CLASSIC GAMING
Max Payne
Developer:  Remedy Games/Rockstar Games
Publisher:  Rockstar Games/Gathering of Developers
Genre:  3rd Person shoot-em up
Year:  2001
System:  Playstation 2/PC/Xbox


A good story is the heart of films and books.  Whether it be about a strange or difficult relationship, or a tense mission of justice, if a story is good, people will flock to experience it.  Videogames do not rely on using story so much, at least not in the early days, for the sake of good gameplay.  Nowadays, people expect a story as well as good gameplay, so the pressure begins to kick in for the developers to make something more original.  One strong story, is that of one man with nothing to lose.

Story - Max Payne begins on a snowy night in New York city, the present day, snow flaring throughout the metropolis as powerful as ocean waves, police sirens scream into the night, and our protagonist is high up on a building introducing his sad tale of revenge and murder in that hard-boiled inner monologue that many comic detectives would do.
He starts off with 3 years ago, working in the NYPD with a healthy wife and beautiful baby girl.  The prologue, which you control Max in, starts off with a grim beginning, as a group of armed crazed junkies murder his wife and daughter, sending Max into bereavement and into the DEA to work effortfully into the case of the mysterious Valkyr drug, which the junkies were high on.  The game cuts to 3 years later around the present day, with a break in the case, and an eventual building up of murders blamed on Max Payne himself.  What follows after that is a long tale of treachery, violence and greed that brings Max ever closer to some shocking truths.


This is one of those games that would work so well as a movie, the kind of movie that Bruce Willis would be typecast into a la Die Hard.  It has a powerful story of darkened revenge that's not watered down at all for your sake, filling you in with the brutal details.  With a great cast of characters to look at and interesting mythological pieces tying it all in, the story of Max Payne is the game's most strongest point of all, it being alone making the game worthy of purchasing.

Graphics - The graphics of this game are in two parts.  The cutscenes and the main action.  The cutscenes are splendidly well done, looking like faded graphic novel pages, an unforgettable part of the game's charm, linking different sections of the game (which is split into several chapters) as well as illuminating more of the story.
The main action, while of course more sharper, takes up more of the game's graphics by the quite amazing graphics of fire and bulles at the time.  Bullets fly from your guns in a somewhat realistic way (even when you pause the game the bullets look cool and realistic as they're frozen in the air with lighting and all).  Lighting is really the best feature of the game, while shadows are not so big in appearance in the game but the gunplay is quite well done.


The faces of characters however are not so well done, being very strictly set to two plastic-looking faces.  The normal face, and the "death face" (when they die and they pull this pained looking face).  Speaking of pained, Max Payne's face is badly done in this game, making him look like a smug-ass constipated guy rather than a fatalistic vengeance-seeker (though he's not to blame, blame the writer of the game, Sam Lake whose face is the actual face of Max Payne).  While this is only 2001, Rockstar have been known more for environmental graphics and not for graphics of face and body.  What the environment offers though is still imprssive enough.

Gameplay - This game is a straight-shooter, pretty much 75% of the game is nothing but pumping lead and explosives out.  You will over the course of time gain more and more weapons, starting with your good old Beretta (and soon after, dual berettas for some John Woo action).  In another prime example of movie homage, this is the first videogame to feature the Matrix-inspired Bullet Time.  Max, by the power of adrenaline, can slow down time and be able to take better aim at enemies or need a few seconds to just deal with a bunch of enemies, or he can temporarily dodge in bullet time for when you need a few extra seconds out of the way (like when someone throws a grenade for example).
The effect is really cool, offering full motion blur for that extra disillusionment.  Another Bullet Time feature (which comes automatically) is the occasional slow death of an enemy with full camera angle for your movie-mocking amusement, usually of a 360-degree rotational view of your enemy slowly falling to the ground.  Lastly, if you obtain the Dragunov sniper rifle later in the game, you can enjoy the camera bullet, when the camera follows the sniper bullet right towards your enemy.


Max however is not a superhuman, so he begins this worrying habit of painkiller addiction.  Painkillers are the healing items of the game, allowing Max's health meter (which is a white silhouette of him that fills red when he's hit, and if it's fully red, he dies) to be restored and bear a few more gunshot wounds.  Though this ignores the fact that by the end of the game, he'd have more bullets in his body than an illegal ammo dump.

Music/Sound - The music is not around for most of the game, moreso letting the ambient sounds of the environment take over.  What music there is in the game is the usually sombre theme tune of Max Payne, as well as a few other pieces.  Sound however is a good feature in this game, ranging from a not-too-bad gritty sense of voice acting of a monotone-voiced Max to further emphasise the hard-boiled on-the-run fugitive in a Sin City way, and the classically themed mobsters and guards of the game, to shotgun shells clonking on the floor and raging snow whirling outside.  Good work has been paid to the sound department for sure.


While Rockstar have nowadays become famous for their flair for the violent, as the Quentin Tarantino of videogames, they do offer good stories now and again.  This is one of them, nicely executed for its time despite its "could've been better" graphics and almost pre-scripted enemy AI, but not too outlandish, and pretty soon you'd have to be cold-hearted or just plain hate the game that much to not sympathise with the titular character.

Fun and Innovation - 4
Replayability - 3
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 4

That was the first game.  There was also the part where he can touch a microphone but say "karaoke was never my scene".

That does explain the facial difference at last.