Max Payne, Great Game.

For three or four years, Max Payne was one of the most mysterious titles in development. All that was known was the storyline: your wife and kid were slaughtered three years ago, and you went from average cop to bitter undercover agent in the New York hell. Now you’re wrongfully accused of killing your partner, and everybody and anybody who has a gun is on your tail. There’s only one thing to do: find the real bad guys before ending up as a chalk line with a bloodstain.
That was all; no screenshots, no playable demos. What did they have in store for us?

Lights… camera… action!

Anyway, as you all know the game is here, and I’ve been playing it non-stop for the last couple of days. And what do I think? A big “Wow!” and a small “Yes, but…”. The biggest surprise for me was that the third-person view really works in this game. Before playing it, I figured it would be a first-person-shooter, and making it a third-person one would have been a mistake. Boy was I wrong! Not only are the camera views excellent (the camera is never someplace where there’s nothing to see), but this view really adds a lot to the atmosphere. Watching Max run, jump, climb, and pump lead into opponents is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a computer game. And he can do it all in slow-motion…

Did you say slow-motion?

That’s right, one of the most important – and by now infamous – features of Max Payne is the possibility to go into a slow-motion mode, a technique they call “Bullet Time”. Basically it’s this: whenever you feel the need to, you can make time go slower. Of course you can still aim as fast as you want to, so that gives you a huge advantage. This Bullet Time isn’t just a gimmick; when faced with a room full of enemies, you really need it, because every shot counts. And of course it looks cool as ice! Of course you can’t run around in Bullet Time constantly – your time is limited, though you can get extra time.
Another neat feature is “Shootdodging”; if you press a movement key and the Bullet Time-key at the same time, Max will make some sort of John-Woo move in slow-mo and you’ll have more time to aim your shots accurately.

A visual feast for the eyes

So if your computer is powerful enough, you’ll be treated to the most beautiful graphics and visual effects ever seen in a computer game. Walls covered in blood, the impact of a rain of bullets, shells hitting the floor, files getting shredded when they’re shot, grim faces of characters and the awesomely cool slow-motion moves by Max who dives out of a bullet’s trajectory with flapping raincoat, aims two guns at his opponent and opens fire before suddenly rolling the floor in real-time… You have to see it to believe it.
And there’s the sound to match. Although there could have been a little more variation in my enemies’ death cries, the sound of Max’s environment comes close to perfection. If you have a surround-set like I do, I advise you to crank it open. Goosebumps guaranteed!

You’re immersed into the story from the very start, although it is a little over the top, and not a single cliché has been left out. Max Payne plays very movie-like, and I got the impression I was caught in a gangster B-movie. The makers are probably film buffs; I noticed references to classics like Scarface, Payback, Get Carter, The Godfather and even Casablanca!
For once the story isn’t broken up by cutscenes, but with some sort of graphic novel or comic. At certain points you go to a comic strip (actually photographs) that helps you on your way. It’s nicely done, contains more info and the voice-acting is well done too. Oh, there are a couple of cutscenes – which you can’t skip – but not that many.

So how does it play?

I have to admit it: I had my doubts with a game that had so much hype, and looked that great – many games with great visuals have horrible gameplay. In less than fifteen minutes I was convinced otherwise. Like a veteran action movie director I used the Bullet Time and saw enemy bullets ripple through the air, just like in The Matrix, while scoring hit after hit on my opponents. What I like is that the game will consider how well you play and adjust the difficulty level accordingly. It’ll follow up on how often you died in a level, how long it took you to complete and how much health you had left. With these data it will adjust the intelligence of your opponents, making it a challenging game – though not too difficult for novices.

Time to upgrade!

A perfect game? Not quite. In order to play Max Payne to the fullest, you need the sort of computer they use at NASA. Although the minimum requirements are around 450Mhz, 96MB RAM and 16MB of graphic memory, I suggest some more Mhz, 192MB RAM and a graphic card of 64MB.
The game is also rather short – perhaps 12 hours for a good gamer. Of course you can replay the game, but it’s a little too linear to have a lot of lasting value – it’s not much more than “go through corridor, dive in room, shoot everybody”. Although it is executed excellently.
Of course there’s no multiplayer mode, because the Bullet Time would make that too difficult to implement.

Conclusion

Max Payne is an absolute benchmark for third-person action games, and will give you the most intense shoot-outs you’ll ever play on the PC. Aside from a couple of minor cons, this is a magnificent game that – if your ‘puter can handle it – belongs in everybody’s collection. The only bad feeling that Max Payne gave me, was that I had to pause the game for irritating mundane things like eating, sleeping and the occasional sanitary pit stop.