Developer: Remedy
Publisher: Rockstar
Rated: M for Mature
Released: December 12, 2001
Completed: December 9, 2017
There are a handful of games throughout history that I get the urge to replay, even in the face of my enormous and ever-growing backlog. Chief among them is Remedy’s seminal action game, Max Payne. From its gripping noir style revenge plot, to the exciting gameplay, and the cutting edge use of slow-motion effects, Max Payne has stood the test of time and is still a high water mark for the genre.
Taking cues from John Woo's stylish shoot 'em ups, Max Payne places you in the shoes of the grizzled titular detective on his quest to avenge the murders of his wife and newborn child. You'll shoot a variety of generic thugs, put high-ranking mafia members on ice, and uncover a conspiracy revolving around a designer drug named Valkyr and its connection to your family, and it's all told from Max's perspective via graphic novel style cutscenes and excellent voice work from James McCaffrey.
Right from the start, Max Payne means business, opening with arguably the greatest prologue in video game history. Max is an optimistic detective with a beautiful family, but when he returns home from a hard day's work he immediately notices something is amiss. Running through his house, he hears the frantic cries of his wife and child horrifically silenced by gunshots. It's a brutal moment, made all the more impactful by the fact that the player is forced to actually play through it. Many games would be content to convey their backstory via a cinematic, but instead Max Payne requires you to complete a sequence you simply cannot win. No matter how fast you move, you cannot save your family, leaving you with a sense of helplessness that puts you in Max's head.
From there, Max kills his way to the top, leaving a trail of blood and bullet casings in his wake. Utilizing a slow-motion gameplay mechanic borrowed from The Matrix, and then aped by dozens of games after, Max dodges bullets and cheats death by popping painkillers, but it's no walk in the part. The game offers a steady challenge that makes each shootout a white-knuckle thrill.
For a game closing in on 20 years old, Max Payne has held up surprisingly well in nearly every respect. The story is gripping and well-written, if a bit hammy and overloaded with metaphors. It's a gritty, violent game, but it doesn't take itself too seriously either, balancing the serious tone with dark humor and a few genuine laughs.
The presentation is fantastic. The comic style story panels do a great job filling the player in and don't suffer from the same aging problems as pre-rendered cinematics. The voice acting is mostly excellent. Many of the characters are stereotypical Italian mobsters, with equally stereotypical accents, Jeff Gurner gives a chilling performance as the psychotic, devil-worshiping Jack Lupino and McCaffrey absolutely knocks it out of the park as Payne. His deep, gravelly voice has a world-weary yet hard-edged quality that nails the main character. To this day, it's still one of my favorite performances by any actor in a video game.
The in-game graphics have aged a bit, particularly on the Xbox where you're locked to lower resolution than playing on a PC, but they don't look bad. The scenery is still quite well done, and the little details Remedy added go a long way to making the game impressive to look at. Bullet decals, the way Max's coat shifts when running or dodging, debris, graffiti on walls, a harsh snowstorm where footsteps leave visible tracks - it all paints a gloomy picture of New York for a gloomy story.
It's not without its problems. Even at the time of release, many jokes were made about Max's constant smirk - courtesy of the game and Remedy's head writer, the brilliant Sam Lake. Though Lake's likeness would not be used for subsequent games, it's still the image I most associate with Max Payne, but there's no denying that it looks silly.
The Xbox version also comes with some added, and inexplicable, stuttering during the graphic novel cutscenes. As they transition from one to the next, there's a brief but definitely noticeable pause in the music. These are not present on the PC version, but good luck getting that to run if you have any kind of modern PC. It's a very minor issue, but it always puzzled me why it was even an issue for the powerful Xbox.
Back to the good stuff, in addition to the mostly solid visuals, Max Payne's soundtrack and effects are excellent across the board. The series' moody piano theme is played with a variety of motifs and instrumentation. It's melancholic and tragic, setting the perfect mood for a revenge thriller, but more intense scenes are scored with harder edged rock music. It all works great, and it's accented by a symphony of gunshot sounds that pack a punch.
The most important thing about Max Payne is just how much fun it is to play. All these years later, it's still one of the best damn action games ever made. The bullet-time mechanic is used brilliantly, giving the player just enough to strategically make fights easier, but still required skill and reflexes. There's a surprising depth to Max Payne's combat, where barging through a door guns blazing is often a one way ticket to join your family, but jumping through in slow-mo gives you a chance to survey the room, take out an enemy or two, then scramble for cover in realtime. Bullet-time is incredibly well-balanced, yet so many games that have come out since Max Payne still miss the mark when they incorporate it and it gives the player such an advantage that the game becomes too easy.
There are a few trial and error sequences in the game - a few blind hallways or staircases where there's no way to know there's an enemy who'll throw a grenade that will almost certainly blow up before you can dodge unless you have superhuman reflexes - but thankfully the game offers a quicksave feature. It also trains the player not to rush into every situation, giving them pause before they descend that next staircase at full speed.
The one major problem with Max Payne's gameplay is the lack of full analog support. I know it was originally intended for PC, and most gamers use a mouse and keyboard, but inching Max forward with an analog stick results in the game's most frustrating sequence. Twice in the game, Max enters a dream state. As he runs down the seemingly endless hallways that stretch out even as he traverses them, he eventually reaches a pitch black room with a thin trail of blood to follow as his baby's cries haunt him. These sequences would be great if the controls allowed for slow, precise movements, but the path is so narrow and the movement so twitchy that you'll undoubtedly fall off or careen off course during a jump a few times. Be prepared to quick save every couple of steps, and to listen to that baby cry for a while.
When it's all said and done though, Max Payne still feels unlike any game out there. It nails the hard-boiled detective noir genre, and thrusts the player into a gritty, violent world drenched in gloom and guns. It's so good you can hardly put it down once you start playing, and it's worth revisiting just to step into Max's blood-soaked shoes and experience the story again. From it's engaging start to the thrilling climax atop a highrise, Max Payne is an epic John Woo-inspired thrill ride.
Max Payne was completed on an Xbox with no cheats.
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