Max Payne

aka: Dark Justice, Max Heat, Max Payne Mobile, Yingxiong Bense
Moby ID: 4529

Windows version

Payne To The Max!

The Good
I have recently played through Max Payne, (which I’m sure most of us gamers have been doing to help us forget that dreadful Max Payne movie) one of my favorite action PC Shooters, which borrows heavily from films particularly Hong Kong action films like John Woo movies.

John Woo pretty much invented stylized action, along with other Hong Kong film directors most notable in the film Hard Boiled (one of my favorite movies of all time), Which has Chow Yun Fat playing Inspector Tequila doing what he does best, blasting criminals involved in a gun smuggling operation (the sequel is the 2007 game “Stranglehold”) this game is not only inspired by this movie but there are many references to it and its director.

Max Payne Opens with Max at the top of a high rise building after some chaos has just brewed in sighting the police to come Max explaining how he came to be in this situation, the story, told in graphic novel form starts with Max a New York City cop talking to his friend Alex Balder about his family and the possibility of joining the D.E.A., he declines because he needs to keep his wife and daughter safe, then Max returns to his suburban New Jersey home to find something is amiss, people have broken into his house and he soon finds his baby daughter and wife dead and junkies in his house.

Three Years later and Max is now a narc in the D.E.A. tracking down the mob and the new distribution of a new synthetic drug Valkyr, while meeting his friend Alex in the subway station he discovers mobsters have taken over planning a heist when he meets up with Alex he is shot dead by a unseen man and Max is framed, this is the last straw Alex is the only thing that kept Max from losing it all those years ago now he has nothing to lose and the story follows many twists and turns from there and circles back to the beginning.

Max Payne plays like your average 3rd person shooter but Max like those stylized action films can slow down time and dive into the fray getting an advantage on his foes by being faster you would think that this would eventually get dull but it hardly ever gets old and adds more dimensions to action gaming they you may think.

Most of the voice acting is solid there are a few cheesy sounding voices but Max’s voice is well done and most of the main cast is as well. I also like the difficulty level of the games it has a system which gets harder if you are playing too well and easier if you are having a hard time.

The Bad
As for the bad the game has its share of levels that seem like filler and could have simply been done in cut scene in stead of making a whole level or two out of it and a some of the gun fights can be exercises in trial and error making you try and try again until you finally succeed.

The Bottom Line
This is an extremely fun action game I've played through this game an uncountable amount of times and it never seems to get old and have finished it on every difficulty level and I still come back for more.

by Classic Nigel (108) on November 16, 2008

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