Max Payne

The Good
Max Payne was an innovative game in its own right, bringing the much hailed Bullet Time effect from The Matrix movies into games. I guess this was a gift as well as a curse, since then it has been in some way or another in a lot of games, so props to 3D Realms for being the first to implement it, and implement it well, as the Enter The Matrix game released some years later didn't do it so well. Having said that the Bullet Time effect has become somewhat of a gimmick, but in this game it had legitimate use.

The Bad
The only thing that irked me about the game was that at some parts of the game you had to virtually fluke your way past, as it was that hard. I found myself using the Bullet Time effect quite a lot in the hard parts, which it was designed for, although more often than not I found myself with the "focus meter" empty quite a few times. If your'e looking for a challenging game, here it is!

The Bottom Line
If you want a challenging game to keep you occupied for the weekend (in my case, a full week!), Max Payne will give you hours of fun, as well as hours of pulling your hair out at the sheer difficulty of some parts. Having said that, the game story is more than enough to keep the people with the shortest attention spans coming back for more.