There’s a new feature, Last Man Standing, that adds a great new dynamic to the action. Rather than simply auto-refilling Max’s health when he takes too many bullets or simply letting him die, Max Payne 3 implements a one-hit kill opportunity in which the screen colors desaturate, except for the gunman who’s made the fatal shot on Max. There’s one chance to kill him and stay alive, at the cost of one painkiller dose. And yet, while Last Man Standing is a great feature that chains combat, it does point to some wonky moments in the game. The camera works exceptionally well 95 percent of the time, but there are moments in which ༺the Last Man Standing camera doesn’t fixate properly, or it shifts away from the intended target. That happens a lot when the feature clashes with 🅷the game’s excellent collision system, which finds Max realistically rebounding off walls. It results in slow, agonizing deaths that you can't prevent as you wish the game would hurry up and let you retry the section.

Features like Last Man Standing complement t♊he gameplay wonderfully. On Normal difficulty, enemy AI is smart enough to flank and attack M🥀ax, and as the game progresses, it gets tougher and tougher to advance quickly. And while the game’s checkpoint system is mildly irritating in the early stages, its pacing can be downright frustrating as you inch toward the final and find yourself saying “oh, man; I’m all the way back here again?” As the game clamps down harder with tougher enemies and more damaging weapons, you’ll be repeating more often than you expect.

Max Payne 3 offers up Arcade Mode, which allowsꦍ you to extend your smiting beyond the campaign. New York Minute returns, and the time-based mode is just as much fun as it was in the prior games. You have one minute on the clock, and each kill gives you more time to rack up a higher body count. New to this sequel is Score Attack, which lets you replay prior chapters while keeping a steady score ticker at the top of the screen to determine how efficiently you can take down thugs. You can compare your stats across a few filters, including global servers and your friends list. It helps give the game longer legs than simply mowing through multiple playthroughs. It’s a fun addition that we used to rack up the points by popping skulls for 500 point multipliers.