A man. A gun. A need to exact revenge.
These are the ingredients that fuel Remedy’s iconic 2001 third person shooter Max Payne. Before John Wick picked up his pistol and waged a one man war because his dog was murdered, Max Payne did the same thing after the murder of his family sent him into an undercover mission to destroy the mob.
Max Payne is a rip roaring tale of revenge, sending players on a quest to destroy every single mobster in NYC after a job goes wrong, finding him on the wrong end of the law. This quest, which is essentially a gun fight from the lowest point in NYC to the penthouse of the tallest building, is flavored with a set of excellent feeling rifles, pistols, and shotguns, as well as the iconic bullet time mechanic that’s set Remedy on the path of icon status that’s led them to Alan Wake 2 today.
Each level is punctuated by comic book style panels that present us with the twisted inner thoughts of Payne, which moves mountains to separate the game from cutscene driven narrative games of its era. Sam Lake’s first crack at storytelling is a bit blunt and hammy, but it does an excellent job defining who Max Payne is, and gives him strong and sympathetic motivations for going on such a wild romp. Characters are wafer thin, but it leans heavy on style to compensate for what it lacks.
Ultimately Max Payne’s greatest strength is its length - level design becomes mundane as it continues to wind down its path and encounters become tedious as the game goes down the route of quantity versus quality for encounters. Luckily it’s very short - any longer and it would become frustratingly boring. It’s a good hang for what it is, but it lays out its cards early, and plays them repeatedly through the credits roll.
Even worse, the Xbox port is poorly suited to the kind of precision aiming that Payne is designed around; the aim assist and analog stick controls are tuned to be tolerable, but doing anything other than hip firing is a fever dream. Aiming during a leap to the left or right? Good luck, friendo. Combine that with mild instability and you have a frustratingly mild experience for what should be a firecracker experience.
These are the ingredients that fuel Remedy’s iconic 2001 third person shooter Max Payne. Before John Wick picked up his pistol and waged a one man war because his dog was murdered, Max Payne did the same thing after the murder of his family sent him into an undercover mission to destroy the mob.
Max Payne is a rip roaring tale of revenge, sending players on a quest to destroy every single mobster in NYC after a job goes wrong, finding him on the wrong end of the law. This quest, which is essentially a gun fight from the lowest point in NYC to the penthouse of the tallest building, is flavored with a set of excellent feeling rifles, pistols, and shotguns, as well as the iconic bullet time mechanic that’s set Remedy on the path of icon status that’s led them to Alan Wake 2 today.
Each level is punctuated by comic book style panels that present us with the twisted inner thoughts of Payne, which moves mountains to separate the game from cutscene driven narrative games of its era. Sam Lake’s first crack at storytelling is a bit blunt and hammy, but it does an excellent job defining who Max Payne is, and gives him strong and sympathetic motivations for going on such a wild romp. Characters are wafer thin, but it leans heavy on style to compensate for what it lacks.
Ultimately Max Payne’s greatest strength is its length - level design becomes mundane as it continues to wind down its path and encounters become tedious as the game goes down the route of quantity versus quality for encounters. Luckily it’s very short - any longer and it would become frustratingly boring. It’s a good hang for what it is, but it lays out its cards early, and plays them repeatedly through the credits roll.
Even worse, the Xbox port is poorly suited to the kind of precision aiming that Payne is designed around; the aim assist and analog stick controls are tuned to be tolerable, but doing anything other than hip firing is a fever dream. Aiming during a leap to the left or right? Good luck, friendo. Combine that with mild instability and you have a frustratingly mild experience for what should be a firecracker experience.