14 DAY TRIAL // I had just shot down not one but two RPG rounds as they were flying towards the helicopter I was dangling from (yes, that is the right verb) and my Max was now on the landing pad, having butchered a few guys who were defending it, thinking about how to progress.
I made my way down a flight of stairs and saw a small entryway leading to more stairs, with some enemies clearly speaking in Portuguese somewhere below.
My vision was severely restricted and I decided to make a grand entrance, jumping sideways in slow motion through the entry in order to spot the enemy forces and maybe take one of them out before landing.
The first time I tried to put this plan into action, I hit the edge of the entryway and unceremoniously dropped to the floor just as an angry man with a machinegun was rounding the corner, quickly putting me out of my misery (Max is never a content or slight happy man).
The second time I managed to make it through the entryway, but again came up against the limits of the RAGE engine that powers Max Payne 3 as, instead of sailing over it, I bumped into the edge of the stairs and again got cut down by my enemies, who were a little more numerous than I expected.
The slow motion dive is at the center of the game experience, but Rockstar has created some situations where it’s hard if not outright impossible to use it in an effective manner.
There are a lot of well-defined spaces with a lot of cover and plenty of time to dive around and shoot enemies but, to my frustration, there are also a few areas where cover-based progress is the only way to go forward without getting shot until Max is dead.
At least the comic book style death sequences are superb, making reloading less annoying than it could be.