Max Payne 3 multiplayer: Deft jump, or wild leap of faith?

Narrative might be king in the world of Max Payne, but beneath the noir-crust there's something more important: jumping slowly through the air while shooting people in the face. When we first heard murmurs about Max Payne 3's multiplayer, we were puzzled as to how this might make the cut. After a few hours of diving through glass while gunning down strangers, any concerns we had went out of the window with an equal sense of disregard.

Rather than just freezing the whole map at once, Bullet Time only affects players involved. If someone in your direct line of sight triggers slo-mo, you'll be caught in their snare until you find cover. In contrast to the red-tinged effect that signals when an enemy is using it on you, the safety signal of blue means you've been dragged into the world of Bullet Time because you can see an ally using it nearby. With the domino effect of slowdown in play, Max Payne 3's multiplayer quickly descends into a brilliant mess of sideways diving. It's consistently silly for all the right reasons: a John Woo vision fuelled by sweets and fizzy drinks.

Bullet Time

The dodge-jump nonsense is immediately entertaining, but it isn't going to be enough to dominate your disc tray. Thankfully, there's plenty more to do. XP levelling and extras to unlock are unlikely to cause a tsunami of shock, but on top of the staple offering, there are a bunch of interesting ideas squeezed in, too. Multiplayer maps are tweaked versions from single-player, offering plenty of new routes and high stuff to clamber over. While many of these are too big to begin with, dynamic map resizing adapts the arenas to be tight enough to keep action flowing even if you're a few bodies short.

The re-use of maps isn't without reason though, and you can expect the game's multiplayer to tie into the main story. The 'Gang Wars' game-mode won't contain spoilers, but familiar faces will be making a return, with a narrative-driven game mode that mirrors some of the conflicts seen in the game's single-player. Providing the perfect proving ground for players who quickly tire of bread-and-butter deathmatches, Gang Wars offers a healthy mix of objective based games connected by a single, evolving narrative. Rather than simply starting the next match at random, the outcome of each encounter decides the objectives in the following round.

If the first match sees one gang taking territory, the following game will likely see them defending it. In some cases you'll need to simply hold your position, while other game modes will expect you to protect against devious bomb attacks. The gaps between each round are narrated by the gravelly tones of Max Payne himself, with each of the many Gang Wars scenarios being potentially concluded in a huge variety of ways.

The most interesting aspects focus closely on the players, putting key members of each team in appropriately important roles. After successfully preventing the enemy from stealing our turf, the next game saw the other team tasked with trying to assassinate the leader of our crew. Our team's top dog was picked automatically, and it was then our job to keep him alive. It's here that the adaptive nature of Gang Wars comes to life - giving the mantle of responsibility to the player most likely to be able to handle it. Despite our efforts and his personal health-boost, our boss eventually ate more lead than he could handle, despite being the best we could offer for the job.

After the main chain of events had seen us reach the end of five matches, the final outcome affected the set-up for the finale. Much like the Eliminator in TV's Gladiators, success in earlier rounds buys you a slight head-start for the final showdown, but still leaves things open to a last-minute comeback. The scenario we played revolved around trying to seize control of the city's docks for gun running, but we're interested to see how the others will pan out. With four adaptive scenarios planned for each of the game's maps, there's plenty of scope for interesting variety - particularly when it comes to creating a cool sense of hierarchy within each team.