Best Shooter Games Like Max Payne 3

The best shooter games like Max Payne 3 are Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Vanquish and Red Dead Redemption 2. Below are 7, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to shooter costs you.

Why Shooter Is a Good Answer for Max Payne 3

Filtering to shooter means you want the guns to be the answer. It is the right filter when what you liked was the feedback — the sound, the recoil, the way enemies react.

What you get: Moment-to-moment feel, and the shortest distance between picking a game up and enjoying it.

What made Max Payne 3 worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the shooter part of that answer, and only the shooter part.

7 Shooter Games Like Max Payne 3

  1. 1. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

    The noir the third game left behind, and the tighter story.

  2. 2. Vanquish

    The same commit-and-slide idea at three times the speed.

  3. 3. Red Dead Redemption 2

    Rockstar's other shooter, with the same animation weight.

  4. 4. F.E.A.R.

    Bullet time plus the best shooter AI anyone has written.

  5. 5. Severed Steel

    Sliding, wall-running and bullet time in a small sharp package.

  6. 6. Control

    Third-person combat with the same physical weight to every impact.

  7. 7. Gears of War

    The heavy cover shooter of the same generation.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Variety. Shooters commit hard to one loop, and the ones that try to be something else usually do the something else badly.

Specifically, these are strong answers for Max Payne 3 that are not shooter games, so they are not on this page:

  • John Wick Hex — If the choreography rather than the reflexes was the appeal.
  • Sleeping Dogs — Rockstar-shaped open world with much better hand-to-hand.

The full list is on games like Max Payne 3 — 9 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best shooter game like Max Payne 3?

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. The noir the third game left behind, and the tighter story.

Are all of these on the PlayStation 3?

No. Max Payne 3 released on the PlayStation 3, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.

What makes a shooter feel good?

How the guns sound and how enemies react to being hit. A shooter with mediocre levels and superb weapon feedback is more fun than the reverse, every time.

Do these need to be played online?

Each pick says. Several of the best shooters ever made are single-player campaigns, and a few of the co-op ones are genuinely worse with bots.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full Max Payne 3 list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is shooter — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on Max Payne 3

More Shooter Games Recommendations

Or read the shooter guide for where to start in the genre generally.