SimonG: While I never understood the hype that surrounded Max Payne, it was a fun little action game. And i really liked the atmosphere.
Two things:
1) Bullet time.
2) Atmosphere.
Those are the "thing" in Max Payne.
(And maybe a third point around here was that it was a Finnish game, but the rest of the world can care less about that...)
Anyway, the series started to turn bad with the rediculous plot of Max Payne 2, although the game was pretty OK to play otherwise. As for the third game, it has all it takes to be a complete disaster.
- developed by a different team
- (if I have understood correctly) showing the protagonist as a totally different kind of man, both by looks and behavior
- (again going with rumors here) taking the film-noir city setting out of the game, and setting it in somewhere else
- game is years behind schedule
- etc. etc.