Max Payne

"A game to remember"

Max Payne

The new breed of 3rd person shooters has arrived. It’s called…Max Payne. This highly detailed game has stunning graphics and one of the coolest new game play features, Bullet-Time. Bullet-Time is a feature that allows you to slow down time, and give you more time to react and fire off a few rounds. It is almost as though it is the Matrix turned into a game. All this cool game play comes with a price, the minimum requirements. They are a 450 MHz. Processor, 96 MB of RAM, at least a 16-bit graphics card, and DirectX 8.0, which comes on the CD.

Max Payne used to be a New York City cop until he came home and found his wife and child murdered, and subsequently finds himself on the run. Faced with a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation, he proceeds to take matters into his own hand. As you might imagine, the matters involve the systematic killing of a whole city full of seedy mobsters, drug dealers, addicts, cops gone bad, and greedy corporate barons.

The storyline is laced with allusions to a dastardly fictional drug and is colored by a dark and moody nordic style, proudly and excellently presented by the games Finnish artists and writers. It is full of shameless vice and merciless violence.

In light of that, the game is not intended for children of parents who might be a bit over-protective of their morals! This is part of its appeal. The storyline is mature and proceeds at a sweaty-palmed pace. It's interlaced with a cheesy, but compelling graphic comic and 3D movies.

Game play:
Max Payne is an incredibly fun game to play. The controls are customizable, so you can set certain keyboard keys to certain commands, so you can feel very comfortable with the controls. The game is broken down into chapters and each chapter is set apart with a comic-book style storyline to help you gain clues and insight as you wind your way along.

Max will come across a decent, but manageable number of weapons - mostly hard-core firearms - to help him blaze his trail. The game is designed to adjust to the skill of the player. As the player improves, the game gets tougher. If the player is struggling, the targets get a bit easier to hit. Don't kid yourself into thinking it’s a pushover - it's still very challenging, but won't leave you stuck at a particularly difficult spot. For this reason, any gamer who's not overly skilled at a shooter would find it very appealing. The only thing I wished would have been better is the length of the game. I believe 12 hours or so is cutting it a bit short.

-9.4

Graphics: The graphics are very, very nice. The third person point-of-view perspective allows for Bullet-Time. During Bullet-Time, you can see the bullets coming at you, which is cool, and also helpful (for evasion). If you shoot a bullet, and then go into Bullet-Time, you can see the bullet trail and watch it all the way until it hits some poor sucker who happened to be in the way. The camera angles are also good, never in the way, usually always where they should be. Everything can be shot or blown up - pictures fall off walls, televisions explode, windows destroyed. Even if you shoot a water cooler it will leak. When you shoot or kill someone they will also interact with the environment around them - falling into chairs, flopping onto tables. Even Max’s facial expressions change when doing different things. During gameplay, guns fire with proper bolt action, and their bullets rely on nifty particle effects to produce puffs of smoke and debris when they hit surfaces.

-9.7

Sounds:
The sounds are good. There is music, and it is mainly there to add to the drama, which it does. The voices are excellent. If you are turned toward certain angles, the voices sound different, so it is easy to tell where the talking people are standing. Water dripping, TV sets in the background getting louder as you move towards them, the idle chatter of gangsters around the corner, and screeching tires and gunfire all make up a magnificent audio experience.
-9.5

Lasting Appeal:
There is not much to do after you have beaten the game. It only lasts about 12 hours. There are different difficulty setting, that’s about it. One cool thing, although it’s for advanced users, is a MAX-FX editor. This allows for the creation of mods. Unfortunately multiplayer was left out.
-7.6

Overall:
Max Payne is definitely a game you will remember. With one of the greatest storylines in a game ever, this is a must have for anyone with a PC that can handle it. Its only flaw is that the game was cut short at 12 hours. Max Payne’s impressive graphics, gripping storyline, and fun use of Bullet-Time action make it a top game of 2001.

-9.0

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/02, Updated 08/14/02