Max Payne

Pros: Awesome story. gameplay, characters and BULLET TIME. Cons: Some areas are so dimly lit that could barely make out the enemies. And short game. 9/10

old ass game

Old school 3rd person shooter. Cliched loose canon cop family killed revenge mafia blah blah blah story doesn't matter. Slow motion diving cutting through endless waves of blocky goons (in the old sense of the world) that sound like Joe Pesci's character in Home Alone is what matters. Short, fun, cheap. Pretty tough too in the way games from before the PS3/360 so often were. Save often.

It's not working

OK

Full of creativity and joy. I wish they would make games like this more.

Having only ever played MP3, I was curious to go back and finally see where it all started. Max Payne was a game I'd struggled to enjoy in the past. I always thought of it as old and clunky; usually putting it down after a half hour or so. Glady, I was wrong. Yes, the game is quite ancient in terms of visuals, design, and gameplay -- but once you put yourself back in that 2001 mindset, it all falls into place. A lot of what's here still holds up remarkably well. Once you get the FixItAll mod installed that is. The gunplay, while unforgiving, is surprisingly fun and well designed. The use of real projectiles gives a bullet-hell, boomer shooter feel that went way over my head when I was younger. The shooting is much deeper than it seems at first glance. The shootdodging feels less useful than later titles, but it has it's uses and once mastered, feels really effing cool. There's a good variety of weapons and the game does a good job of switching up environments and locations. The shooting still holds up. If it feels this solid now, it must have been mind-blowing in 2001. All the action is stitched together through an old school noir like narrative where hard-boiled cop, Max Payne, seeks revenge for his murdered wife and child while uncovering an underground drug ring and the conspiracy that lies underneath. It's quite compelling and the story vignettes are presented in graphic novel like comic panels. The story does wonders for the games vibes, and by the end I was pretty invested. I also want to give a shout out to the level design. Anytime you play a game from this era, it's immediately apparent how little these games hold your hand. In today's age of waypoints, objective markers, glowing interactive items and buttons, a game that has none of that will feel shocking at first. But after the first couple levels, you start thinking about things differently. You learn to be a little more experimental with how you overcome obstacles, and it's refreshing. There's no mind-bending puzzles here or anything that's overly hard. But it's easy to forget just how much modern games tell the player exactly what to do. Also, with 3D Realms as the publisher, you can see a lot of their influence through the interactivity of the environments. Cabinets can be opened, T.V.'s turned on, toilets flushed, etc. It's a small thing, but does help the world feel more realized and not just set-dressing for John Woo style shootouts. My only real gripe with Max Payne is enemy placement and how straight up unfair some of the encounters can feel. I'm not ashamed to say, I was quicksaving constantly. There is no "modern" checkpoint system, so if you don't save often, you'll lose progress. And with the amount of bad guys waiting around the next corner with a fully-loaded shotgun, you're probably gonna die a lot. This could have been a skill-issue on my part, but damn, sometimes the enemy placement is frustrating. I'll chalk it up to old school game design. And to be fair, none of the encounters were so impossible that I couldn't finish them. They often require you to rethink your strategy and after a few attempts, you'll prevail. Last thing I'll say is that the atmosphere and overall vibe of this game is still captivating. The comic panel cutscenes, the music, the performances, the snowy streets of New York, it sill all works on an audio/visual level. And it really amplifies what, in today's standard, is a simple third-person shooter. Max Payne holds up, don't let the age or the design put you off. It's a fun ride. If the reported Max Payne 1 remake is around the corner, I'm glad I got to experience this classic first.