Max Payne 2001 Published by: Rockstar Games   Developed by: Remedy   Buy It Now

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Platform: Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC, Macintosh

Genre: Action

Number of Players: 1

“Max Payne is a man with nothing to lose in the violent, cold, urban night.  A fugitive undercover cop framed for murder, and now hunted by the cops and the mob.  Max is a man with his back to the wall, fighting a battle he cannot hope to win.  Prepare for a new breed of deep action game.  Prepare for pain…”  -From the Max Payne box cover.

It’s a good thing we gamers don’t base our purchases on box cover splash, cause if we did, no one would ever give Max Payne a shot.  I mean, did you read that copy?  Is that not, like, the most overused kinda setting for a game in the world?  If you had a dollar for every gritty, urban, cop on the edge type story line out there, well, I don’t know how many dollars you’d have, but it would be quite a lot. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on box cover splash for our game info.  No, we savvy gamers know the best info for game news is the ever present Media Hype Machine.  TV, web, previews disks- we know everything we want to know about any given game, and much we really don’t, long before it comes out.  Unfortunately, most games don’t live up to all that hype.  Once you get them in your console, you find that, other than the graphics and sound, they are all pretty much the same as what came before.

Enter Max Payne, a game that lives up to the heaping helpings of hype shoveled upon our heads for so long before it was released.  The mold, while not exactly shattered, is certainly an unusable mess.

You play the title role, stubble faced Max Payne.  Max is a cop.  His family has been murdered.  He has been framed.  He is out to clear his name and get revenge in the cold, dark night.  He will do this by killing a lot of people and blowing a lot of stuff up.  Along the way, will meet interesting people, who will give you clues and tips to the whole what and why for of the story.  The story is told through a graphic novel layout, and here, the artwork is superb.  The style and feel is very much like that of comic artist Alex Ross, who did Kingdom Come, among others, and it is just excellent.  It works extremely well for the subject matter of the game.  After the cut scenes are over, its back to the killing and blowing stuff up.  Cool.  I just love killing people and blowing stuff up.  Well, in games at least.  I cant say if I like it in real life or not, cause I’ve never done it.  Hopefully, no one will ever murder my family and frame me for murder, so I don’t have to find out.  In this game, killing and destroying is a true joy, done with a unique style, thanks to Bullet time effects and great animations.  There is a high level of attention paid to detail in this game, from simple sounds, to particle effects, even down to the bullets you shoot.  And that’s good, cause you will shoot a lot of bullets.  You have a great assortment of guns to fire them from too, including dual Barettas, shotguns, the Desert Eagle (the heavy hitting hand cannon brought to by the good folks at Israel Military Industries, makers of the infamous Uzi SMG), and so many more.  Control is a bit different- it takes a little getting used to, but after a short time, it comes naturally, and burning down bad guys while flying through the air in slow motion is not only very, very cool, but relatively easy to do. 

As with most Rockstar games, the graphics are a bit sparse.  While not the most beautiful game on the Xbox, the visuals serve this game’s style very well, so I really can’t nit pick them all that much.  Character animations are very good, and watching the scum bleed and fly as you blow them away is very satisfying.  The sound effects work very well.  The sounds of gunshots and things burning are suitably realistic, and taken all together, the environments really give you a feeling of being there.

In Max Payne, you use the bullet time effect to slow down time, enabling you to dodge enemy bullets, while keeping yours right on target.  You’ve seen it overused to death in the movies, but getting to actually use it in a game, especially when it’s this well done, is a real treat.  The bullet time is measured in an hourglass shaped meter- when it runs out, no more slo mo.  It refills on its own over time, though, without having to find special power ups, and that is a good thing.  If you do get shot (and you will), your character’s health status is handled with the standard meter, running down as you get shot.  Refilling it requires finding pain pills, located in places you would expect to find them, such as first aid stations and bathroom cabinets.  This, to me, is a nice change from the random floating chicken legs and things that you find in most games.  It helps keep the sense of realism in line.

One thing I liked very much is the game’s self adjusting difficulty feature.  With this, the game tracks how you play, and adjusts the badness of the bad guys to keep the game flowing.  This, to me, is a much-needed aspect to games, and I’m glad to see it’s finally arrived.  A game that is too easy is not worth playing because there is no challenge.  If a game is too hard, well, I’m sure you know what happens- you have to invest in a new controller in the most extreme cases, but at the very least, its just not worth the frustration, and the experience is ruined.  Max Payne gives you a decent challenge, but also keeps thing moving along at a nice even click.  The game is not terribly long (I think I beat it in a bout 10 hours or so), but the pacing makes it feel just right.  Hopefully, we will see this feature in more games in the future.

When you take all the games aspects together, what you get is a great game playing experience, and you remember why you started playing games in the first place.  Intense shooting action combined with a gritty story, groovy comic style storytelling, and a difficulty level that is just right for you, makes for a title that is fun to play while it lasts, and it comes highly recommended.

- Ed -