Max Payne

"Insert Pain-Related Pun Here"

'Max Payne' is the most ridiculous game that I've played in quite some time, and I mean that in the nicest way. I mean, you're controlling a rogue cop that has about ten different fully-loaded weapons under his coat, and he's mowing down dozens of gangsters and other thugs while doing slow-motion flips and dives. And even after being shot countless times and suffering a monstrous beating with a baseball bat, Max simply pops a painkiller or three and jumps back into the fray. If all of this sounds like a John Woo movie on crack, well, that's what the developers of 'Max Payne' were aiming for. While the game's pulp and noir overtones can be aggravatingly cheesy, the playing experience is pure adrenalized action, and darn addictive while it lasts.
As the game begins, poor Officer Max discovers that his wife and baby have been murdered. Naturally, he flips his lid and goes seeking revenge, out to deliver some yummy lead sandwiches to anyone remotely connected to his family's deaths. And wouldn't you know it? As Max goes on his bloody rampage, bigger conspiracies begin to open up, and Mr. Payne gets involved in a huge pile of high-powered criminality. I won't spoil any of the game's plot details here, of course. They're largely irrelevant, anyhow, since the game's many factions simply represent different-costumed guys to shoot at.
'Max Payne' is a fairly typical third-person shooter in most regards, but it has a few funky features that really give it some flavor. The most obvious is Bullet-Time, which allows you to slow down the action and aim your shots more carefully while the baddies are practically frozen and defenseless. Of course, your little hour-glass of Bullet-Time runs out fairly quickly, so it must be used strategically. (Although killing people fills it back up nicely.) A variation on Bullet-Time is Shoot-Dodging, which causes Max to dive while he slows down time, which is a good way to enter a room when you don't know where your foes are located. Shoot-Dodging gives you time to look around and aim during your dive, and maybe even squeeze off a few rounds.
The developers squeezed plenty of real-life guns into the game for Max to use. Berettas, grenades, Ingrams, a few different shotguns, Desert Eagles... even an M-79 and a sniper rifle, for those special occasions. I may have even forgotten a few. Thankfully, Max can carry every single one of these guns at once, with tons of extra ammunition as well. Sure, it's unrealistic, but variety is the spice of life, after all. You might as well blast away, too, since every baddie leaves behind his piece for you to use, and there is an almost unholy amount of ammunition scattered everywhere. I must have stumbled across dozens of shelves, cabinets, and boxes stuffed with bullets and grenades, apparently left behind by careless military commandos. Max can also recover painkillers, which serve as the food/medikits/hearts/rations/power pills in the game. Max doesn't have a health bar, but rather a 'pain meter' that fills as he takes abuse, and his happy pills keep him from dying. Like ammunition, you'll find medicine cabinets stuffed with painkillers in the most random places. Just go with it, man.
The continuous bloodbath of 'Max Payne' is intercut with 'graphic novel' scenes, which detail the game's story in the form of a comic book. They also allow Max to say stupid crap like ''the sun went down with practiced bravado,'' easily the worst piece of writing I've seen in a game in quite some time. The prose isn't always that awful, but melodrama and third-rate pulp fiction abound. Sure, Max is in some pretty heavy stuff, but there's nothing very apocalyptic about a vengeful cop shooting dumb mobster thugs. The graphic novel idea is unique, I guess, but it comes off as a low-budget alternative to real-time storytelling.
Even worse are the game's two intermissions, which are nightmare sequences inside Max's troubled head. These tend to involve sound loops of wailing babies and Max's wife screaming for her life, and tons of blood, endless hallways, and sledgehammer-subtle symbolism. They also involve some incredibly annoying careful-walking-and-jumping exercises that would be excusable in a good platforming game, but are God-awful in a pure action title. At what point did the designers think: ''hey, what this game needs is a part where the player has to jump from one tiny pool of blood to another, over and over, while the sound of a baby being tortured plays in the background?'' These scenes were quite chilling at first, but poor execution quickly made them into a nuisance.
Still, as far as action goes, 'Max Payne' delivers the goods. The stylish gunplay is great fun, and the enemies put up a nice fight. My favorite moment was when I Shoot-Dodged into a room, blasted a guy in front of me, and then did a complete twist-around and shot a guy behind me before the slow-motion wore off. My roommate was watching me at the time, and he said: ''wow, that was cool.'' And it was. 'Max Payne' has a lot of those moments, with blood sprays and bullet ripples looking ever-so-nifty in Bullet-Time. Sure, even stylish violence is still pretty brainless. But the game manages to entertain the twisted killer in all of us.
'Max Payne' looks like a million bucks. The crime and grime of New York City is in sharp detail, and the characters in the game look fantastic. Max always has this weird expression on his face, but it's a small detail.
The game's soundtrack is dark and minimal; usually overshadowed by gunfire or dialogue. The voice-acting is the usual mixed bag, with a whole lot of ham and cheese coming from the game's villains. The actor playing Max does pretty well with the lines he's given, though.
If you like bloody action, you'll definitely want to pick up this game. If you're the type to play a game for many hours a day, you could probably get away with a rental, since 'Max Payne' isn't that long and it has little-to-no replay value. Fifty bucks is a fair price to own this game, though. If your gaming budget is fairly thin, hunt down a used copy to keep the 'hours-played-per-dollar' ratio to your liking.

Note: If you have to choose between this version or the PlayStation 2 version, grab the X-Box edition. It's a much cleaner port from the original computer release. Sure, the X-Box controller sucks, but you'll get over it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/29/02, Updated 01/29/02