anyway, the excruciatingly painful wonderful trailer is after the break.
Hello, you. The unseasonably warm afternoons seem to be making the hivemind sleepy. Personally I've been in a trance for the best part of an hour, just staring off into the blue skies overhead. Mmm. Is that jazz playing from an open window? But then everything suddenly came back into focus and I realised there were videos to be blogged. And we all like to see imaginary men getting shot - Hell, some of us depend on it for our sanity. Yes, not a day goes by where RPS doesn't provide your manshoot fix. Here it is. Again, and it's Max Payne 3 multiplayer. How could that possibly work? Apparently by only making players in your line of sight enter bullet time. Which is a neat way to solve it. You'll have sort of bullet time "bubbles" going off across the level when people choose to use it, I suppose. Anyway, the video explains it, so go take a look. Slooooowllllyyyyy.
]]>For months now, the internet has been buzzing with speculation about what secrets forthcoming man-shooting game Max Payne 3 might contain. So very many questions are left to be answered by this third part of the epic, twisting saga of shooting a lot of men in the face in slow motion, and we've had to wait long, agonising years to discover how it all ends. With Max Payne 3's release just months away, RPS has rounded up all the rumours, speculation and script leaks to bring you the definitive guide to Max's fate. Spoilers await.
]]>The new Max Payne game has graphics in it. A lot. Our research suggest that it's around 70% graphics, 20% noises, and 10% miscellaneous. For more information on Max Payne's graphics, visual effects, and cinematics, I should direct you to the new trailer, below.
]]>Alright, so Max Payne 3 has a cover system, we've established that. But stay calm, it's going to be alright. I played the fancy high resolution PC build for an hour across multiple fights with multiple enemies and didn't duck once. Can we all settle down quietly now?
]]>Time to get your grisled look on. The first ever screenshots of the PC version of Max Payne have appeared. They number three, and Rockstar boasts the PC version will feature,
"gloriously increased resolution and graphical detail in both the epic story and the explosive multiplayer modes."
See them below.
]]>The second Max Payne 3 trailer has been thrust out from the seething fronds of the internet like... nope, I can't finish that coherently. But let's be honest, it wasn't really angsty Payne's monologues that did it, it was the guns, the pills, and the hundreds of dead gangsters sailing slowly through the air.
Watch more of that stuff happening, below.
]]>Earlier this week I spoke with Oskari Häkkinen, head of franchise development at Remedy, about the PC release of Alan Wake. We talked about the importance of PC gaming to the Remedy team, drawing inspiration from popular culture and whether Alan's further adventures will be following close behind.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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?
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>"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?
]]>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.
]]>We sent Agent Smee back to Rockstar HQ with another mission: to uncover Max Payne 3. This is what he found.
First things first. The main meat of the game may be set in Brazil, but the preview begins familiarly enough with Max trapped under gunfire in his shambles of a New York apartment, a furious mafia mob boss screaming Max’s name hysterically into the winter night’s air in a nasal Italian-American accent. It’s unmistakably Max Payne, complete with battered trench coat and crap tie. The sudden attack interrupts him from drowning his sorrows in a whisky bottle, the mafia thugs positioned at the end of the corridor shooting out his windows. But Max is unconcerned as he’s basking in the impervious safety of a cover system, hunched up to the side of his front door, gun in hand.
]]>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.
]]>Bearded and/or bald bodyguard/cop simulation Max Payne 3 has a release date of March 2012. I suppose that’s a release month rather than date. But the month isn’t the exciting part; the exciting part is that the release date is for both consoleboxes and PC. Hurrah! This is Rockstar, remember, so they might have kept us waiting until 2018. There will also be a multiplayer mode, more details of which below, and there are two new screenshots to look at. It's a veritable trenchcoat pocket full of details!
]]>Rockstar have released a spread of new screens of Max Payne 3, showcasing the game's flashback-heavy plot (but not its less corridor-focused structure, sadly). We've got Max in his current role, as a baldy bodyguard in Brazil, but we've also got him as a less baldy cop in Brazil and even as a less baldy cop in America, looking flash in his trademark leather jacket and disgusting tie (if the flash in question is a flashbang, going off inches from your face). Come take a look.
]]>Some decent information is arriving about Max Payne 3, in the wake of some shitty screenshots being released. EDGE magazine have got a giant old feature about it, and through the power of copying out some bits, we can tell you some snippets about the game below. We'd also recommend you rush out and buy a copy of EDGE, as that will assuage our guilt.
]]>You don't visit, you don't write, you don't even sodding call for two years, Maxwell, and then without warning you send us a photo of you in the dark, looking all mucky and miserable, and another picture of some squinty bloke with a gun? We can't even see your face, Max, and you look as though you're about to shoot your own feet. Charming. Thanks, Max. Thanks ever so, yeah?
"He's coming," Rockstar say. Really? I thought it was just the way he was standing.
In theory, this is still due on PC - it was at least originally announced for it. Rockstar seem to have given up on this platform lately, but let's keep the faith for Fat Max anyway. You can see the other pic below.
]]>Once we get past early summer things get a little hazy. We enter a nether-realm of shifting dates and unclear prophecies. By then we'll also have a whole bunch of games I haven't previously mentioned show up in the intervening months, stuff that we didn't have release dates for to place them in our line-up. This final post in our preview attempts to survey them all. To the future! (And check out part one and two if you haven't seen them already.)
]]>It's going to be a quieter Christmas than we were expecting. A bundle of big-name games have announced in the last few days that they'll no longer be bulging Santa's sack, but instead offering themselves in the colder months of 2010. This year your Christmas tree will not be towering over 2K games BioShock 2, Mafia II, nor Max Payne 3. Indeed they're not alone. A smattering of console-only titles have also slipped, as well as Activision's Singularity. What's a jolly-bellied man to do this holiday season? Deliver Modern Warfare 2 an awful lot, it seems.
]]>(All the images in this post click through to the full size version.) Mr Payne is older, twelve years older, and living in Brazil. He's no longer a cop with nothing to lose, and instead is a bodyguard for a wealthy Sao Paulo family. Rockstar have sent over a bunch of images of the new game, showing our favourite emotionally-tortured slow-mo diving dude in the process of dealing with Brazil's unpleasantly-armed urban underworld. The game is being developed with the RAGE engine which powered GTA4, although with some modifications, including "brand-new particle physics technology to deliver spectacular, highly advanced close-quarters combat" and "an intelligent cover system". Rockstar also report that "Bullet-Time, an addiction to painkillers, mature themes and Max’s ever-present internal monologue" will all be present in the new game. So that's good.
]]>At least if the gossip spinning out of an alleged Game Informer cover story is to be believed. Via VG247, we have a low-res photo of said possible cover, showing Mr Payne looking more than a little worse for wear. A follow-up story on Deeko condenses what it claims are the salient points of the feature - our Max is down and out in Brazil, addicted to painkillers and living in a "fully-destructible world." Sound plausible? And if it does, how do we feel about Rockstar moving the poor lad from his traditional home of New York to Latin America? Sounds good to me: potentially very colourful, as I'm not sure I can stand many more grim'n'gloomy-looking shooters.
]]>Rockstar drops the first hint about the next installment of the grandaddy of slo-mo man-shoots:
]]>
![קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/honkai-star-rail-bronya-fu-xuan.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]")
