Grizzled New York Police detective Max Payne hasn't had an easy life. His family's dead, his girlfriend is dead, and his career took a bit of a dive when he shot his partner. To top it all off, his third game, appropriately titled Max Payne 3, has been plagued with a comedy of errors, first being delayed to this year and then being delayed out of this year.

Though news has been quiet on the Max Payne 3 front for some time now, all is not hopeless when it comes to the bullet-time using, two-gun toting badass. Rockstar Games has posted two new pictures of the character on their Twitter account, along with two simple words to bolster inspiration: "He's coming."  Seeing as he's finally showing up after eight years, it's about damn time.

Rockstar has been busy readying their release of their new crime title, L.A. Noire, so putting the guy who shoots bad guys with very little rhyme or reason on hold is understandable. However, after eight years, this game has got to be revolutionary in some way. With a steady release of excellent titles, it would be unfortunate to see Rockstar's reputation get tarnished on a title this overdue.

The screens aren't mightily impressive, but they do shed some light on the kinds of changes the cop goes through during the course of Max Payne 3, which might be taking place in San Paolo, Brazil, and sees Max as a private security consultant (if that hasn't changed).

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At least one picture shows Max quite possibly before the period of time where he decided to shave his head and don bright tropical shirts. Perhaps this could be the game's prologue where he's just had it with bureaucracy and turns into a gun for hire. It's not easy to blame him, considering how bad his life has been in the two previous games.

Since E3 is closing in, this could be a not-so-subtle way of Rockstar saying there will be a Max Payne 3 related announcement coming at the expo. Should that be the case, there will be more than a few happy fans.

Max Payne 3 has no official release date, but could be coming out on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

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Source: Rockstar Games Twitter