Looking at some screenshots before I bought it, I thought it might be kinda crappy now. But it holds up surprisingly well gameplay wise! The controls don't feel " old " at all and it has great level design in my opinion. I'm at chapter IV now and it's one of the most fun I've ever had with a third person shooter, I only wish I played this before.

I'm probably going to buy 2, but to fans of the series who have played 3, should I get that too? I only ask because it doesn't really look anything at all like this one in terms of almost everything.....Though I'm literally judging that off of a few screenshots and videos, so what do I know.

Max Payne 2 plays very much like Max Payne 1 in all the ways that matter and has superb presentation. It's a fantastic game, although it's shorter than the other two. Definitely get it, you won't be disappointed.

I do believe Max Payne was the first "mature" game I played. Before that, it was adventure edutainment and AoE. I loved the hell out of it; I remember the oil tanker level being pretty scary to my 8, 9 year old mind. In terms of level design, I guess, though I recall a few times such level design led to frustrating death/reload cycles.

Max Payne 2 doesn't play like MP1, IMO. It's faster and much easier, considering how it uses bullet-time. 1 relies on shoot-dodging almost exclusively (standing bullet-time is useless except for lining up shots, though that's rarely necessary). MP2 basically slows the entire world down while you move the same speed, each kill giving you a small boost in that speed - in the challenge modes, you can chain dozens of kills as you become hella fast, regain your BT fuel, and all the dudes get hella dead.

Max Payne 3 is... interesting. Reading about it years before it came out, people would say that it was being ruined by Rockstar by setting it in daytime Brazil rather than night-time New York, as well as shaving his head. I kind of breezed through it and didn't really consider my feelings on it until after, which made me realize how terrific it was - I didn't have time to think on the theoretical ramifications of the setting and character design because how balls-out crazy the entire time was. Everything made sense by the end. As for the mechanics, they updated quite nicely - I would safely assume this is Rockstar's best shooter in ever, though I did play it on PC, and wouldn't know how it works on a gamepad (which is blasphemy for a Max Payne game). All in all, an excellent game; in retrospect, I think it should have at least made the top 10 of the year, but that's me.

It's up for you to decide. All I gotta say is, Christmas is 2 months out, Black Friday is one - don't be a Scrooge.

PS I actually read your post rather than skimming it - you actually used a gamepad? Jesus. It being a decade-old game, your computer(?) should handle it soundly. Don't limit yourself to just the console experience. Much like Quake, the difference is night and day.