"Max Payne = Great gayme!"

Introduction
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Max Payne has been in development for quite some time now, and has received a lot of attention. The major reason it was given so much attention was the fact that it used bullet time (of Matrix fame), but you’ll hear a bit more about that later on.
The game was very hyped, and I am very happy to say that it lives up to the hype it was given.

Gameplay
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You’ll start off the game with Max taking you back three years, to the most horrible day of his life. He comes home to find junkies (smacked up on Valkyr, or V, the latest designer drug, gaining popularity at an alarming rate) have broken into your house, and have your wife and baby daughter hostage.
You make your way upstairs to be greeted by screams of your wife, and your baby’s crying coming from inside another room. Within seconds they are both dead.

This is your first real experience of combat, and your first taste of bullet time. What bullet time does is slow things down to a crawl, while still letting Max’s crosshair move at a normal pace. This greatly increases your accuracy, and will help give you the jump on enemies.

Bullet time is used a lot through the game (you choose when to activate it), but manages to be very useful, and fun throughout the entire game. 95% of the time, you won’t encounter just one enemy, but three or four. You can open a door to a room, dive in with bullet time on and pop a cap in one enemy as you first dive in, and another as you hit the ground, then dive for the nearest cover, jump out again, and do some more killing. Without bullet time, Max Payne would have been tediously difficult, and not fun to play at all.

In certain instances, the game will go into a cinematic bullet time effect when you kill someone, rotating around their body as blood sprays about the place, and as they slowly fall to the ground.

Bullet time even follows headshots from the sniper rifle!

Max has a good number of weapons at his disposal, ranging from the standard pistols, and double pistols, through to Uzi’s, shotguns, grenades, an assault rifle, molotov cocktails, a sniper rifle and more. Each of the weapons has it’s own use, and you’ll soon know what to use, and when.

As Max progresses through the game, you will be given bits an pieces of the story, through Max talking to himself, listening into conversations, in-game cutscenes and mostly by the excellent graphic-novel type cartoons. These are brilliantly done, complete with voice actors who say everything in each frame, to sound effects as the cartoon is “played” out.

It’s amazing how well these cartoon frames actually work. They add a great amount of character and personality to the game.

Throughout the game you’ll find yourself in a huge variety of areas, and situations. From infiltrating a Mafia Don’s mansion, to the cold streets of New York, to sneaking about a cargo ship, and plenty more. There’s so much variety, and personality in all of the areas you will be, you’ll really enjoy playing the game, and will be urging to make it to the next chapter.

Another thing worth mentioning is the interactivity with the environments. You can turn on taps and showers, open drawers, shoot glass into pieces, push buttons, blow up beifcases full of dirty money and watch particles of green stuff float away, play musical instruments you find, use vending machines and so on. Every time you come across something, if you’re like me, you’ll run over and try to interact with it, just because you can :P

One of my best Max Payne moments was the first time I saw a gas canister resting against a wall. Being a complete pyromaniac, I instantly got excited :P I saved the game, aimed for the top nozzle and fired. Sure enough, a huge, fast flowing and realistic (not that I’d know…..) flame began shooting up from the top of the canister. Seconds later it exploded…. satisfying my needs. There are plenty of these canisters as well. Thank you very much Remedy!

There’s never a dull moment in Max Payne. There are plenty of enemies everywhere you go, but never toooo many. At times you will encounter groups of three or four tough enemies, who will come in batches of about three, each lot coming after you’ve killed the previous lot. Thanks to the quicksave, which saves your exact status and location, you will be able to get past the more difficult encounters simply by trying them over until you have the best plan of attack worked out.

Max Payne is a brilliant game. Never has a Third Person Shooter delivered such an enjoyable experience. The great method of story-telling, combined with the great plot, lots of action, and variety in location, and the awesome bullet time, Max Payne is a PC gaming experience not to be missed.

9.4/10

Graphics
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When I first saw images of Max Payne, I was utterly amazed at how realistic the game looked. Of course some time has passed between when the first images of the game surfaced, and it’s actually release….

By today’s standards, Max Payne looks very good, but not brilliant. With all of the graphical effects, options and texture details turned right up, and running in a high resolution Max Payne is a sweet looking game. The texture work is some of the best around. The Characters sport an average polygon count, but are very well animated.

Some very nice special effects have been put to use in Max Payne, apart from the lighting, and particle effects, and all of the usual stuff, there is one area that has obviously been given a lot of attention, the weapons. When you fire a weapon you will see fire blow out the end of it, which looks super cool, and justifies some rotating camera bullet time work, just to get a nice look at it now and then. As well as this, you can actually see bullets fly through the air, leaving nice little trails as they zoom past at a snail’s pace.

One thing that you’re bound to notice is that Max has one expression on his face, throughout the entire game (except for the death face that is). He looks a bit like…. Well, there is only one way he can put it. He looks like he has a rather large/painful object shoved square up his arse.

While Max Payne isn’t THE most impressive PC game around, graphically, it is certainly up there with the best. The textures and special effects deserve some special praise.

9.3/10

Sound
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The main thing you’ll be hearing in Max Payne is the sound effects, more specifically, weapons. Both your own, and the enemies. Each weapon sounds different, is sampled at a high quality and sounds very nice. The more powerful guns have a deep, heavy noise when fired, the automatics make that “tcchhtcchtcchtcch” noise and so on.

When bullet time is activated you will hear a heart beat, and everything will be heard in slow motion (as it should be). This adds greatly to the effect of bullet time, especially when coming out of it.

The voices are also worth mentioning, not only the guards saying “It’s Max Payne, kill him!” and whatnot, but the voice overs, used in the cartoons, and in conversations you can listen in on. Very well done indeed.

The music in Max Payne, at times seems to be a little on the absent side, which is perfectly fine by me. The music mainly sinks into the background, with a few piano keys here and there etc. This helps set the mood for you.

When the action hots up, so does the music, becoming much more apparent, fast paced an intense.

The sound effects are top notch, and the music, while sometimes a little absent sounds good and is used well.

8.9/10

Multiplayer
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No mulitplayer mode, and I can understand why. Think about it. You can choose to slow time down whenever you want, so what happens when one player activates bullet time, and the other doesn’t?

Anyway, I really cant see how a multiplayer mode would have worked, so I can’t complain about there not being one, can I? ;)

N/A

Story/Plot
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Mobsters, Hookers, Drugs, Guns and Explosives, Max Payne has got them all. The game’s story is pretty much as follows: You are Max Payne, your wife, and baby daughter were murdered three years ago by junkies, high on the latest designer drug, Valkyr, or V for short.

Max sets out to get revenge on the people responsible for the creation, and distribution of the drug.

As you progress through the game, you will be given deeper insight, and information into what is happening, through conversations you hear, in-game cinematics and the graphic novel type cartoons. The cartoons really do help you understand the plot, as well as making it out to be even better crafted than it already is (see: It makes the story seem cooler, because of the way it’s told :P). The cartoons are executed to perfection. There is no other way of describing them.

Considering this is a Shooter at heart, it is quite surprising to realise how deep, and well done the story and plot of the game really are. Hats off to Remedy again.

9.2/10

Originality
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Max Payne is a game like no other. Sure, there have been plenty of third person shooters before, but there is something special about Max Payne, that makes it a cut above the rest.

Remedy, by adding a thick, complex and engrossing plot have done something that no-one has tried before. Giving a third Person Shooter a REAL story (not like the usual “Aliens have invaded the earth, blow the **** out of every last one of them).

The way that the actual story is told is though an amazingly original idea, and it just adds even more to how original the game is.

The final point, is the main drawcard or the game. Bullet Time. Death and explosions always look better in slow motion…. Just look at any film :P The Matrix really took Bullet Time to the next level, and Max Payne has “borrowed” every aspect of what made the Matrix Bullet Time so cool. The slow motion, the cinematic camera angles, and the ability to actually see your weapon’s bullet’s flying through the air. Great Stuff.

One of the most original shooters in years, Max Payne reeks of originality, style and class.

9.7/10

Controls
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The controls are pretty basic, yet very functional in Max Payne. The mouse turns, the arrow keys move, shift jumps and enter “uses” objects. To activate bullet time for as long or as little as you like, all you have to do is tap the right mouse button when standing still. But most of the time you’ll be using one of the four Bullet Time Dives, either a forwards, back, left or right dive, that moves in bullet time, and as soon as you land goes back to normal speed. To do a bullet time dodge you simply have to hold the right mouse button, and the arrow key which points in the direction you want to dive.

The controls are responsive, and very well though out. No complaints here.

9.0/10

Replayability
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The game will take a good 12 or so hours to complete first time round, and once beaten the first time round you will be awarded with two new settings. A new difficulty setting, and a timed mode, where you have to beat each level within a set amount of time.

There is some incentive to play the game through again to unlock more stuff, and to get the most out of the title you’ll probably want to try and complete it on the new modes anyway. But for some people, the game can only be so fun, for so long.

Still, I’ll be playing this game on the odd occasion down the track, just because it’s so damn cool.

8.9/10

Difficulty
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On the first difficulty setting, Max Payne will be about average in difficulty. But thanks to quicksave, anytime you get to a tough spot, you can save and reload over and over until you clear it.
On the second, and third difficulty levels (which need to be unlocked) you will have a considerably harder time beating the game. Not to mention the New York Minute setting, where you have to beat each chapter in a set amount of time.

Max Payne caters for al tastes (or should I say skill levels) in terms of difficulty.

Load Times
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On my PC, I’d say the load times are pretty reasonable, and about average, if not a little on the quick side (compared to other games). Still, I can’t speak from the perspective of someone with a lower end PC…

Pros
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(_) Bullet Time…. Executed to perfection.
(_) The Graphic Novel story telling is a very original, and brilliantly executed idea.
(_) Lots of quirky jokes the developers have thrown in, from the numerous John Woo film references,
to the scene where Max’s wife writes him a letter in a dream telling him he’s in a computer game..
and plenty more.
(_) Extremely interactive environments.
(_) Bullet Time rocks!
(_) There is incentive to beat the game over again a few times.
(_) Did I mention bullet time?

Cons
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(_) Even after beating the game once, you can’t skip the cut-scenes.
(_) The game is a little on the short side. Sure, the unlockable extra difficulty settings add more to the game in terms of replay value, but it would have been nicer if the game was a little longer.
(_) To see the game’s best side you will need a pretty decent PC

Buy/rent
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Buy. Though the game can be completed in roughly 12 hours, it is WELL worth the purchase. This is one of those games that everyone has to play. Hopefully you’ll see reason to buy this game, as many, many very satisfied gamers already have.

Alternate Action
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- Go watch the Matrix
- Now go watch a few John Woo action flicks
(The truth is, that there really isn’t anything else quite like Max Payne in the way of games)

Overall
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Third Person Shooting perfection. There’s little more I can say. Go out and buy it now, Max Payne rocks!

Overall
9.4/10 (Rounded to 9/10 for GameFAQs)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/03/01, Updated 10/03/01