Max Payne

The Good
Max Payne is a very simple, but fun cinematic shooter that takes genuinely old-fashioned gameplay and updates it with some tricks of its own.

The choice of third-person view, relatively rare for 3D shooters, adds the advantage of allowing the protagonist to perform moves that would be pointless in an FPS, such as rolling. We've seen many times how your FPS opponents were rolling to avoid your shots; but now you can finally do it yourself! Quickly navigating Max to save him from the constant barrage of bullets, madly rolling and jumping out of the way in time is often a life-or-death situation. The action becomes more intense and also more cinematic when you actually see your hero performing all those moves.

The famous "bullet time" effect makes the action even more stylish. Max Payne feels like one of those over-the-top kung-fu movies. Getting rid of your enemies becomes even more impressive when they die in "dramatic" ways, even the simplest kill turning into yet another scene.

The graphics of Max Payne are a sheer beauty; the engine is powerful and smooth, and the levels are quite detailed, filled with Duke Nukem 3D-style interactive environments: you can turn on and off TV sets, flush toilets, and so on.

Max Payne kicks in on a very personal note. The uncomplicated narrative is basically a vigilante quest for revenge. The player is easily able to identify himself with Max, and the following elimination of bad guys becomes more satisfying than ever.

The story is told in still screens with comic-book pages on them, which is an original and stylish idea. The dialogues and, most of all, Max's own comments, are well-written and convincingly spoken. An interesting thing is the usage of humor. At first sight, it seems there's nothing to laugh about here, but the more you advance the story, the more you realize it has a double edge. Its stylistic references to action movies are so obvious that it nearly becomes a self-aware parody.

The Bad
Max Payne is a very simple, linear game, almost to the point of turning into an "on-rails" shooter. You are typically taken to locations that look "explorable", but upon closer inspection it is revealed that there is only one path to proceed. Miraculously locked doors, blocked passages, and other assorted linearity enforcers are everywhere.

The gameplay is very basic, going back to the old days of shooters when problems were solved with blasting everything you see to pieces. Since the game is rather short and there isn't much variety in the enemy design, stylish bullet time kills can get quite monotonous with the time.

The game's heavily scripted AI and its reliance on simplistic setpieces make it feel even more restrictive, filled with situations where you are forced to do things a certain way. The difficulty is very much arcade-like, reflexes and quicksave abuse playing a dominant role; essentially, it's all about resorting to bullet time and frantic rolling over and over again. Max Payne is, in fact, short and repetitive at once.

Max's colorful comments may not fit everyone's taste; some of them try to be too sophisticated, making a strange expression. Also, Max has a permanent silly grin glued to his face, which makes him look like a maniacally-minded dork.

The Bottom Line
If your dream video game is an incarnation of those very uncomplicated action movies with ridiculously tough vigilante heroes who shoot bad guys in spectacular ways, Max Payne is just what you need. However, those looking for deeper, richer, and more varied 3D action might want to pass on this one.

The Good
Max Payne is one of the most innovative games since Deus Ex, bringing a new level of gaming with the MAX-FX engine and bullet-time animation. The game had a well drawn-out story that could have easily been adapted from a movie. The care used to bring everything together helped make the story more believable. The saving/loading system was very well done; instead of reloading the map, all the entities, the enemies, it kept everything in resident memory which took the load time almost down to zero.

The Bad
Despite the rave reviews and general coolness of Max Payne, it still has its shortcomings--and they're not small. Firstly, the game was disappointingly short. The ending was horribly unspectacular and, while providing for sequels (which Remedy has already said they are making), left way too much unsolved. It [the ending] also caused my GeForce256 card to strain, even at low-medium detail (we're talking 1FPS). Secondly, and most importantly, there is a HOLE on level 2.7(?) that allows enemies to be spawned outside of the map, shoot through the wall at the bottom of the stairwell, and kill Max during a short cinematic that involves walking through the conference room door. After 20-or-so deaths, I found the only way to overcome this (without loading a game saved on a different level) was to, as the door was opening (before the controls locked), shoot wildly and hope that I killed enough of the off-map enemies before I died. Finally, the movie when you started the game was TOTALLY un-necessary. I'd rather have some bonus stuff on the disc instead of a useless movie when you opened the game (the game didn't even preload in the background while it was being played!).

The Bottom Line
Max Payne is a solid shooter, and is a good buy. When Remedy releases further "episodes" of the game, it will (hopefully) become an excellent buy. All said and done, I was kind of disappointed when it turned out that the lobby demo in 3DMark2001 wasn't in the game. ;)

The Good
The style is evident, from the over-the-top dialogue ("the sun went down with false bravado...") to over-the-top gunplay (everything from Striker auto-shotgun to grenade launchers). The graphics novel interludes gives that stylized art that calls attention to itself. The plot... completely over-the-top as well... From shooting crime bosses all the way up to government conspiracy, even has a few elements of X-files and Twin Peaks... And boy, is bullet-time fun...

The Bad
The style can be too over-the-top for people. There's plenty of blood (heck, EVERYBODY you shoot leaves a puddle of blood, some more than others). The plot is also full of cliches (government conspiracy, Mafia "wiseguys", etc.), even has an evil twin thrown in the mix! In the final levels, the game becomes quite difficult (and that was on the LOWEST level of difficulty!) when you're assaulted by guys in bullet-proof vests armed with the latest weapons. There's usually no room for you to hang-back and pick them off one at a time. It's usually full-speed ahead guns blazing. No saved-replays of your "best" shots.

The Bottom Line
Max Payne is about as close as you will come to "play" an action movie. It may be short (but then, so are most action movies), it may be a bit trite and cliche (but then, so are action movies), and it may be over-the-top (again, like action movies) but it sure is fun.

Bullet-time effect as implemented in the game is a brilliant innovation in action gaming. As you're still able to aim (in real-time), if you have a good mouse or controller you can pull off action-hero style diving shots with side-dives (shoot-dodges) or just "plain" bullet-time like the way Neo went through the lobby in the Matrix. Of course, BT is limited and you can't keep using it (you get more by killing more bad guys).

Being third-person, this game lets you admire your own moves while evaluating the enemy shots. As each bullet IS modelled individually, this can be very important to decide which way to dodge. However, the viewpoint sometimes makes it impossible to see what you actually want to shoot, esp. in constrained spaces like in a doorway or against the wall. Still, it is possible to see "around" corners and that's part of the gameplay.

The game has a way to "leading" you through this one-way maze without making it too evident. There LOOKS like plenty of doors, but only a few of them are functional, and even the doors that seems to lead to alternate paths actually just provide a few more goodies (pain killers, ammo, etc.) for you, and you'd have to backtrack to the main path.

Occasionally when you come to an important dramatic point (come across TV or radio or paper on desk) you get a graphic novel update of your situation, like the police has joined the chase after you, and so on. While it adds to the atmosphere, it also breaks up the rhythm of the action.

The game is quite user-friendly. There are unlimited save slots, as well as a quick-save and quick-load buttons. When you die, you get a choice to reload from the most recent save, and you only need to press one key to load it. This makes you want to retry that part of game again immediately... Wish all games can do that.

The game runs tolerably on older computers, but if you can crank it up to maximum eye-candy, you're in for a full cinematic experience... Shoot a group of bad guys and sometimes that last guy's death will be replayed in slo-mo... Too bad you can't save that to savor over-and-over again... Expect to see realistic shadows, rag-doll physics (not REALLY implemented, but pretty close), and more.

There are occasional situational puzzles that forces you to figure out what to do next, but usually they aren't very hard, as mostly they involve jumping from one to another, or in some cases, shooting things. The solution for the final takedown was pretty ingenious as well.

Overall the game is short, about 10 hours at most. Still, it's one INTENSE 10-hour ride, and one you'd likely to savor over-and-over by going back for the higher-difficulty levels, as well as discover the secrets that lies within... There are quite a few hidden rooms and such for you to find.

And it's NOT really possible to describe the elation you feel when you pull off that perfect diving shot... Just imagine that you noticed 3 bad guys talking around the corner. You arm the grenade launcher... And you did a diving jump... Lobbing a grenade into their midst... They go "what the..." then the grenade goes boom, tossing them in all directions... You take a breath, then shots bounce off the wall behind you... Another group of bad guys to shoot...

This is one heck of a ride, so enjoy it.