I played the first two Max Payne games a half-dozen times
apiece. I love their stylized, kinetic violence. I love Max's
pulp-noir voice and fatalism. The guy's more sympathetic than he
has a right to be, considering those preposterous storylines,
and I love directing his pill-fueled, bullet-time ballet
tragedies. So while I greeted Max Payne 3 with a lot of
trepidation, I'm thrilled that Rockstar lived up to the series'
legacy with a masterful blend of near-perfect combat and
character. In an overcrowded genre, Max Payne 3 shows how to do
a linear shooter right.  With Max Payne 3, Rockstar grounded Max
in a convincingly crafted setting and surrounded him with a more
believable cast of characters than the old games' intentional
cliches. While MP3 might cut ties with the past a little too
cleanly (its references to the previous games border on
dismissive), Max is exactly where he should be 10 years later:
washed up in Brazil, getting drunk and high while doing private
security work. His clients are the ultra-we