Max Payne for PC - Review

August 4th, 2001

originally written for GamesDomain.com

The white page stared at me blankly like the accusing eyes of a murder victim.  I stared back, resolute and unflinching.  The resounding screams of my defeated foes echoed in my head, reminders of the long road taken.  A road paved in blood, with bodies for a divider line.  I shook my head in frustration, desperately trying to drive out the past.  I returned to that blank page, my albatross, my critic, my final accuser.  One question continued to haunt me, like a battle-frenzied demon clawing through my synapses:  “Why is Max Payne so good?”  I began to write…

If that first paragraph reads a little over-the-top, then the tone of Max Payne from Remedy and 3D Realms will feel like a…like a…like a barbed-wire straightjacket two sizes too small.  Max Payne is a console-ish third-person action shooter that is soaked in film-noir clichés and hyperbolic similes that, often, don’t make any sense.  It also begs the question, “Will they ever get tired of diving and shooting in slow motion?”  The answer is a long, drawn-out “NNNNNOOOOOO!!” yelled while jumping through a skylight, dual Berettas unloading.

Max Payne is the most fun I’ve had playing an action game in a long time.  The concept is simple enough.  Third-person shooters are nothing new.  Remedy has taken a worn out idea and infused it with new life.  The game plays like most other third-person shooters available on the console of your choice; you control your character from above and behind, you have a targeting reticule, you put it on the bad guys, and shoot.  It features the standard array of armament: pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and submachine guns.

The “new life” that I mentioned can be summed up with the current zing term for entertainment:  “bullet time”.  Often used in movies and recently in television, bullet time describes the technique of slow motion during action scenes to accentuate bullet hits and impossible feats of athleticism.  In Max Payne, it is an element that must be mastered.  You can put Max into bullet time at will as long as he has it stored up in his bullet time meter, which refills as he kills the bad guys.  This is a huge advantage in combat because while everyone and everything else slows down, you can still aim in real-time.  So Max can enter a room full of people and, with a couple dives, fire two guns with deadly precision while dodging most of the bullets.  I’m not talking Remo Williams-bullet-dodging, just diving out of harm’s way in time.  Watching the movies for Max Payne before it came out, my thoughts were, “It’s just a gimmick.  It will get old in 5 minutes.”  I’m here to tell you it never gets old; it just gets more and more fun.

Bullet time is not the only new element in Max Payne.  There is also a fairly involved story, an interesting anti-hero for a main character, a graphic novel-style of showing cut scenes, and scalable A.I. that increases or decreases during play.  The story for Max Payne follows Max on his road of vengeance as he unravels the mystery of his murdered family and a conspiracy to frame him.  It takes place in the sallow underbelly of New York City, with both the mafia and the police on Max’s trail.  Max is a fugitive cop on the run, and prone to overly dramatic voiceovers.  Much of the story is told in graphic novel cut scenes that play out like the pages of a comic book.  I found this method of telling the story to be jarring and detracting from the action.  They pop up right in the middle of a level and yank you out of the game, and they do this frequently. Luckily, these scenes can be skipped at any time.  Some of the cinematics are told using the more-than-ample game engine, which I prefer.  The scalable A.I. is something that was mentioned frequently in the press releases, but I really did not notice it.  There were never fewer enemies when I’d have to replay a spot, so it must be extremely subtle.  To its credit, I never found any part of the game impassable, and I was never stuck for very long.

What really sells the game are the graphics.  Max Payne uses a new engine capable of incorporating photo-digitized textures, radiosity lighting, and hardware T&L.  All that translates into, “It looks really really good.”  The recommended requirements of 700 MHz, 128 MB RAM and a 32 MB video card are a little steep, but I ran it on a 733 with 256 MB RAM, and a 64 MB GeForce 2 GTS, and it ran beautifully with the details all the way up.  The game environments are very well detailed with litter, graffiti, hypodermic needles, and all the little pleasantries that make New York City what it is.  These environments are also extremely damageable.  After a firefight, the walls are peppered with bullet holes, glass lays shattered, and carnage is evident.  It really makes those long gun battles fun when every misplaced bullet hits something and leaves a mark.  Max Payne does come off a little ‘grey’, and the textures can be somewhat uninteresting, but that is what slums look like.  The character models support some very realistic faces with slight variations in expression, however they do not support pain-skins or damage modeling.  So, while clearing out a room of villains, you are rewarded with a puff of blood here and there, but no visible damage on the bodies.  A per-polygon damage model like that of Soldier of Fortune would really have paid off here.  The villains themselves can get a little repetitive.  There are about three or four different kinds of villains, with some variety among each kind.  Basically, they are all guys with guns.

Max Payne is not a perfect game by far.  It is fairly short, there are some little quips with the graphics, a lack of multiplayer (which may or may not be a problem depending on who you ask), and the use of bullet time could, conceivably, wear on the player.  At times during the game, I would want to sneak up on people, but Max does not sneak.  He runs loudly, alerting everyone of his presence, so that they know, HERE COMES THE ‘PAYNE’!  Max Payne is a step forward for the genre and a step in the right direction.  It stands as the new standard by which to measure action games.  The bar has been raised.