They should have sent an army. Well, a bigger army.

MP3 looks amazing when it is left to its own devices, but it also goes overboard on garish visual effects.

Max Payne: world's worst tourist.

Bullet-time is a precious resource that requires careful planning and situational awareness to employ effectively.

Passos is a good man to have at your back.

You can use a "paranoia" ability to cause an enemy's radar to suddenly flood with hostile signatures.

This is usually where I stop drinking.

About half my multiplayer sessions have ended in a crash or a sudden host disconnect.

Close enough to see someone's name on it.

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-wealthy Branco family, a group of vapid and vile patricians that he regards with barely disguised contempt. He and his new partner Raoul Passos protect the Brancos while they play among the skyscrapers and offices of Sao Paulo, far removed from the poverty, violence, and repression down in the slums.While some of the characterizations are a little too broad (you'll identify the main bad guy within about 30 seconds), what makes it all work is actor James McCaffrey's superb reprise performance as Max Payne. In MP3 he is allowed more range and expression than ever before, in part thanks to amazing facial animations, and he has such a handle on this character that Max can make even overplayed characters and dubious plot twists feel authentic. It's a good thing, too, because Rockstar is incapable of making a game that doesn't include some heavy-handed statements about the American character, and it is awkwardly done here. Max is a lot of things, but he's not a convincing metaphor for American interventionism.When the walls protecting the Brancos crumble, Max is back in his element as he takes on gangs, paramilitaries, and a deadly group of police waging their own war on Sao Paulo's underclass. The action takes Max from shootouts in a swank nightclub and expensive corporate offices to all-out war in the slums and streets of Sao Paulo. Each setting is beautifully realized with lavish textures, tons of detailed models, and evocative lighting. Max Payne 3 does not quite demand a new videocard, but it does makes a hell of a good case for buying one.I just wish Rockstar had not been so carried away with stylistic flourishes lifted straight out of a Tony Scott acid-trip. MP3 looks amazing when it is left to its own devices, but it also goes overboard on garish visual effects like fake video interlacing and sudden spikes in contrast and brightness that literally had me wondering whether my videocard was failing. The flourishes are unnecessary -- one look at the beautiful ruin of Max's face tells us everything we need to know about his shaky psyche.My favorite thing about these detail-rich locations, however, is that they play a role in combat. Cover often acts more like a mesh than a wall. If your target is hiding behind a desk, you might be able to lie down on the floor and fire through the chair legs to take out his ankles, drop him to the ground, and open up the headshot. This is not a standard "stop-and-pop" cover shooter.Still, Max is also not the Matrix-style superhero he used to be. There's less bullet-time to go around. Max's movements have greater intertia, and you can sense that Max is an aging ex-cop and not a twitch-shooter avatar. He still has the footwork, but you have to use it more carefully. If Max dives into a wall, he's going to hit it, drop out of bullet-time, and be stranded on the floor. But weaker bullet-time makes for a stronger game: it is a precious resource that requires careful planning and situational awareness to employ effectively (although the close third-person camera can make it hard to get a good view in confined spaces). It's more satisfying when Max goes on a killing spree, because it is hard-won.It helps that he has worthy adversaries. The AI's foot soldiers keep up heavy fire, work their way around to your flanks, and bum-rush you if given the chance. MP3's campaign takes skill and tactical savvy to complete, and the premium it places on marksmanship makes it feel like a proper PC shooter. If only it still had player-saves: MP3 can be outrageously frustrating thanks to uneven checkpoint placement. It also makes heavy use of turret sequences that don't hold a candle to the player-driven action. In my playthrough I had at least four firefights come down to the last few rounds in the last clip. I'm not sure it gets better than hearing my gun dry-fire just as my last opponent collapses in a geyser of blood. These are some of the best firefights I've had since the first FEAR, and that wins MP3 a lot of forgiveness for any blemishes.With so much care and attention on the single-player campaign, I expected multiplayer to be an afterthought. But once you unlock the full range of game modes, it's clear that Rockstar has some great ideas. It starts with the character load-outs themselves: as you add more gear you hurt your movement speed and health recharge rate, but go in lightly armed and you'll be able to heal up after only a few seconds, and you can always gear up on the battlefield by scavenging dropped weapons. It's a great balancing system that promotes experimenting with different play styles.My heart sank when I saw the radar in corner, but even that is cooler than it first appears. Only spotted enemies appear on the map, yes, but you can also equip your character with gear and perks that reduce the chances you'll be spotted and marked on other players' maps. You can use a "paranoia" ability to cause an enemy's radar to suddenly flood with hostile signatures. So the radar, far from ruining the game, introduces a fascinating element of double-think to the proceedings.There are two great multiplayer modes. The first has six players hunting two others who play as Max and his partner Passos. Whoever kills either becomes the new Payne or Passos. Max and Passos are outnumbered, but they're also heavily armed heroes with pain pills and lots of bullet-time to slow their enemies down. If Max and Passos can work together, they're very hard for the rest of the players to stop.The main attraction, however, is Gang Wars: a series of linked "missions" comprised of different game modes. The two teams compete in a best-of-five series that might include a capture the flag mode, a territory domination map, an assassination game, an attack-and-defend scenario, or a team elimination deathmatch. The best-of-five format makes for some amazing tension, particularly when it all comes down to round five, and the intensity level goes through the roof.Multiplayer is also the least-stable part of Max Payne. About half my multiplayer sessions have ended in a crash or a sudden host disconnect. That usually causes me to walk away in frustration. But I also keep coming back to experiment with new loadouts, buy new gear with the cash I win during battles, and settle more XP-rich vendettas against the fools who call me out during a multiplayer match. MP3 offers a good set of multiplayer options, and they might even be great if Rockstar stabilize online performance.I came to MP3 with low expectations and fear that Rockstar would lose what made those earlier games special. I also can't deny that Max Payne features a lot of the trademarks of the big-budget shooter: huge cutscenes, severe linearity (which, to be fair, is true to the originals), some poor plotting, and nothing but shooting.Even if Max Payne 3 does not transcend genre, it is at least an example of genre at its best. These are familiar ingredients, yes, but they are expertly prepared and remind us once again that this limited genre is capable of exciting and demanding gameplay. Max is the perfect traveling companion for this bloody adventure: sad, angry, and utterly without fear. Max's terrible vengeance remains an awesome thing to behold.: I missed you, Max! There really is something about his signature brand of slow-motion gunplay that few other games can come close to. Shame about the multiplayer glitches, but I'd have wanted to play MP3 even if that didn't exist. Does broken or tacked-on multiplayer drag down single-player games for you?