So fun and real that you WILL feel the payne!

I will start my review -I never do- with a short info about the company itself, since they for me have a great but uncertain future in the industry...and they deserve the space.

Developer

Taking a lot of time to develop this title -so much time I was so not excited when it came out- Remedy Entertainment and 3D Realms, in resume did a great Job. So as far as I'm concerned, the time was worth waiting.

Being founded in August, 1995. The goal of this company from the start have been to create die-hard action games that somehow involves innovative ideas, and extreme amount of quality content, mixing state-of-the-art graphics engines to deliver rich vissuals, and putting the right people together, so my friends...the mix of all this, really pays off.

Their debut game was a not-so-good-in-my-eyes racing game called Death Rally, though I have to grant the game somewhat of an addictive game-play, is the type of game that simply don't hook me, all I can say is that this title started it all so we should all feel grateful for that matter.

In the past, back in 96' when the before mentioned game was finished, they started building up the idea of a "3rd person action game", who was later cooked -for lack of better words- in the Apogee's division of "3D Realms", and the magic started with Max Payne, being developed by 24 talented individuals and co-workers of the two companies.


Pusblisher

Since founded in January of 1998, this Texas-based computer and video games publushing company have been doing an amazing job inside the gaming industry, being the glue that holds the company together in my eyes, this moto "we treat developers as professional entertainment artists", making it the original concept from which the company was made of, Gathering Of Developers (GOD) starts the tough but excellent path winning respect and building up a name for itself.

After being bought by Take Two Interactive, and now being one more of the subsidiary's of the before mentioned company, GoDGames remains with the same concept they had when they started, that basically being, cultivating and developing strong relationships with different decent developers world wide.

The first sucesss the company released was the best-selling "Railroad Tycoon II", which for me was an excellent game -and I'm not too much in the railing industry as you could see given my post of Microsoft Train Simulator- and though I know the games are quite not that similar they both deal with the same issue, Trains.

After that they started co-developing and releasing a wide range of titles going from racing with 4X4 EVO, and strategy Tropico, to games I call -grab a gun and kill everything you can on the way- Serious Sam, all excellent titles in their genres, but the magic for this company it's just starting, and they showed that to me with the latest release from them I got my hands on...no less than Max Payne, let me tell you why I think this companies and specially this title have the wood to be an excellent award winning monster.

Graphics System/Engine

Ok...this is the first aspect of the game that will get you shocked, the incredible stunning visuals it offers. The engine used to create the game was the same used to test in 3DMark®2000, a program that can be found by the company MadOnion, and that engine it's called "Max-FX" from Remedy Entertainment.

Thanks to this incredible graphic engine you can get more impressive and useful effects like "Radiosity" -which it's basically "realistic refraction and reflection" using energy instead of ray lining. skin characters -not DX7 pixels-, in-motion and static objects with LOD (Level Of Detail) where the number of polygons varies given the distance, and the right tool for lighting, the gouraud. So in resume, the core of the graphics system in this game, is as best as you could get and though we all know this changes quickly when new tools arrive in the market, the Engine Max-FX will be the favorite of game developers for a while.

Given the info about the engine used, for those who do not know what the hell I'm talking about it all reduces to this, you have an incredible title rich in visuals, to make some examples you can shoot decoration and it will reflect the shoting -not a new technique, but damn well done in this title-, you can see your shadow or reflection given the scenario -floor-, you can shoot sofa's, tv's, so the game is really stunning and detailed, also you have a wide range of complements when it comes to in-game features, like being able to interact with things, is simply a vast world full of wonders, where realistic details with impressive vissuals will drawn you to an action world where at some point you will feel inside the game, being the mighty Max.

The most noticeable -and fun- aspect in this game -graphics and gamewise- is the Slow Motion feature that after using it for the very first time will give you the strong feeling that your Neo from The Matrix. This feature is simple and added-help in-game, so you can get out of hairy situations, though I recommend to a lot of people using it wisely because it doesn't charges back up -yes, you have somewhat of a meter- like mána in Diablo® II, but when shooting people, so this adds some sort of get-out-of-the-hairy-situation and a sense of fast gameplay since it doesn't slow the game given the fact that you can't sit and hide untill it's charged again.

GamePlay

Deatils of gameplay and features in the game:

-Brief Story-

Max Payne is a good cop, with a wife and a kid. He goes home one night and he found his wife and child murdered by a couple of street junkies. Finding himself trapped in a mind black hole where he feels frustrated and no hope of having again the life he decided to have, then he takes a job with the DEA to prevent the traffic and use of drugs trying to look for some venganza.

The adventure stars as you enter a subway station to meet a friend -also a cop-, so your friend get's shot and killed -too- so you start this sort of -seek and revenge- deathly mission, trying to find those bastards that killed your family and friends.

-Camera/Perspective And Controls-

Being a 3rd person shooter type of game believe me when I say the camera movement can be quite tedious and annoying. But this is not the case in this title, the camera keeps the game fun -most of the time- by not getting on your nerves while you try to deal with the perspective and controls, at the beginning you will get really use to both having no trouble whatsoever in learning the different techniques you can perform. So if your worried that this is yet another messy "3rd Person Shoter", you cannot be more wrong !

-Graphic Novel Style-

Another stand-out feature in this game, is the graphic story panels. Which will appear in what I call key-points during the game narrating the happenings, being mixed with some cinematics during the game they will make you flow through the history adding a sense of a "plot" to it, so it's just not get a gun and kill -which I find tedious-

-Intelligent Difficulty System-

This is simple an amazing feature in the game where you have the option to set up the game difficulty during a game.

The enemies are smart as they can be, hiding and waiting you behind furniture or boxes, and making somewhat of an atteck surprise making a lot of scenes very difficult, but again, you can determine the level of it, judged on how well you did during the course of the previous levels and based in the number of deaths, time took to complete the previous level, and boom ! the game difficulty adjust given the information on how well you play it.

You have a scale from 1 to 7, you start at number 3 and this will varie, so during the course of the game you will see yourself in action scenes with a difficulty level of 4, and some others with minor difficulty. For me, a pretty and genuine aspect of this title.

-Player Modes-

This is one of the lacks I've seen in this game, no Multiplayer action which in my tiny littly bitsy world would've added an extreme ammount of fun to it...but I think the developers did not see this title as another CS. So all you get is the single player mode, which to be honest was good enough for me -but what about the online freaks who can't live without a nice online action- ? Good question, anyone knows the answer ?

So yes, it can be somewhat of a down point in this game, but given the fact I'm not a before mentioned online-freak and I prefer my single player action, the game was simple good enough for me, it's all about tastes...

Final Words

To wrap up here people, cause I realised I was getting somewhat extended -sorry, got carried away- all I have to say is that this title for me is very promising in the fun department -seems something hard to achieve now a days by big names like Microsoft or EA-.

Perhaps I'm more of a optimistic person, and I try to focus too hard on the good aspects of the game, sometimes not paying the needed attention to the down points, but in this game, I simply found 2, No Multiplayer and the rich-person type of a machine you need to play it, since I warn people, it won't run in every computer so be aware. But besides those 2 points, I see a game "complete", with incredible graphics, a rich sound system -not explained in my review due to time- and hours of gameplay.

So finally, some may be disappointed for not having the right system or for the lack of online action but I can guarantee to those who are not looking a second part of Counter Strike and for those who own a decent machine, that this title is as sweet as you can get now a days when it comes to believing your some sort of hero armed to the teeth.

Final Score: 9.0

Note:

- Part of the info about both companies were found in their respective websites.
- Special thanks to the staff of TGC® Venezuela, for their help and information about the graphics engine used in this game.