Max Payne 3 is a contradictory game which doesnt immediately ingratiate itself with the player. It's about an alcoholic ex-cop who moves to Sao Paulo and proceeds to massacre half the criminal underworld because of his deluded sense of justice. Yet playing Max Payne 3 is actually pretty satisfying, once you get used to how incredibly fragile Max has become in his old age. He can't take more than one or three shots before keeling over, so staying in cover is actually pretty important. On the one hand, a large part of me is disappointed that Rockstar Games turned my beloved Max Payne into a game which plays just like every other proficient 3rd-person shooter out there, but on the other the bullet time still looks and feels really cool, and even with the weight of 2 previous games heavy on his shoulders Max is still able to look svelte and agile. On the PC the game is downright gorgeous but I'm still flummoxed why it needed a blistering 30GB of hard disk space, because none of the textures look that good or that high rez. I can only assume it was due to poor optimization, but from a gameplay perspective there is no stuttering or lagging. Rather just some pretty obtrusive screen-tearing in several spots. The kind that when you notice it makes you go Argh! Still, I enjoyed Max Payne 3 while it lasted. Don't really want to play it again, and don't really want to play the multiplayer either, so there you are.

In other news my daily job has become such a frenzy since December I often find myself mentally exhausted by the end of the day, and thus my tolerance for frustrating or sub-standard games is wearing thin. My example of this is Test Drive Unlimited 2, which I picked up for a song in a recent Steam sale. Test Drive suffers from what I have dubbed the FUEL Dilemma: Its got a massive, sprawling endless world and very little interesting content with which to populate it. I still fail to see why the game should be semi-multiplayer all the time, since you hardly interact with other players unless you specifically seek them out. The game has 2 islands, Ibiza and Hawaii, which are gigantic and have a variety of roads which try to mimic real-life, but since the AI traffic is so light and the islands are devoid of pedestrians, everywhere feels like a ghost town. All of the social interactive nonsense just feels like window dressing, but the main reason I disliked my time with Test Drive was simply how badly the cars handled. I never felt like I got to grips with a vehicle, and often I'd find myself spinning out on a corner, stopping, and then not being able to get going again in a straight line. The punishing level of difficulty in the Driving Schools is counter-balanced by the laughable AI in the races. Like FUEL, Test Drive has a lot of potential but its missing an awful lot of basic functionality.

Quick roundup of other things Ive been playing, including Skyrim (downloaded Dawnguard, pretty good), L.A. Noire (went back because damn, I love L.A. Noire) and yesterday started up some XCOM: Enemy Unknown. When youre winning XCOM feels awesome but when youre losing good soldiers left, right and centre XCOM feels like its kicking you in the teeth and spitting on your grave. Oh yes, and it was my birthday last week. 24 feels damn similar to 23.

Oh and final, final thing: SYSTEM SHOCK 2 IS OUT ON gog.com. So you know, buy it.