Max Payne 3

Borrowed this one from a friend and finished it in a couple of days. It`s not a very long game, and the replay value is pretty low for reasons I'll get into in a moment, but I'd say it's worth a rental at least.

Honestly, the shooting may well be the best of any third person shooter currently on the market. Diving through the air in slow motion, shooting at gang members and crashing to floor to watch their bodies abruptly fall over feels better than ever, especially with the impressive physics-based animations. Enemies are very aggressive in their attempts to take Max down and your health doesn't regenerate (what a novel concept) so there's plenty of challenge to be found as well.

I've heard some people complain about the addition of a cover system ruined it by turning it into Gears of War, but if you really spent the whole game ducking behind bit of wall then they have only yourself to blame. While you can indeed press a button to attach yourself to cover, the system is really only there to give you a quick breather so that you can pop some painkillers and let your bullet time recharge before getting back into the action. The rest of the time it's run, gun and shoot-dodging fun.

So, it's a lot of fun to play. Trouble is, you won't spend nearly enough time actually playing it. The game is lousy with long, often unskippable cutscenes breaking up the action every five minutes or so, mostly to mask the limitations of the engine and it's incredibly long loading times. All those wonderful Euphoria animations came at a heavy price it seems, and it makes replaying it a hassle when you're forced to watch the same shit over and over again.

Like I said, consider renting it if you can, as it's certainly worth playing through at least once. Just be aware of that there is a very heavy cutscene to gameplay ratio.