written by owen on 2025-Jun-14.

I finished BioShock and jumped right into MP3. I had played the first 2 games long ago on PC. My memory of the prior games faint and disjointed. Right off the bat; it's a smooth game. It runs from scene to scene so seamlessly that I waited for an oppurtunity to save and quit it but it never came. it just kept going and going. If I died it would instantly restart without even loading. It is like some kind of new/old video game drug.

It is not as stylized as HitmanAB but it has a lot of texture and the story has excellent writing. The writing/narration is so dense that you want to see what happens after every scene. The dense writing is super saturated like a diamond soup from a distant planet made completely of diamond asteroids.

As usual with Rockstar this is an expensive production. Very linear game play, well crafted to a surgical level. I played on easy - no point in struggling through the tough spots = life is short. i can see the game getting real tedious on any other level. Many devs and artists must have died bringing this to market. The polygon work is complex, the environments a bit sparse but there is no real reason to stop and look around - keep moving. The entire game play just pushes you forever forward like a train on skates through a scenic ghetto of death and carnage.

The game crashed roughly 4 times during my play through. I sure it is pushing the 360 to the max even though I felt like I was watching cut-scenes half the time and redoing quicktime events another 25% but the gameplay is good and cutscenes reduce over time as the story unfolds.

Conclusion

Initial rating 9/10. Not for everyone, might hard crash your xbox360, some sequences are annoying, some bad fire fights with no easy way out except bullet time and tanking some shots. Play it on easy if you value your time. MP3 is a slick well polished game with lots of dialogue. Totally recommend. Must play.

Quick tips

The auto lock on feature is your friend. Use it often especially in those quick time events when you are not allowed to fail.

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