"After Y2K, the End of the World had become a cliché. But who was I to talk? A brooding underdog avenger alone against an empire of evil, out to right a grave injustice? Everything was subjective. There were no personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you."
In Max Payne, New York City comes first. We have a few moments just with the city, and the chatter of police scanners cutting through the howling snowstorm, before Max hits us with one of his characteristic delightfully purple parodic noir metaphor.
This might not seem worth noting, given what a tiny slice of the game it is, but I think it's important in the context of how the rest of the game's narrative is portrayed (mostly from Max's narration) and from the rest of Remedy's games that followed in Max Payne's lineage. Control, Quantum Break, and Alan Wake all open with their protagonists and their narration before the world, giving the player no time to form an impression of it outside the lens of our central character. Alan Wake offers the greatest window of time for this at a whopping two seconds before he starts banging on about Stephen King. So Max Payne giving us about a minute of time in snow-covered New York feels almost luxurious in comparison. And then Max Payne barges in, bringing Helheim with him.
I spend so much time pointing this out because any attempt to talk about what Max Payne is doing on any level below the surface makes one sound like a particularly unhinged conspiracy theorist, something that Remedy are explicitly aware of and has playfully prodded at in their future game Control in particular. Part of this is the conscious silliness of the surface-level: comic-sans narration boxes filled with prose so purple it can make fine wine, and, of course, the way the entire story is told through delightful school-play images made from the developers and their friends and family putting on ill-fitting outfits and making silly faces. There is a pervasive charm to all of this that invites luxuriating in it, but I think a common mistake one can make when reading any work is to simply assume that something is thoughtless because it's a bit silly. Remedy was not somehow unaware of the fact that they were a bunch of nerds and their relations playing dress-up, and indeed, lean into it.
The archness, the artifice, and the absolute over-the-top-ness of it all, evokes the tropes and styles it is pulling from so bluntly that it becomes solid in the mind, manifesting into a brick thrown at your face that then falls into your lap, remaining there and weighing on you, never letting you forget what it's doing. From the comic panels, to the tvs throughout the levels playing broad parodies of soap operas, Twin Peaks, and, uh, The News, to Max Payne himself, as he intrudes upon the serenity of New York at the beginning, a noir cliche diving in through the door from one of the better issues of Frank Miller's Sin City (the comic panels and narration and image of a city in white bearing greater similarity to those comics than anything starring Philip Marlowe) and leaving reality covered with bullet holes in his wake.
But here's the thing. He doesn't close the door behind him. And slowly, other things start to creep in.
A superhero with a baseball bat climbs out of a comic strip and into the head of a mob torturer who is a fan of the comic. The apocalyptic snowstorm that blankets the city of New York, and the pervasive Norse Mythology references that litter the game, crawl out of a book about Ragnarok being read by someone in the club Ragna Rock. Max's actions are fed into a news cycle that makes entertainment out of it. The game's genre references become recursive and circular, wrapping in on themselves over and over. Max becomes aware of his own status as a loose cannon cop out for revenge. Mobsters make themselves into occult monstrosities in order to survive. People write fiction. Fiction crawls into peoples' heads, influences them, and through them, the world. And then people carry those ideas back into fiction. People imposing on fiction, fiction imposing on the world. On and on it goes.
It is an imposition the player performs as well. I can't bring too much to the table in terms of the mechanical construction of Max Payne's fantastic moment-to-moment gunplay, as in many ways, the sheer joy of diving in slow-motion through a doorway and riddling an entire room of goons yelling "PAYNE!" full of holes simply speaks for itself with more wit than I could ever manage. However, one thing I do want to mention is something has, to a certain extent, been obscured by successive ports to consoles and phones and back to the PC. Max Payne was a PC game first and, I think, foremost, and understanding this is key to understanding how the game handles checkpoints, or, to be more accurate, how the game doesn't. Autosave points are extremely few and far between, and most deaths will take you back to the start of the level, and these deaths come quickly and mercilessly, with only a single mistake standing between Max and the grave eagerly awaiting him.
Of course, the game does not actually expect you to restart from the beginning of each level every single time. The game expects - an assumption that was reasonable given that this behavior was ubiquitous across Max Payne's contemporaries on the platform - for you to manually save the game and create your own checkpoints from which Max can resume his story after his next future full stop. This seemingly innocuous feature might be the game's cleverest ludic move, as together with fast deaths and often-scarce painkillers demanding a certain degree of trial-and-error perfectionism, the player is put into the role of director, cutting the action when they are satisfied with the scene as it played out. It is a system that imposes storytelling structure onto every aspect of play, including even the act of entering the pause screen to save and reload into its all-consuming storyboard.
On every level of it's construction, Max Payne is a game about stories insinuating themselves, loudly and quietly, into the real, and it's surprising to find the DNA that runs through Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control already fully-formed in (Death Rally aside) the studio's debut title, arguably more deftly and charismatically than any of those later works would manage. The strength of Max Payne is that unlike, say, Alan Wake, all of this is left to crawl around the periphery, only bubbling up very occasionally, allowing the player to put together the disparate images in their head, like a detective attempting to solve a mystery by staring at connected pins on a bulletin board. Indeed, I don't know if I would have the confidence to make this read if not for Remedy's future work pulling on all this stuff much more explicitly. Max comments on some stuff, but not all, and one of the most compelling images the game has to offer eludes his notice completely.
Late in the game, Max is recruited by a shadowy illuminati-like organization known as the Inner Circle, and learns that pretty much everything in the plot stems from their influence, and in particular, from one of their number who manufactured the US Military super-soldier drug that drives the game's plot: Valkyr. In his own piece on the game, critic Noah Gervais explains Valkyr, the hilariously cartoonish green goop drug that has it's origins in a military super-soldier project, as a kind of uniquely video-game pulp that bleeds in from what was typical for video games in that moment, and I would say that is fairly accurate. Where I deviate from Gervais is that he finds Valkyr to be a kind of ancillary element, something that emerges out of the video game milieu of the time rather than an intentional element, and that is where I disagree. Valkyr is a consciously artificial video game trope that begins this video game, in the same way that Max's dead family is a consciously Noir trope that begins this Noir story, created by a US military project run by a member of a secret organization who's headquarters is draped in conspicuous US historical ephemera, from the room looking like the briefing room of the White House, to the Washington Monument replica at the center of it all.
There was something disturbingly familiar about the letter before me, the handwriting was all pretty curves.
"You are in an American world, Max."
The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. The film noir aesthetic, the American comic influence, even the bullet-time mechanics derived from a filmmaker who, contemporaneously, was being consumed by the Hollywood machine making strange twists on the Hong Kong action films he so excelled at.
I was in a cultural world shaped by the hegemonic influence of American fiction. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Everything after this point, after this moment, is perfunctory. The point is made, the statement is said. As Max would put it, the final gunshot is merely the exclamation mark to everything that led to this point. He fulfills his duties to the game and the genre strangely quietly, defeats the villain, and is taken away in the back of the car, knowing exactly what has, what is, and what will happen.
He releases his finger from the trigger, and then it is over.
Until you start again.
Try Hard Boiled mode or New York Minute mode for the next challenge!
In Max Payne, New York City comes first. We have a few moments just with the city, and the chatter of police scanners cutting through the howling snowstorm, before Max hits us with one of his characteristic delightfully purple parodic noir metaphor.
This might not seem worth noting, given what a tiny slice of the game it is, but I think it's important in the context of how the rest of the game's narrative is portrayed (mostly from Max's narration) and from the rest of Remedy's games that followed in Max Payne's lineage. Control, Quantum Break, and Alan Wake all open with their protagonists and their narration before the world, giving the player no time to form an impression of it outside the lens of our central character. Alan Wake offers the greatest window of time for this at a whopping two seconds before he starts banging on about Stephen King. So Max Payne giving us about a minute of time in snow-covered New York feels almost luxurious in comparison. And then Max Payne barges in, bringing Helheim with him.
I spend so much time pointing this out because any attempt to talk about what Max Payne is doing on any level below the surface makes one sound like a particularly unhinged conspiracy theorist, something that Remedy are explicitly aware of and has playfully prodded at in their future game Control in particular. Part of this is the conscious silliness of the surface-level: comic-sans narration boxes filled with prose so purple it can make fine wine, and, of course, the way the entire story is told through delightful school-play images made from the developers and their friends and family putting on ill-fitting outfits and making silly faces. There is a pervasive charm to all of this that invites luxuriating in it, but I think a common mistake one can make when reading any work is to simply assume that something is thoughtless because it's a bit silly. Remedy was not somehow unaware of the fact that they were a bunch of nerds and their relations playing dress-up, and indeed, lean into it.
The archness, the artifice, and the absolute over-the-top-ness of it all, evokes the tropes and styles it is pulling from so bluntly that it becomes solid in the mind, manifesting into a brick thrown at your face that then falls into your lap, remaining there and weighing on you, never letting you forget what it's doing. From the comic panels, to the tvs throughout the levels playing broad parodies of soap operas, Twin Peaks, and, uh, The News, to Max Payne himself, as he intrudes upon the serenity of New York at the beginning, a noir cliche diving in through the door from one of the better issues of Frank Miller's Sin City (the comic panels and narration and image of a city in white bearing greater similarity to those comics than anything starring Philip Marlowe) and leaving reality covered with bullet holes in his wake.
But here's the thing. He doesn't close the door behind him. And slowly, other things start to creep in.
A superhero with a baseball bat climbs out of a comic strip and into the head of a mob torturer who is a fan of the comic. The apocalyptic snowstorm that blankets the city of New York, and the pervasive Norse Mythology references that litter the game, crawl out of a book about Ragnarok being read by someone in the club Ragna Rock. Max's actions are fed into a news cycle that makes entertainment out of it. The game's genre references become recursive and circular, wrapping in on themselves over and over. Max becomes aware of his own status as a loose cannon cop out for revenge. Mobsters make themselves into occult monstrosities in order to survive. People write fiction. Fiction crawls into peoples' heads, influences them, and through them, the world. And then people carry those ideas back into fiction. People imposing on fiction, fiction imposing on the world. On and on it goes.
It is an imposition the player performs as well. I can't bring too much to the table in terms of the mechanical construction of Max Payne's fantastic moment-to-moment gunplay, as in many ways, the sheer joy of diving in slow-motion through a doorway and riddling an entire room of goons yelling "PAYNE!" full of holes simply speaks for itself with more wit than I could ever manage. However, one thing I do want to mention is something has, to a certain extent, been obscured by successive ports to consoles and phones and back to the PC. Max Payne was a PC game first and, I think, foremost, and understanding this is key to understanding how the game handles checkpoints, or, to be more accurate, how the game doesn't. Autosave points are extremely few and far between, and most deaths will take you back to the start of the level, and these deaths come quickly and mercilessly, with only a single mistake standing between Max and the grave eagerly awaiting him.
Of course, the game does not actually expect you to restart from the beginning of each level every single time. The game expects - an assumption that was reasonable given that this behavior was ubiquitous across Max Payne's contemporaries on the platform - for you to manually save the game and create your own checkpoints from which Max can resume his story after his next future full stop. This seemingly innocuous feature might be the game's cleverest ludic move, as together with fast deaths and often-scarce painkillers demanding a certain degree of trial-and-error perfectionism, the player is put into the role of director, cutting the action when they are satisfied with the scene as it played out. It is a system that imposes storytelling structure onto every aspect of play, including even the act of entering the pause screen to save and reload into its all-consuming storyboard.
On every level of it's construction, Max Payne is a game about stories insinuating themselves, loudly and quietly, into the real, and it's surprising to find the DNA that runs through Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control already fully-formed in (Death Rally aside) the studio's debut title, arguably more deftly and charismatically than any of those later works would manage. The strength of Max Payne is that unlike, say, Alan Wake, all of this is left to crawl around the periphery, only bubbling up very occasionally, allowing the player to put together the disparate images in their head, like a detective attempting to solve a mystery by staring at connected pins on a bulletin board. Indeed, I don't know if I would have the confidence to make this read if not for Remedy's future work pulling on all this stuff much more explicitly. Max comments on some stuff, but not all, and one of the most compelling images the game has to offer eludes his notice completely.
Late in the game, Max is recruited by a shadowy illuminati-like organization known as the Inner Circle, and learns that pretty much everything in the plot stems from their influence, and in particular, from one of their number who manufactured the US Military super-soldier drug that drives the game's plot: Valkyr. In his own piece on the game, critic Noah Gervais explains Valkyr, the hilariously cartoonish green goop drug that has it's origins in a military super-soldier project, as a kind of uniquely video-game pulp that bleeds in from what was typical for video games in that moment, and I would say that is fairly accurate. Where I deviate from Gervais is that he finds Valkyr to be a kind of ancillary element, something that emerges out of the video game milieu of the time rather than an intentional element, and that is where I disagree. Valkyr is a consciously artificial video game trope that begins this video game, in the same way that Max's dead family is a consciously Noir trope that begins this Noir story, created by a US military project run by a member of a secret organization who's headquarters is draped in conspicuous US historical ephemera, from the room looking like the briefing room of the White House, to the Washington Monument replica at the center of it all.
There was something disturbingly familiar about the letter before me, the handwriting was all pretty curves.
"You are in an American world, Max."
The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. The film noir aesthetic, the American comic influence, even the bullet-time mechanics derived from a filmmaker who, contemporaneously, was being consumed by the Hollywood machine making strange twists on the Hong Kong action films he so excelled at.
I was in a cultural world shaped by the hegemonic influence of American fiction. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Everything after this point, after this moment, is perfunctory. The point is made, the statement is said. As Max would put it, the final gunshot is merely the exclamation mark to everything that led to this point. He fulfills his duties to the game and the genre strangely quietly, defeats the villain, and is taken away in the back of the car, knowing exactly what has, what is, and what will happen.
He releases his finger from the trigger, and then it is over.
Until you start again.
Try Hard Boiled mode or New York Minute mode for the next challenge!
As you might expect from the way I constantly play and analyze important games, I try to do the same for albums, and this week I’ve been listening to Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). This was the first time I sat down to listen to Wu-Tang, and while the name of the group should have been a big hint, what surprised me was how the album was almost… dorky? It’s packed with references and samples from kung fu movies which were getting old even at the time of the album’s release, and you would think they would make the whole thing sound dated, but the reality is just the opposite. These movies were such a huge inspiration for producer/singer/songwriter The RZA that every track shines with the love. If you want to see just how much, check out this amazing interview where he talks about the movies he’s sampled, it’s plain that the enthusiasm hasn’t waned even 1% all these years later. That earnest appreciation has a certain magnetism to it, and it characterizes Max Payne in the same way it does Wu-Tang. You have references to oldschool noir, comic books, John Woo action, a whole slew of disparate influences, but they blend in a way that only fans who deeply understand the material could accomplish. James McCaffrey’s performance of the titular character is a big part of what brings it all to life, giving Max an edge while also establishing him as someone with a genuine sense of humor, but the extreme situation has dulled his ability to tell fantasy from reality. This blur turns the bullet-time mechanic from a simple cinematic homage into something that’s iconically Max Payne; it’s hard to tell whether the slow mo is something he’s imagining, or if his adrenaline is actually giving him the edge. The game’s ability to reuse proven narrative language while injecting it with new personality in this way is what makes the game such a timeless classic, it shines with the love of its influences while also being entirely original. I can only hope the upcoming remake knows how to do the same.
It pains me to say this (no pun intended), but I did not mesh with Max Payne as much as I hoped I would have despite how much I respect the franchise and its contributions.
I learned pretty early on that Max Payne is from the early era of adaptive difficulty; I don't think anyone's exactly figured out the algorithm, but it works something like this. The more enemies you successfully kill without dying, the bulkier enemies get and the more powerful their attacks become. In a sense, it's meant to reward players that play well with a more engaging challenge and pacify players that don't play as well by lowering the level of difficulty so they have an easier time getting by. That said, I can only conclude that this adaptive difficulty is far too skewed in the direction of absurdly difficult. By the time I was on the third chapter of part I, enemies were no longer instantly dying to my shotgun or my baseball bat... which kind of defeats the purpose of using those weapons because I often didn't have enough time to get in a second attack before I would get ended by an enemy turning around and firing. On the other hand, I lost count of how many times I got sniped (quite literally) by enemies firing with a shotgun 50 feet away, with all the bullets lined up; meanwhile, my shotgun can't instantly kill them point blank with a headshot and misses most of the shots if I take five steps back. It is absolutely insane how bullet spongy the enemies get, to the point where they will take 10 bullets to the throat before going down while it only takes a single spray of the Ingram from an enemy to tear you to shreds; the shotguns unfortunately become very useless quite early on for this reason and by the end of the game, the Berettas were following suit and just unable to deal enough damage to quickly knock down the streams of enemies. It's also worth mentioning that for the adaptive difficulty to supposedly kick in and lower itself, you have to wait for the entire death animation to play out before reloaded, which can take a solid 10 seconds or more at times. While almost all the reviews I've read have been glowing, I think it definitely says something that quite a few of them had to resort to playing with cheats on just to get through the story mode. And that was on Fugitive Difficulty, the easiest/normal difficulty mode! I can't imagine how grindy this game must feel on harder difficulty modes due to how skewed the adaptive difficulty felt for me.
I'll quickly point out a few of the other issues too. If the enemies weren't already annoying enough, quite a few of them are placed in locations where they have free reign over you in tightly packed corridors or corners and can lay waste to you with grenades, rocket launchers, or sniper shotguns. A lot of time was spent quick saving and reloading at these locations to clear them out with grenades (which in itself is tricky because I often got shot down with the grenade in hand before I could retreat to change weapons) or luring them out so I could pick them off one by one and attempt to actually use the shotgun; this sort of felt lame and antithetical to the main gameplay so I tried my best not to camp and hide away/sneak attack. In particular, there's one section near the end of the game where three goons were firing rocket launchers upon me (insta kill) so I couldn't approach them to pick them off and had to rely on the shaky sniper rifle. Right after that, I was tunneled onto upwards elevators where a sniper shotgun boy was perfectly firing down his sights, and I couldn't approach both because of the angle and because there was a mine in the way that I had trouble disabling due to the line of fire. Enemy placement in Max Payne can cheapen the difficulty to some extent as well, is what I'm trying to say. Of course, there's some classic 2000s era jank to be dealt with, such as the multiple instances where I got shot and often insta killed by shotguns through walls, or where my individual shots got blocked by the strange hit detection of some corners/rails. (Oh, and the cutscenes are unskippable too as part of this era, so save often.) The sort of shaky and inconsistent aim doesn't help much either; you really want to go for the head because it deals 500% more damage, but aiming for the head will often just not hit so it becomes safer to aim for the body even despite the bullet spongyness that comes with adaptive difficulty. Finally, there are two dream sequences that will make Max Payne go through these dark labyrinths on narrow balancing beams, and you also have to jump between the beams at times; the game was definitely not meant for 3D platforming, and these sections feel way too precarious for just setting up the scene as prologue sections.
Now I don't want to be all doom and gloom, so I'll take this time to talk about the original game's big strength; its game feel and atmosphere. Max Payne takes heavy inspiration from the "heroic bloodshed" genre of Hong Kong action cinema (down to the tragic narrative and combat) and having watched enough John Woo and Chow Yun-fat movies in my time (both of which are actually referenced in the game!), I think the writers nailed it. The story's told through these pulpy, low fidelity comic book strips with very serious sounding voiceovers while foreboding, noir tunes tinker in the background (reminiscent of the "Jazz Club" from Hard Boiled). Max Payne himself is this sarcastic, dry humor undercover cop sold out by both the mafia and the police and finds himself as a loner driven to his wits end thirsting for revenge having constantly been down on his luck. When the gameplay succeeds, it hits hard and emulates the gun-fu of heroic bloodshed films quite well; it's a ton of fun slo mode diving past entranceways or down stairs as you land bullet after bullet into the hearts of countless mobs. Bonus points for the occasional slow motion zoom-in as you finish off some enemies here and there and get to watch their bodies slump to the floor while your bullet passes clean through. And of course, you've got a crazy over the top thriller crime drama as the backdrop to the worst winter in New York City combined with guns, drugs, explosions, and betrayals. The presentation absolutely holds up to modern standards and ultimately is the big selling point for me despite my other complaints.
Having said all of that, I really really wish I could recommend Max Payne more considering all the praise its received and its legacy, but unfortunately I feel the need to be a voice of dissent because the (somewhat misunderstood) adaptive difficulty really turned certain portions of the game into a slog and I cannot in good faith recommend this without reservations. For those of you reading who want another point of comparison, may I suggest Stranglehold? It's actually a video game sequel directed by John Woo starring Chow Yun-fat with all the classic elements of heroic bloodshed films, combined with even more wild shenanigans (like emulating the belly flop cart sliding scene from Hard Boiled) to perform as compared to the original Max Payne, and I found that to be much easier to adapt to thanks to Tequila's many overpowered tricks matching the energy and strength of the opposing mobs. Regardless, I still plan on playing Max Payne 2 sometime after this as I've heard it's a massive improvement over the original and personally recognize the original's contributions to video game history. It's just a shame that I couldn't be one of the ones to get fully engrossed in this classic; they've always said you shouldn't meet your heroes, but I suppose Max Payne was right in insisting he was no hero.
PS: It took me a solid day and a half to realize that "Max Payne" is a pun even after multiple characters in the comics lampshade this. My mind is still blown regarding this revelation.
I learned pretty early on that Max Payne is from the early era of adaptive difficulty; I don't think anyone's exactly figured out the algorithm, but it works something like this. The more enemies you successfully kill without dying, the bulkier enemies get and the more powerful their attacks become. In a sense, it's meant to reward players that play well with a more engaging challenge and pacify players that don't play as well by lowering the level of difficulty so they have an easier time getting by. That said, I can only conclude that this adaptive difficulty is far too skewed in the direction of absurdly difficult. By the time I was on the third chapter of part I, enemies were no longer instantly dying to my shotgun or my baseball bat... which kind of defeats the purpose of using those weapons because I often didn't have enough time to get in a second attack before I would get ended by an enemy turning around and firing. On the other hand, I lost count of how many times I got sniped (quite literally) by enemies firing with a shotgun 50 feet away, with all the bullets lined up; meanwhile, my shotgun can't instantly kill them point blank with a headshot and misses most of the shots if I take five steps back. It is absolutely insane how bullet spongy the enemies get, to the point where they will take 10 bullets to the throat before going down while it only takes a single spray of the Ingram from an enemy to tear you to shreds; the shotguns unfortunately become very useless quite early on for this reason and by the end of the game, the Berettas were following suit and just unable to deal enough damage to quickly knock down the streams of enemies. It's also worth mentioning that for the adaptive difficulty to supposedly kick in and lower itself, you have to wait for the entire death animation to play out before reloaded, which can take a solid 10 seconds or more at times. While almost all the reviews I've read have been glowing, I think it definitely says something that quite a few of them had to resort to playing with cheats on just to get through the story mode. And that was on Fugitive Difficulty, the easiest/normal difficulty mode! I can't imagine how grindy this game must feel on harder difficulty modes due to how skewed the adaptive difficulty felt for me.
I'll quickly point out a few of the other issues too. If the enemies weren't already annoying enough, quite a few of them are placed in locations where they have free reign over you in tightly packed corridors or corners and can lay waste to you with grenades, rocket launchers, or sniper shotguns. A lot of time was spent quick saving and reloading at these locations to clear them out with grenades (which in itself is tricky because I often got shot down with the grenade in hand before I could retreat to change weapons) or luring them out so I could pick them off one by one and attempt to actually use the shotgun; this sort of felt lame and antithetical to the main gameplay so I tried my best not to camp and hide away/sneak attack. In particular, there's one section near the end of the game where three goons were firing rocket launchers upon me (insta kill) so I couldn't approach them to pick them off and had to rely on the shaky sniper rifle. Right after that, I was tunneled onto upwards elevators where a sniper shotgun boy was perfectly firing down his sights, and I couldn't approach both because of the angle and because there was a mine in the way that I had trouble disabling due to the line of fire. Enemy placement in Max Payne can cheapen the difficulty to some extent as well, is what I'm trying to say. Of course, there's some classic 2000s era jank to be dealt with, such as the multiple instances where I got shot and often insta killed by shotguns through walls, or where my individual shots got blocked by the strange hit detection of some corners/rails. (Oh, and the cutscenes are unskippable too as part of this era, so save often.) The sort of shaky and inconsistent aim doesn't help much either; you really want to go for the head because it deals 500% more damage, but aiming for the head will often just not hit so it becomes safer to aim for the body even despite the bullet spongyness that comes with adaptive difficulty. Finally, there are two dream sequences that will make Max Payne go through these dark labyrinths on narrow balancing beams, and you also have to jump between the beams at times; the game was definitely not meant for 3D platforming, and these sections feel way too precarious for just setting up the scene as prologue sections.
Now I don't want to be all doom and gloom, so I'll take this time to talk about the original game's big strength; its game feel and atmosphere. Max Payne takes heavy inspiration from the "heroic bloodshed" genre of Hong Kong action cinema (down to the tragic narrative and combat) and having watched enough John Woo and Chow Yun-fat movies in my time (both of which are actually referenced in the game!), I think the writers nailed it. The story's told through these pulpy, low fidelity comic book strips with very serious sounding voiceovers while foreboding, noir tunes tinker in the background (reminiscent of the "Jazz Club" from Hard Boiled). Max Payne himself is this sarcastic, dry humor undercover cop sold out by both the mafia and the police and finds himself as a loner driven to his wits end thirsting for revenge having constantly been down on his luck. When the gameplay succeeds, it hits hard and emulates the gun-fu of heroic bloodshed films quite well; it's a ton of fun slo mode diving past entranceways or down stairs as you land bullet after bullet into the hearts of countless mobs. Bonus points for the occasional slow motion zoom-in as you finish off some enemies here and there and get to watch their bodies slump to the floor while your bullet passes clean through. And of course, you've got a crazy over the top thriller crime drama as the backdrop to the worst winter in New York City combined with guns, drugs, explosions, and betrayals. The presentation absolutely holds up to modern standards and ultimately is the big selling point for me despite my other complaints.
Having said all of that, I really really wish I could recommend Max Payne more considering all the praise its received and its legacy, but unfortunately I feel the need to be a voice of dissent because the (somewhat misunderstood) adaptive difficulty really turned certain portions of the game into a slog and I cannot in good faith recommend this without reservations. For those of you reading who want another point of comparison, may I suggest Stranglehold? It's actually a video game sequel directed by John Woo starring Chow Yun-fat with all the classic elements of heroic bloodshed films, combined with even more wild shenanigans (like emulating the belly flop cart sliding scene from Hard Boiled) to perform as compared to the original Max Payne, and I found that to be much easier to adapt to thanks to Tequila's many overpowered tricks matching the energy and strength of the opposing mobs. Regardless, I still plan on playing Max Payne 2 sometime after this as I've heard it's a massive improvement over the original and personally recognize the original's contributions to video game history. It's just a shame that I couldn't be one of the ones to get fully engrossed in this classic; they've always said you shouldn't meet your heroes, but I suppose Max Payne was right in insisting he was no hero.
PS: It took me a solid day and a half to realize that "Max Payne" is a pun even after multiple characters in the comics lampshade this. My mind is still blown regarding this revelation.
A bit closer to heaven
I can't exactly remember the specific year and date at this point but it was during the early 2000s when my stepdad bought a copy of Max Payne for the PS2 and played it in the living room to the chagrin of him constantly dying because he never used bullet time at all. He managed to beat the whole game on PS2 without using bullet time which kinda sounds unheard of when I heard about it at the time. My experiences with the game at first didn't stop there either. I remember seeing him playing the nightmare level and much to its namesake because of how my mind worked and a fear of blood at the time, I ended up getting nightmares for two weeks because of it. I couldn't process what I even saw because I was around the age of seven and nine when this happened. I pretty much never touched the game again until I was a teenager with a laptop and able to get it online playing it for the first time and actually being able to digest what I experienced. Eventually replayed the game in a constant fervor using various mods such as the kung fu mod.
It's hard to argue how much effort Remedy has put into this neo-noir third person shooter. The act of slowing down time, events playing out via comic strips, wearing the obvious influences on its back almost feels like a miracle to me. Just for the notion of introducing one of my favorite mechanics in video games ever, Bullet Time. Something about slowing down and seeing the literal projectiles flying over you must have been no small technical feat for the Finnish developer at the time.
Even with knowing every single story beat and level by heart, playing some of the levels still manages to give me a cold sweat of sorts especially the nightmare levels. It feels like a part of me still gets paralyzed from the thought even though I know it isn't real anymore. You can purely play Max Payne as a regular third person shooter but I feel you'll miss out a bit. Listening to the enemies' conversations, even watching the in world television shows after hearing them an insurmountable amount of time never gets old.
The art of gunplay still feels satisfying to a great degree. A huge variety of weapons at your disposal including full on spray and pray like the ingrams or the accurate and slow sniper rifle, each gun feels great to use to a degree. A minor quirk of the gameplay is the difficulty on Fugitive (the standard and the only one you can pick on the first playthrough). It follows an interesting dynamic difficulty mechanic where it goes off how often you're dying in a predetermined amount of time. Dying too much will lower the difficulty but not dying at all after a while will ramp it up. Can't stress enough either that you shouldn't quick load immediately since the difficulty only lowers when you complete the death animation. If I can give you a single piece of advice for playing this game is to save often. It'll save you some frustrating headaches as enemies can come out of almost every corner and one shot you even on regular settings.
I really wish I can talk more about this game. The writing really speaks for itself, it all comes together like a tinfoil conspiracy theory. The gameplay is still great and simple to a huge benefit of just aiming and shooting with a spread. Best way to play it is on PC (with a fix all patch to restore sound and make it actually work for some computers) and or Xbox since I heard that's a decent version too. Avoid the PS2 version as it's a more lackluster version of the game overall. With news of a remake on the horizon, I'm cautiously optimistic that Remedy will be able to do it justice but I still recommend playing the original since I really feel like you'll lose out a bit of the charm that went into the original !
I can't exactly remember the specific year and date at this point but it was during the early 2000s when my stepdad bought a copy of Max Payne for the PS2 and played it in the living room to the chagrin of him constantly dying because he never used bullet time at all. He managed to beat the whole game on PS2 without using bullet time which kinda sounds unheard of when I heard about it at the time. My experiences with the game at first didn't stop there either. I remember seeing him playing the nightmare level and much to its namesake because of how my mind worked and a fear of blood at the time, I ended up getting nightmares for two weeks because of it. I couldn't process what I even saw because I was around the age of seven and nine when this happened. I pretty much never touched the game again until I was a teenager with a laptop and able to get it online playing it for the first time and actually being able to digest what I experienced. Eventually replayed the game in a constant fervor using various mods such as the kung fu mod.
It's hard to argue how much effort Remedy has put into this neo-noir third person shooter. The act of slowing down time, events playing out via comic strips, wearing the obvious influences on its back almost feels like a miracle to me. Just for the notion of introducing one of my favorite mechanics in video games ever, Bullet Time. Something about slowing down and seeing the literal projectiles flying over you must have been no small technical feat for the Finnish developer at the time.
Even with knowing every single story beat and level by heart, playing some of the levels still manages to give me a cold sweat of sorts especially the nightmare levels. It feels like a part of me still gets paralyzed from the thought even though I know it isn't real anymore. You can purely play Max Payne as a regular third person shooter but I feel you'll miss out a bit. Listening to the enemies' conversations, even watching the in world television shows after hearing them an insurmountable amount of time never gets old.
The art of gunplay still feels satisfying to a great degree. A huge variety of weapons at your disposal including full on spray and pray like the ingrams or the accurate and slow sniper rifle, each gun feels great to use to a degree. A minor quirk of the gameplay is the difficulty on Fugitive (the standard and the only one you can pick on the first playthrough). It follows an interesting dynamic difficulty mechanic where it goes off how often you're dying in a predetermined amount of time. Dying too much will lower the difficulty but not dying at all after a while will ramp it up. Can't stress enough either that you shouldn't quick load immediately since the difficulty only lowers when you complete the death animation. If I can give you a single piece of advice for playing this game is to save often. It'll save you some frustrating headaches as enemies can come out of almost every corner and one shot you even on regular settings.
I really wish I can talk more about this game. The writing really speaks for itself, it all comes together like a tinfoil conspiracy theory. The gameplay is still great and simple to a huge benefit of just aiming and shooting with a spread. Best way to play it is on PC (with a fix all patch to restore sound and make it actually work for some computers) and or Xbox since I heard that's a decent version too. Avoid the PS2 version as it's a more lackluster version of the game overall. With news of a remake on the horizon, I'm cautiously optimistic that Remedy will be able to do it justice but I still recommend playing the original since I really feel like you'll lose out a bit of the charm that went into the original !
This review contains spoilers
This game is so beautiful.... we really don't need anything better than baked lighting.
Also love when it diverts into pulp horror for a lil bit.
After playing for a few hours I went walking down the street and my brain randomly sent signals to my brain being like "Can you activate slow-mo and do a bellyflop into the concrete????" not realizing that you can't do that in real life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9GZNcpbro
Also love when it diverts into pulp horror for a lil bit.
After playing for a few hours I went walking down the street and my brain randomly sent signals to my brain being like "Can you activate slow-mo and do a bellyflop into the concrete????" not realizing that you can't do that in real life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9GZNcpbro
When Max Payne is firing on all cylinders, it is an absolute joy to play and one of the best gaming experiences you can have. The bullet time mechanic is so much fun and it has got a great story and atmosphere to go with it. There are just so many parts of this game that are such a drag to get through. A lot of areas I found myself slowly progressing through trial and error. Having to die multiple times just to work out enemy placements or see what trap is waiting for you in the next room became frustrating, especially with all of the one hit kills and lack of checkpoints.
-the rxmas of this medium tbh
-boyfriend said this game is like what a child thinks real life places would be like. was playing the ragna rock segment when he said that and u know what he’s right. feels at times like a fake game made for a real movie, like the gta clone in spike lee’s inside man lmfao
-nails what winter feels like in cold grey places. think more ppl need to appreciate old rockstar aesthetics. ik this is not rlly a rockstar game but idk the look that this bully and gta3 share during their winter scenes are unparalleled. ill probably never play manhunt bc idk idgaf but I bet those games have lots of cool like grey winter scenes
-the platforming horror prologues are consistently rlly cool and don’t rlly outstay their welcome esp when save-scumming. cool that ur literally reliving/replaying max’s most traumatic moments and it kind of paints him as a total psychopath ie in the fact that he’s responsible for sm death and destruction but is haunted by the only death that’s happened to him. feel like playing mp3 beforehand def endeared me more to max as a character and also having a real person’s face grafted onto the ingame model rlly helps humanize the character as well
-weird survival horror angles in this whenever there’s a cutscene, but like the masc vers of that. specifically lots of overhead diorama ass angles, kind of goes hard. idk I fell off of silent hill 4 real hard after playing like half of it solely bc I was not having fun and it wasn’t what I wanted to see in a survival horror game. idk this is and enough of that has to do w how overwrought and weird the sounds in this game are. the fucking baby crying in all the platforming moments lmaoo. idk this is like a very masculine game but also very in its feelings, very emo I love it
-think seeing non-american’s world view of nyc pre 9/11 is genuinely such an important thing to have esp as someone who has no memories of a world before that. think remedy’s take on the city is just as inspired and prescient as sons of liberty and the only reason this isn’t held in quite as high esteem in that regard is bc idk this didn’t have censorship at the last minute/is a hopeless story in a hopeless world unlike the ending of mgs2/looks and feels more nj than ny
-owned this either on my first iphone or my ipod as a child and never got past the first five mins lol
-boyfriend said this game is like what a child thinks real life places would be like. was playing the ragna rock segment when he said that and u know what he’s right. feels at times like a fake game made for a real movie, like the gta clone in spike lee’s inside man lmfao
-nails what winter feels like in cold grey places. think more ppl need to appreciate old rockstar aesthetics. ik this is not rlly a rockstar game but idk the look that this bully and gta3 share during their winter scenes are unparalleled. ill probably never play manhunt bc idk idgaf but I bet those games have lots of cool like grey winter scenes
-the platforming horror prologues are consistently rlly cool and don’t rlly outstay their welcome esp when save-scumming. cool that ur literally reliving/replaying max’s most traumatic moments and it kind of paints him as a total psychopath ie in the fact that he’s responsible for sm death and destruction but is haunted by the only death that’s happened to him. feel like playing mp3 beforehand def endeared me more to max as a character and also having a real person’s face grafted onto the ingame model rlly helps humanize the character as well
-weird survival horror angles in this whenever there’s a cutscene, but like the masc vers of that. specifically lots of overhead diorama ass angles, kind of goes hard. idk I fell off of silent hill 4 real hard after playing like half of it solely bc I was not having fun and it wasn’t what I wanted to see in a survival horror game. idk this is and enough of that has to do w how overwrought and weird the sounds in this game are. the fucking baby crying in all the platforming moments lmaoo. idk this is like a very masculine game but also very in its feelings, very emo I love it
-think seeing non-american’s world view of nyc pre 9/11 is genuinely such an important thing to have esp as someone who has no memories of a world before that. think remedy’s take on the city is just as inspired and prescient as sons of liberty and the only reason this isn’t held in quite as high esteem in that regard is bc idk this didn’t have censorship at the last minute/is a hopeless story in a hopeless world unlike the ending of mgs2/looks and feels more nj than ny
-owned this either on my first iphone or my ipod as a child and never got past the first five mins lol
Some executive really let the devs add a section where they crank your FOV wide open and make you wander through a shrieking dead baby maze, and then they have you do some questionably designed platforming over a bottomless pit of guilt and spilt blood.
Not complaining. It’s awesome.
Not complaining. It’s awesome.
About damn time. Hard-boiled snowy John Woo worship with a slight air of sardonicism throughout. The "bullet time" mechanic it birthed is slightly janky now, but when it works, it fucking works. Don't miss this classic.
I was in a Backloggd review.
Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Its almost a perfect first attempt at a Video Game. And contrary to popular believe: This isnt a quick save nightmare and if you actually play well using the bullet time to slow down and speedup the action, then you can blast through even the highest difficulty. Besides that the game has fantastic voice acting, a fun story and a killer atmosphere that still holds up.
I've been meaning to get into the Max Payne trilogy for a while. Whenever I thought about buying it, I always ended up going with some other option, and I don't know why it took me so long to get around to buying it. I bought Max Payne two days ago, along with Yakuza 0, and even though I just beat it a few minutes ago, I can't wait to get back to the game and beat it on Hard-Boiled mode.
Max Payne is a fairly short game whose levels are mostly pretty similar in terms of gameplay, but there's a reason why this game is regarded as the classic that it is. For starters, I loved this game's atmosphere. The grimy, snowed-in New York setting and terrific voice acting from James McCaffrey made me feel like I was playing through a gritty, no-nonsense crime novel, and it also worked really well with the comic panel cutscenes, introspective storytelling, and especially the nightmarish and unnerving dream sequences. This brass knuckle atmosphere meshes brilliantly with the gameplay, which clearly (and proudly) takes inspiration from filmmakers like John Woo and the Wachowskis with its bullet time and shootdodge mechanics.
I generally loved Max Payne, but there's one level in the game that made me consider lowering my score entirely. While I didn't mind the game's lack of checkpoints, as I thought that it made the gunfights much more engaging, I was especially annoyed and frustrated by the level "Stone-Cold Dead", which went on for almost ten minutes and had the unbearable elevator sequence. That level wasn't enough to fully worsen my thoughts on Max Payne, though, as I thought that it was a fantastic game that makes me really excited to check out the other two games in the trilogy.
Max Payne is a fairly short game whose levels are mostly pretty similar in terms of gameplay, but there's a reason why this game is regarded as the classic that it is. For starters, I loved this game's atmosphere. The grimy, snowed-in New York setting and terrific voice acting from James McCaffrey made me feel like I was playing through a gritty, no-nonsense crime novel, and it also worked really well with the comic panel cutscenes, introspective storytelling, and especially the nightmarish and unnerving dream sequences. This brass knuckle atmosphere meshes brilliantly with the gameplay, which clearly (and proudly) takes inspiration from filmmakers like John Woo and the Wachowskis with its bullet time and shootdodge mechanics.
I generally loved Max Payne, but there's one level in the game that made me consider lowering my score entirely. While I didn't mind the game's lack of checkpoints, as I thought that it made the gunfights much more engaging, I was especially annoyed and frustrated by the level "Stone-Cold Dead", which went on for almost ten minutes and had the unbearable elevator sequence. That level wasn't enough to fully worsen my thoughts on Max Payne, though, as I thought that it was a fantastic game that makes me really excited to check out the other two games in the trilogy.
Stupendously cinematic for the age, a bounciful accolade of heroic bloodshed and a lovechild of different styles- Moody tragedy as the ammunition to John Woo breakneck spectacle and larger-than-life Lynchian existentialism. If not for the aged yet marvelously balanced gunfighting, the screenwriting was COOKED. It's still such a hypnotic oddysey thanks to McCaffrey (rest his soul) and Sam Lake's masterminding surfing on atmospherical coolness. Remedy peaked here.
Through its apparent attempt to be surreal and subversive it ends up succeeding in its original goal, that of being the most honest and down to earth of them all. Max's sense of justice is so stark it feels like vengeance, and he certainly tries to paint it that way, but the end result is a completely righteous set of ideals that guide him on his path towards heaven.
ITS PAYNE WACK'EM
In the back room of an apartment, I am cut loose from the city. It watches me pass with sharp neon eyes. The sun has gone down with practiced bravado, twilight crawled across the sky and laden with foreboding. The night has gilded the monitor in silver. Every pixel is covered with light. The image of one mean sonnuvabitch called “Max “Payne”, is repeated over and over. The Drug. The red and yellow of a beretta’s muzzle flashes fiercely on the white screen’s snow.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me I’m playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no one’s laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
“Remedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.”
“The result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.”
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. I’d been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. I’d died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friend’s brains looked like splattered across a wall. I’d been writing a review in the style Max Payne’s dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. I’m dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alex’s brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepad’s joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this would’ve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me I’m playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no one’s laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
“Remedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.”
“The result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.”
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. I’d been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. I’d died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friend’s brains looked like splattered across a wall. I’d been writing a review in the style Max Payne’s dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. I’m dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alex’s brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepad’s joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this would’ve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
"I don't know about angels, but it's fear that gives men wings."
Still kicks all kinds of ass even after a dozen replays. Max Payne, along with its sequel, slot comfortably into my top 10 games of all time. It still holds up (save for some weird compatibility bugs that are easily patched), plays great and has writing and voice acting that is still unmatched compared to most games that have come out since.
Remedy has been on an absolute tear with Control and Alan Wake 2 so if they can take that magic and apply it to the upcoming Max Payne remakes then a stone cold classic could possibly be made even better.
Still kicks all kinds of ass even after a dozen replays. Max Payne, along with its sequel, slot comfortably into my top 10 games of all time. It still holds up (save for some weird compatibility bugs that are easily patched), plays great and has writing and voice acting that is still unmatched compared to most games that have come out since.
Remedy has been on an absolute tear with Control and Alan Wake 2 so if they can take that magic and apply it to the upcoming Max Payne remakes then a stone cold classic could possibly be made even better.
Max Payne was one of those characters I always had a strong familiarity with but I’ve never actually gotten around to playing the series which is a bummer. I really missed out as a kid (my loss is my mom’s luck though because I know she would’ve needed to help me with those blood mazes).
Aside from the peculiar controller movement that takes some getting used to, the game still holds up incredibly well, and I had a blast with it even 23 years later. A true classic.
Aside from the peculiar controller movement that takes some getting used to, the game still holds up incredibly well, and I had a blast with it even 23 years later. A true classic.
Nothing to say but, rest in peace James McCaffrey. An iconic character with an iconic voice that can never and will never be forgotten.
Gameplay has not necessarily aged the bests, at least on controller. I feel like this game would be a lot smoother with mouse and keyboard, of course its what it was designed for. That being said, the game is still fun.
Gunplay, while not as precise on controller, is really fun. The dive mechanic is fun. My one real gameplay criticism is that managing health is a pain (ha). You have to find painkillers to heal, and if you don't your just outta luck. One of those old "you respawn with the health you had when you saved" type deals where it's easy to get kinda stuck in a shit situation. That being said, it wasn't enough to make me hate playing.
The story is kinda generic but in a the same way something like Dragon Quest is generic. Max Payne inspired most of the detective/crime thriller stories we see to this day in gaming. It is not its fault that its so influential that its now generic! What ISN'T generic at all though is the way that story is told. The comic book style is so fun and engaging, and its really fun to just go through and reread the story. The dialogue is also written perfectly.
Overall this is a great game, and if the remake can fix the gameplay quirks, this could be a 5/5.
Gunplay, while not as precise on controller, is really fun. The dive mechanic is fun. My one real gameplay criticism is that managing health is a pain (ha). You have to find painkillers to heal, and if you don't your just outta luck. One of those old "you respawn with the health you had when you saved" type deals where it's easy to get kinda stuck in a shit situation. That being said, it wasn't enough to make me hate playing.
The story is kinda generic but in a the same way something like Dragon Quest is generic. Max Payne inspired most of the detective/crime thriller stories we see to this day in gaming. It is not its fault that its so influential that its now generic! What ISN'T generic at all though is the way that story is told. The comic book style is so fun and engaging, and its really fun to just go through and reread the story. The dialogue is also written perfectly.
Overall this is a great game, and if the remake can fix the gameplay quirks, this could be a 5/5.
"Before You Embark On A Journey Of Revenge, Dig Two Graves" what a stupid fucking quote. I'm killing way more than two people idiot.
I wish I had something more substantial to say about Max Payne. It's been a week since i finished it. I don't think it was my fave in the series. But as the original, I gotta give it a lot of love. This bizarre pop culture stew, made from chunks of The Matrix, Raymond Chandler, Twin Peaks, John Woo and bad New York accents. It's a combo only Remedy still solely provide. But I think what's been lost over the years is the palpable atmosphere the series has when it's trading in street level crime. The alleys and dirty hallways of dilapidated apartment buildings and hotels. That sense that the snow you're stepping in is covered in piss. The Max Payne games always tend to escalated upwards, until you're having manic shootouts in expensive, lavish high rise buildings, fighting mercenary goons. But few games ever capture and relish in the dirt the way Max Payne games do. Video games so desperately lack Raymond Chandler and John Woo inspirations nowadays too. Max Payne is a reminder that not every game with a gun has to be about aliens or shooting people of colour in various warzones. Shame the memo didn't go out.
Minha ''análise" poderia ser resumida em: Max Payne tem uma história muito boa, atmosfera noir bacana e envolvente, dublagem (em inglês) incrível, gameplay legal, mas com sistema de dificuldade horrível.
Porém, eu decidi que vou dissertar "um pouco" sobre isso.
Uma das melhores coisas nesse jogo é que o modelo facial do Max Payne foi o próprio Sam Lake, que na época era o roteirista do jogo, e hoje é o diretor criativo de qualquer jogo da Remedy. Ver a cara do Max Payne / Sam Lake durante as cutscenes enquanto ele mata trocentos inimigos é ao mesmo tempo engraçado e fodástico. A expressão facial do Max Payne, que parece o tempo inteiro que ele está com uma vontade enorme de cagar ou mijar é icônica. E o fato do Sam Lake ainda conseguir fazer a mesma expressão mesmo depois de mais de 20 anos é ainda mais foda.
Uma coisa que é preciso se atentar é que o Sam Lake realmente só deu o rosto para o Max Payne. Quem dubla ele na versão original (em inglês) é o ator sensacional James McCaffrey, que é um amigo e colaborador de longa data do Sam Lake, e por isso ele dublou personagens dos outros jogos da Remedy.
Uma coisa que até hoje é lembrada e é realmente bacana é a mecânica de bullet time, onde o tempo fica lento e o Max Payne pode atirar em seus inimigos com mais facilidade (e estilo também, quando se ativa o bullet time e logo em seguida dá um pulo pro lado). Isso claramente foi inspirado no filme Matrix, de 1999 (que não inventou isso, mas aperfeiçoou e trouxe para o público geral), e essa mecânica não seria exclusiva de Max Payne nos jogos. Ela também foi utilizada, por exemplo, nos próprios jogos de Matrix e na trilogia F.E.A.R.
Outra coisa legal desse jogo é que a história é contada principalmente por meio de páginas de quadrinhos que estão aos montes no jogo, seja em locais e objetos-chave no cenário, como também em trocas de capítulo.
Esse é um baita jogo, quase excelente na minha opinião, e que felizmente conseguiu seu lugar na história dos jogos. A Remedy mereceu esse reconhecimento.
F para James McCaffrey, dublador de Max Payne, Thomas Zane (em Alan Wake 1), Zachariah Trench (em Control) e Alex Casey (em Alan Wake 1 e 2). Um excelente dublador, que partiu cedo demais. Descanse em paz, James.
Porém, eu decidi que vou dissertar "um pouco" sobre isso.
Uma das melhores coisas nesse jogo é que o modelo facial do Max Payne foi o próprio Sam Lake, que na época era o roteirista do jogo, e hoje é o diretor criativo de qualquer jogo da Remedy. Ver a cara do Max Payne / Sam Lake durante as cutscenes enquanto ele mata trocentos inimigos é ao mesmo tempo engraçado e fodástico. A expressão facial do Max Payne, que parece o tempo inteiro que ele está com uma vontade enorme de cagar ou mijar é icônica. E o fato do Sam Lake ainda conseguir fazer a mesma expressão mesmo depois de mais de 20 anos é ainda mais foda.
Uma coisa que é preciso se atentar é que o Sam Lake realmente só deu o rosto para o Max Payne. Quem dubla ele na versão original (em inglês) é o ator sensacional James McCaffrey, que é um amigo e colaborador de longa data do Sam Lake, e por isso ele dublou personagens dos outros jogos da Remedy.
Uma coisa que até hoje é lembrada e é realmente bacana é a mecânica de bullet time, onde o tempo fica lento e o Max Payne pode atirar em seus inimigos com mais facilidade (e estilo também, quando se ativa o bullet time e logo em seguida dá um pulo pro lado). Isso claramente foi inspirado no filme Matrix, de 1999 (que não inventou isso, mas aperfeiçoou e trouxe para o público geral), e essa mecânica não seria exclusiva de Max Payne nos jogos. Ela também foi utilizada, por exemplo, nos próprios jogos de Matrix e na trilogia F.E.A.R.
Outra coisa legal desse jogo é que a história é contada principalmente por meio de páginas de quadrinhos que estão aos montes no jogo, seja em locais e objetos-chave no cenário, como também em trocas de capítulo.
Esse é um baita jogo, quase excelente na minha opinião, e que felizmente conseguiu seu lugar na história dos jogos. A Remedy mereceu esse reconhecimento.
F para James McCaffrey, dublador de Max Payne, Thomas Zane (em Alan Wake 1), Zachariah Trench (em Control) e Alex Casey (em Alan Wake 1 e 2). Um excelente dublador, que partiu cedo demais. Descanse em paz, James.
Over 20 years later and ahead of a remake, this game remains a flawed masterpiece. A metaphor-laden script that oozes pure noir, those instantly recognisable and slightly uncanny comic-book cutscenes, and the implementation of the "bullet-time" effect, lifted straight from the Matrix but none the less impressive for it. All of these elements left me repeatedly wondering how the hell this game is as old as I am.
The controls are smooth enough to allow amazing precision control, particularly during the slow motion bullet-time mechanic, but just limited enough so that you're still in serious danger in every firefight. The game has a somewhat notorious bug where the adaptive difficulty doesn't take into account loading quicksaves, so not far in you'll be given enemies with quick reaction times and dealing higher damage. It can be incredibly difficult, but the ability to quicksave at any point means it's just a matter of immediately giving it another shot. You even get two slots just in case you hit the button right as a suit with a shotgun opens a door next to you...
If I had to pick flaws, it'd be the story. Not that it's bad story, even if it doesn't really establish any character other than Max himself. As the story is from his perspective, and given that said perspective is total apathy towards anything other than his objective, this could be interpreted as staying true to that, but it still leaves some frustratingly unanswered questions.
The other issue is that I think the game overstays its welcome by about a chapter or two, which left me greatly fatigued towards the endpoint - though the quality of the final act was enough to fire my synapses right back up. I could also take the opportunity to complain how much of a bitch this game is to run on modern PCs...you have to install a fan-made fixpack for even the bare essentials like audio, and not immediately crashing; even then, issues remain such as minor graphical bugs, stuttering, and the occasional random freezing. And yet despite suffering through all that, I think this game was worth it by far. A true testament to its quality.
All in all, don't wait for the remakes, get this game in its original state now...if you still can, as Rockstar have already delisted it in a few regions as far as I can tell. Also, avoid the console ports if possible, they make a lot of compromises from what I hear.
The controls are smooth enough to allow amazing precision control, particularly during the slow motion bullet-time mechanic, but just limited enough so that you're still in serious danger in every firefight. The game has a somewhat notorious bug where the adaptive difficulty doesn't take into account loading quicksaves, so not far in you'll be given enemies with quick reaction times and dealing higher damage. It can be incredibly difficult, but the ability to quicksave at any point means it's just a matter of immediately giving it another shot. You even get two slots just in case you hit the button right as a suit with a shotgun opens a door next to you...
If I had to pick flaws, it'd be the story. Not that it's bad story, even if it doesn't really establish any character other than Max himself. As the story is from his perspective, and given that said perspective is total apathy towards anything other than his objective, this could be interpreted as staying true to that, but it still leaves some frustratingly unanswered questions.
The other issue is that I think the game overstays its welcome by about a chapter or two, which left me greatly fatigued towards the endpoint - though the quality of the final act was enough to fire my synapses right back up. I could also take the opportunity to complain how much of a bitch this game is to run on modern PCs...you have to install a fan-made fixpack for even the bare essentials like audio, and not immediately crashing; even then, issues remain such as minor graphical bugs, stuttering, and the occasional random freezing. And yet despite suffering through all that, I think this game was worth it by far. A true testament to its quality.
All in all, don't wait for the remakes, get this game in its original state now...if you still can, as Rockstar have already delisted it in a few regions as far as I can tell. Also, avoid the console ports if possible, they make a lot of compromises from what I hear.
So Max Payne. This one is kinda hard to rate. For one, I am very picky so the fact I enjoyed a game this old enough to finish it is an achievement in of itself. And I will say the game starts off really strong and for the whole first act, despite some janky old game bullshit I was having a lot of fun. Even when Part 2 decided to reuse a whole level essentially, I still had fun but by the time Part 3 rolled around the cracks that had shown along the way started to grow and my interest in the game quickly plummeted, and I spent almost the whole of Part 3 wishing it would end already. So what's so wrong you may ask? Well, considering its such an old game a lot of it is forgiveable but it took away from the experience so greatly it just has to be mentioned.
Firstly I will admit that the combat is still pretty fun, but when the levels lack visual variety and you're walking through the four hundredth grey and brown hallway or factory, the gameplay quickly becomes tiresome. Plus as iconic as bullet time dodge is, at least in this game, it is a lot more situational and way less useful than I expected since it often barely lasts long enough for a kill. Another big annoyance is checkpoints which as to be expected for a PS2 game are pretty awful, but when they're coupled with often unnecessarily long slow mo unskippable cutscenes, it starts to get really grating on the overall experience.
But by far the worst thing about the game is the absolutely ridiculous amount of platforming. While that in of itself isnt really an issue, Max is allergic to walking in a straight line and all of the things you need to walk on are like an inch wide, making falling off to your death something that you'll just have to get used to. This is especially notable in Max's two nightmare sequences where you're supposed to jump and follow a red blood trail in pitch dark. Whoever designed those segments belongs in the gulag. So those are my big problems with the game, and they drag it down a lot, turning it in from a game I enjoyed greatly in the first half to a game I never plan to revisit.
But since we've spent the whole time being negative I do wanna list the positives. For one, the writing is really good. Max has some stellar dialogue and the comic book presentation is a nice touch. Enemies also can be heard having some really funny conversations. The story itself was something I checked out of by the end but it wasnt bad either. The few times the soundtrack is used are also great, and like I said it does get old and the bullet time is a little weak but the combat is still really solid.
I also wanna note the character models, theres a scene at the beginning of the game where Max Payne comes home to find his family dead and it shows his face on the screen and it is genuinely the funniest character design i've ever seen in my entire life and it made me laugh out loud despite how horrific the scene was. Anyways despite how frustrated it made me, I think Max Payne was good for its time even with all the flaws and theres no denying it was very impactful to games as a whole. I do quite look forward to playing the sequels.
Nancymeter - 69/100
Firstly I will admit that the combat is still pretty fun, but when the levels lack visual variety and you're walking through the four hundredth grey and brown hallway or factory, the gameplay quickly becomes tiresome. Plus as iconic as bullet time dodge is, at least in this game, it is a lot more situational and way less useful than I expected since it often barely lasts long enough for a kill. Another big annoyance is checkpoints which as to be expected for a PS2 game are pretty awful, but when they're coupled with often unnecessarily long slow mo unskippable cutscenes, it starts to get really grating on the overall experience.
But by far the worst thing about the game is the absolutely ridiculous amount of platforming. While that in of itself isnt really an issue, Max is allergic to walking in a straight line and all of the things you need to walk on are like an inch wide, making falling off to your death something that you'll just have to get used to. This is especially notable in Max's two nightmare sequences where you're supposed to jump and follow a red blood trail in pitch dark. Whoever designed those segments belongs in the gulag. So those are my big problems with the game, and they drag it down a lot, turning it in from a game I enjoyed greatly in the first half to a game I never plan to revisit.
But since we've spent the whole time being negative I do wanna list the positives. For one, the writing is really good. Max has some stellar dialogue and the comic book presentation is a nice touch. Enemies also can be heard having some really funny conversations. The story itself was something I checked out of by the end but it wasnt bad either. The few times the soundtrack is used are also great, and like I said it does get old and the bullet time is a little weak but the combat is still really solid.
I also wanna note the character models, theres a scene at the beginning of the game where Max Payne comes home to find his family dead and it shows his face on the screen and it is genuinely the funniest character design i've ever seen in my entire life and it made me laugh out loud despite how horrific the scene was. Anyways despite how frustrated it made me, I think Max Payne was good for its time even with all the flaws and theres no denying it was very impactful to games as a whole. I do quite look forward to playing the sequels.
Nancymeter - 69/100
fuck, he HATES italian people
Ahead of its time in some ways, and painfully dated in many others. I loved the storytelling, the realistic locations, detailed ambient soundscapes, scripted setpiece moments, and the combat when the game was playing fair. Unfortunately the gameplay often devolves into trial-and-error tedium, where you'll grind your way through encounters and quicksave every couple minutes knowing instant death is always just around the corner. The game punishes you for using its iconic dive by leaving you defenseless and unable to shoot at the beginning and end of the animation, and using slow motion is often frustrating because suddenly your bullets travel at a snail's pace, requiring you to lead your targets in a way that just doesn't feel right. Sometimes you pounce on a group of enemies and kill them with a quick burst of precise gunfire and it feels great, other times you'll pump 5 shotgun blasts into a goon's face as they continue shooting you like the Terminator. I can't imagine what a slog this must have been on consoles back in the day.
a movimentação desse jogo beira a deixar qualquer um maluco, nas poucas partes q envolve parkour eu acabava fechando o jogo, é muito ruim.
eu joguei a versão dublado, q na epoca devia ser do caralho, mas hj em dia é muito tosco.
agora nas partes boas fica com a historia, apesar de cliche é muito bem feitinha, com uns plots q eu achei legal
Max como é de se esperar não tem muito carisma pois o personagem é pra ser assim
os cenários são ótimos, a trilha sonora é boa, e o sistema de mira q eu pensava q seria horrivel até q é ok.
otimo inicio de uma franquia.
eu joguei a versão dublado, q na epoca devia ser do caralho, mas hj em dia é muito tosco.
agora nas partes boas fica com a historia, apesar de cliche é muito bem feitinha, com uns plots q eu achei legal
Max como é de se esperar não tem muito carisma pois o personagem é pra ser assim
os cenários são ótimos, a trilha sonora é boa, e o sistema de mira q eu pensava q seria horrivel até q é ok.
otimo inicio de uma franquia.
Aqui temos um conceito simples: andar e atirar em tudo que surge na tela. Em sistemas de gameplay, podemos pontuar o bullet-time, que ajuda a criar um senso de estratégia corriqueiro e deixa os confrontos mais divertidos. Mas tudo isso, só funciona da forma que funciona, pela influência imensa que o cinema de John Woo teve aqui, pra que desconhece o sujeito, é um diretor de Hong Kong de filmes de ação (maravilhosos diga-se de passagem).
Além da narrativa, seguir o melodrama típicos da filmografia dele, a gameplay ta mais preocupada em criar situações engajantes do que lógicas ou realistas. É tudo sobre manobras enquanto você tenta matar todos em tela, sendo basicamente o estilo de ação dos filmes.
O jogo só dura um pouco mais do que devia, tirando isso é maravilhoso.
Além da narrativa, seguir o melodrama típicos da filmografia dele, a gameplay ta mais preocupada em criar situações engajantes do que lógicas ou realistas. É tudo sobre manobras enquanto você tenta matar todos em tela, sendo basicamente o estilo de ação dos filmes.
O jogo só dura um pouco mais do que devia, tirando isso é maravilhoso.