Max Payne

The Good
Max Payne was an innovative and unique action title for its time. Sadly, its gameplay draws such as bullet time have been worn and torn so bad that if you describe Max Payne to a modern gamer who missed it first time around they'll simply go 'meh, its been done.' Even I for awhile was so worn out from games with bullet time and "John Woo style" gameplay mechanics that I dismissed Max Payne as dated. But a recent playthrough proved to me that this game is just as good as it ever has been.

For the year 2001, Max Payne was an absolutely eye popping game. These were the early days of full 3D acceleration, yet MP actually looked better than almost every other game on the market, better than Unreal, better than Quake 3, and so on. The detail and animations were exquisite, and high poly character models and environments were used to great effect. Its still satisfying to tear a room apart with bullets and as the dust settles make out piles of bodies lying in blood and brass bullet casings.

Developers love to use the term "Cinematic gameplay." This term has been around ever since the early days of CD when a fad of "interactive movies" came about. These interactive movies had little gameplay value and were often very poor. One of the only truly good interactive movies was the revolutionary laserdisc title, Dragon's Lair and it still had little 'play' value but it was saved by an entertaining story and visuals. But when the developers at Remedy called Max Payne a cinematic experience, they weren't bullshitting around this time. This is as close as you will get to being in an action movie you can actually interact with. Somewhere between "Sin City" and... well, John Woo movies the game is a third person shooter that allows you to use various weapons as well as the now cliche Bullet Time. But even after the glut of bullet time games, Max Payne is still one of the few games that does it right. It can really save your hide, and it looks cool seeing all the bullets, droplets of blood, pieces of plaster, all in slow motion and the "Shoot dodge" moves, which allows you to do slides, jumps, etc. to dodge while shooting in bullet time is still cool and the tight controls make it intuitive and fun. A sort of trademark of 3D realms, you can interact with most objects in the game whether they are important are not, and it is encouraged as you never know when you will find that extra bullet or the much needed health pack (Or in this game, pain pills. Why do so many games interpret pain medication as health? I suffer from arthritis and have pain pills, and sure it helps the pain but it doesn't heal me) and of course there are various jokes or evidence pieces that will help the story come together.

Speaking of the story, Max Payne tells a good one. It's done in a kitschy Noir style, and while this method of story telling as well as the voice acting can be somewhat silly at times, once you get used to it there's a great story that unfolds gracefully and has many satisfying twists and turns.

Guns sound realistic and are fun to shoot.

The AI isn't a push over. Although they are scripted, they can fight back well and are pretty harsh and brutal at times. Bullet time can sometimes be the only way that you can trump a gaggle of baddies, Remedy definitely realized that even a cop isn't going to be superman even if Bullet Time is a somewhat strange power when taken in or out of context.

The MaxEd tool available for the game is surprisingly easy to use and both my wife and I have made some homebrewed levels and campaigns, and it doesn't require a ton of hard coding knowledge to make a well detailed level.

After beating the game, various new modes are unlocked and they are more than just tougher difficulty levels. They change the game in various ways, and there's even a mode built for speed runners called New York Minute. If you're into speed running, try New York Minute, just prepare for the game to hold your balls in a vice grip because its pretty damn tough. You have to beat every level in only a minute per each one. Its hard as hell, but very rewarding when you can successfully beat a level. These modes give the game plenty of replay value.

The Bad
The game is relatively short. While it may seem lengthy by today's ridiculously short standards, the game will only take you about 11 hours to beat.

The game can be frustratingly hard at times. The box claims to have adaptive difficulty adjustments to make the game easier or harder based on how you are doing, but I have noticed no such thing. Quick save is your best friend here.

As good as the graphics are for the time, they are lacking in one area: Facial animation. It's strange that they wouldn't have it, the game uses skeletal animation, you can tell by various animations and the way fingers realistically move and animate. Yet the characters faces are painted on, and its kinda creepy when they talk and their faces don't move. Remedy could've easily just made .gif files and changed the faces in cinematics if they didn't want to go through the trouble of using their skeletal animation system for full facial animation, and they DO use this effect as Max's face contorts in pain upon death as do the bad guys. Its disappointing, and as I said, kinda creepy how the faces never move and it reminds me of the way people talked on the Nintendo 64.

The voice acting and dialogue can seem hammy and somewhat stupid. "Pain killers: Take away the pain, leave the hurt." What the hell does that mean? Sometimes it uses its "Noir" style a little too much and the descriptions are often silly and sometimes when you'd expect a character to emote realistically, just another cheesy Darth Vader "NOOOO" voice happens. You get used to it eventually, but its still somewhat annoying.

The Bottom Line
Max Payne is still an awesome shoot 'em up and a thrilling third person shooter. It may seem short, but it will keep you in the game at all times and is fun throughout. Its also one of the few games with bullet time that actually still makes it feel fun and unique, but that's most likely because it was the first game to use it. It looks cool and plays cool, and its got a good story despite some silly acting. If you haven't checked this one out yet, definitely give it a look.

The Good
The atmosphere is great - the storytelling takes place not in ingame-sequences or videos, but in comic strips with voiceover. Both the comics and the voice acting is very well done and has funny elements. The story itself is quite entertaining and realistic.

The revolutionary bullet-time makes you think you're in some kind of John Woo film and there is a scene which clearly lends from The Matrix.

You might also enjoy to play a different type of character for a change. Max Payne isn't a hero fighting for the good, he is just a man out for revenge, a one man army ripping through hordes of enemies. So even he is a policeman, he will not attempt to deal out arrest warrants - the enemies are going down.

Weapons are well balanced and each has its strength. Depending on how far away the enemy is, how well he is covered, how many enemies are there and especially whether you use bullet time, every weapon is useful right to the end of the game.

The Bad
With view being locked in third person, it happens sometimes, especially when you are ducked, that the player is obstructing the view, making it hard to aim at the enemy.

There's some kind of delay in the grenade throwing which makes it easy to blow yourself up. Also grenades are so powerful that if you aren't prepared for the enemy to throw one and get into cover quickly, you will usually get hurt pretty badly.

The biggest disadvantage for me was that the higher difficulty levels aren't open right away. You have to play through the game on the easiest level to unlock the harder ones.

The Bottom Line
A refreshingly different shooter with a sinister, all-consuming story. Like no other shooter, this game plays itself like an action-film and is definitely worth being played through once.

The Good
I admit, I had spectacularly high hopes for this game. There were several reasons: the first is Remedy's first product, the absolutely superb Death Rally; the second is the use of the seemingly revolutionary MAXFX engine in demonstrations such as 3DMark 2000, 3DMark 2001 and XL-R8R from MadOnion. My expectations got only higher when I saw the absolutely fascinating Max Payne E3 demo from 1999; back then I couldn't have imagined anything more spectacular. A game from a company founded on demoscene roots, with music by one of my favorite musicians, Teque? What could be better?

Shift forward a bit: early 2001. Discussing matters with Teque over e-mail revealed that he's been removed from the Max Payne development team. Unfortunately he wouldn't divulge any further information, but something inside me cracked when I realized I wouldn't hear his spectacular music in a game I've been waiting for for so long. Then 3DMark 2001 came out, music also not written by Teque. Still the MaxFX engine, astounding visuals, but the design of the entire demo was lacking. I had a bad feeling about this: these events didn't bode well.

Shift to mid-2001, Max Payne finally comes out. The game I've been waiting for for about three years, something new and innovative. When I finally got around to playing the game, I had mixed feelings about what's coming. I finished it an hour ago, and once again my instincts haven't failed me: I was terribly disappointed. Why? Well lets discuss the good things first.

• Solid game engine. Not as revolutionary as I expected, not the absolutely astounding visuals I've been promised, but absolutely solid never-the-less. It is also reasonably fast. Ah, and the bullets and fire look absolutely gorgeous.
• Max Payne features a decent plot. Nothing as complex or involving as Deus Ex or even Half Life for that matter, but enough to keep me interested as I played along. However, the plot has absolutely no bearing on the advancement of the game, which is indeed unfortunate.
• The absolutely spectacular "bullet-time" effect, as far as I know the first ever to be implemented in a computer game. It really is quite astounding at first, seeing everything in slow motion but retaining decent control over your character. It also makes for some beautiful fight scenes, where for example you jump through a door, ducking a shot fired by a guard behind it, only to spray him with the Colt Commando on your way to the ground. However, the novelty wears thin after a while.
• Plenty of cute in-jokes (upcoming spoiler), for example the Ingram-near-bathroom-with-bad-guy-coming-out-Pulp-Fiction-style scene, or the Buffy bit.

The Bad
On the contrary, Max Payne has many shortcomings.

• While the engine is solid, it just doesn't bring anything new to the table. Frankly, I think Serious Sam was more revolutionary, bringing Quake 3-level graphics to the table with detail textures, excellent framerates and no hype.
• Absolutely linear gameplay. I don't think I've ever played a game this linear before. Unlike most shooters, even the earliest ones where you at least got the chance to explore areas, enter rooms etc., in Max Payne you will frequently find yourself in a tight corridor with five doors, only one of which opens and is the way to the next section of the game. Not only is there only one way past any given obstacle, but there is only one way to proceed in the game! The whole game is built like one giant action sequence. I don't know about you, but for me it means only one thing: fast boredom and claustrophobia.
• Level design is nothing to be proud of. The scenes are generally grey, dimly lit and spectacularly nondynamic, unlike older games like Alice, Serious Sam or Deus Ex. Nothing changes in the scenery; there are very few things to interact with; environment mapping (used to a great extent in Quake 3 to improve visual dynamic) is scarce at best. Most importantly, the levels are dull, uninspired and very "square" in design (reminiscent of much, much older games like Doom or Blood), despite the ability to use much higher polygon count to improve visual smoothness.
• The cutscenes that use the game engine are of poor quality, and would befit a game from the era of Half Life (and even that manages better). The worst thing is, you can't skip them (much like Half Life)!
• Poor, uninspired at best background music. I can't shake the feeling that the music is more an afterthought than intended and fully integrated into the game development (as in Deus Ex, and I believe it shows). I just don't understand what happened to what was supposed to be one of the best game soundtracks ever written.
• There are several key sections of the game that even a beginner designer, or at least someone properly versed in computer games, would know not to include in the game. Specifically: the first dream sequence (where you have to go through two different sequences of a maze, one of which also incorporates a minor jumping puzzle). Completely pointless, unbelievably frustrating and doesn't improve the game in any way what-so-ever. The other one is the restaurant where you're supposed to meat the Italian guy, and which bursts into flames. Set aside the frustration and the nusance of having to practice your F5/F9 keys (quicksave/load) for a minute; any person in his right mind would immediately exit the restaurant through the main door (locked? no problem; what are you carrying a shotgun for?). Moreover, a touch of fire may give you a nasty burn, but certainly not kill you; a small fact that the designers seemed to have neglected. In short, there are several frustrating scenes in the game, and the worst thing is, you don't have any choice but to go through them! So much for Deus Ex ushering a new era in computer gaming...
• The problem with the aforementioned beautiful Bullet Time effect is that the game relies on it way too heavily. The novelty will wear off after half an hour, along with the excitement you get from the game. The combats are monotonous, with dumb enemies that never actually change (just pack more and more powerful weapons), and the monotony of the gameplay really gets to you after a while.
• I couldn't help but be offended by the way Max looks. Quite frankly, he looked far better in the E3 demo (and in the "lobby shooting spree" scene of 3DMark 2001). He has a kind of permanent "sneer" on his face that annoys me every time I see it. I can't help but think of Max as a kind of modern age Leisure Suit Larry. 'nuff said.

The Bottom Line
Overall, a great disappointment and not worth your money.