the vynsane asylum

I hadn't bought any new games in awhile, so I bought Max Payne 3 at WM for $20. I had never played the previous Max Payne games (or seen the awful Mark Wahlberg film) so I didn't have any preconceptions about the series. But I'm usually impressed with Rockstar's gaming efforts, so it had that in its favor.
It's a fairly short gaming experience. I started on Monday and just finished the game. I may go back and find some of the hidden extras, but overall I don't see much of a replay factor. The story itself is pretty good. Max is a burnout ex-cop in this one, whose been hired to protect a rich Brazilian family in Sao Paulo and gets caught up in kidnapping and organ harvesting plots involving local gangs and corrupt police and political officials. It's a fairly straightforward 3rd person shooter with lots of violence and a high body count. There's also a few vehicle chases interspersed, one in speedboats, one in a bus, one on a subway, and an exciting finale at an airport where you have a grenade launcher vs various coptors, army vehicles, and an escaping Lear jet.
It was pretty entertaining, like an action movie you can play, but I wish it would've played longer.

I got Max Payne 3 for Christmas and haven't played it yet. Haven't played the first two either. Supposedly the AI for the bad guys is supposed to be smarter. So if you are in a shoot out, they actually take cover.

The previous games came out like a decade ago for the Original XBox. And it was a different company doing them. I dont think you need to have played the other games to get the gist of the character. In fact, some people were complaining this is a departure from the guy from the first games. Less of a badass supercop and more of a burnout. They kinda explain his history in a couple flashback levels set in Jersey. The AI is about the same as other RockStar games. Or the most recent 007 games like BloodStone and QoS also come to mind. They'll take cover, cover each other, and try to flank you if there's enough of them. Staying in one spot under cover will get you killed for sure. I found the best way is to deplete their numbers at the beginning with a few head shots before diving behind something. They're unawares at the start of a firefight.
The slo-mo "bullet time" feature helps immensely. One drawback is the amount of "cutscenes" throughout the game. Some of them last several minutes. And theres no 'skip' button. Even on the second play through. But on the second play, I've found cleverer ways to kill badguys. For instance, in one shoot out in a car chop shop, shooting the gear box for the hydraulic skids, you can crush a dude with a car! Or in another area, shooting a brick from under a truck's tire will make it roll into the water, dragging two aholes with it.

Bought, played and finished the new Tomb Raider reboot earlier this summer.
Excellent game with a good story and great design.
Not too hard though. I finished it maybe two weeks, playing for a few hours at a time.

Diabolical wrote:Bought, played and finished the new Tomb Raider reboot earlier this summer.
Excellent game with a good story and great design.
Not too hard though. I finished it maybe two weeks, playing for a few hours at a time.

When that drops down to $20 I'll be grabbing that one as well.

It was on sale for $30 when I snagged it.

I went to WM today and picked up MassEffect3. It was marked $19.99 but rang up a mere $9.96 at the register.
I didn't get very far in the first one and always meant to go back and restart it, but I played the 2nd one all the way through and enjoyed it. Only a couple hours into this one, but it's shaping up well.

Looking at Skylanders Swap Force & Just Dance 2014 for the kids for Xmas. I'm also likely going to get Diablo III for PS3 to play coop with Tom. We loved the demo. He's been asking for Call of Duty as well & they've had one on loan here for a bit, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to have my baby own that just yet.

When I stopped at Target to pick up Batman: Arkham Origins I also saw and grabbed Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on clearance for $5.98.
Never played an Assassin's Creed game, and I've heard they are good, so I couldn't pass it up at that price. I probably won't crack it open until I'm done with Batman.

Found an even better deal than my last post: Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days for PS3 for a whopping $2.99.
I haven't played it yet so I have no idea if its any good or not (the reviews seem right in the middle), but for $2.99 I couldn't pass it up. Besides, it can't any worse than the Iron Man 2 game.

COD Ghosts for $29.99 because it came with an upgrade code that I used for a download of the ps4 version for $10 more. The ps4 version proper is still $59.99 up here, so now I can play on both systems if I want for less money.

Why would I want to play on both systems you ask? I have no answer for that. Please bugger off.


Oh, and I won't call "spoilers" per se, but part of the opening takes place in space - and it's ridiculously awesome.

The space stuff was in the commercial, so it's fine.

However, it doesn't explain how guns work in the vacuum of space with no oxygen to burn to fire the primer to actually shoot bullets. But wev, it's only a game.

Less thinky more shooty.

I just wasn't sure if they had an in-game explanation, or if they're just giving a middle finger to physics.

Nah, there were even sounds in space to go along with the issue you described - I'm just going to chalk up the sounds as vibrations traveling through the space suits from firing the rifles/being struck by rounds and the ability for the rifles to fire as them having been specially designed to work in space - let's call it an encapsulated firing system that works on small air canisters like a paintball gun as the first part of a 2 stage firing process. Or something.