Max Payne - Matrix-like crime-fighting

Max Payne is so-far the most innovative 3d-shooter yet. Developed by Remedy and released by God Games and 3d Realms, this game pushes the limits in today’s standard 3d-shooter. It features crystal sharp graphics, movie like in-game cinematics, and some pretty cool gameplay. Here’s the breakdown.

Pros –

1) The bad guys have identifiable photo-mapped faces. The shock value of seeing realistic, photo-mapped characters, and not just random art-drawn faces, but actual programmers and designers of the game, was just amazing. Why? Because I’m no longer fighting an aimless horde of look-alikes, Men in Black, aliens, or Doom-fire demons. I can finally say, hey I just killed Jack, Ricky, Tom and Spike. The reality level has just been drawn up a notch, and it’s good.

2) Environmental sound! A little seemingly detail but can mean a great deal in a 3d-shooting game. As you get closer to the bad-guys who are conversing over whacking your corpse, they get louder. That means gunshots, explosions and just random radio chit-chat around the corner can have their distances judged by how loud they are. The bonus is that Remedy did an amazing job with the sounds themselves; screams, bullets, everything comes through with quite bone-chilling realism.

3) Okay- here we go, the Matrix like bullet-time. This sounds stupid, being the overused effect of a lifetime but actually turns out quite cool in this game. What happens when you press the right-mouse key and a direction is that you jump in slow-motion. During this time you can swing your mouse around and gun down as many baddies as you can. Bullets can be seen traveling through the air during this short period. This allows for some pretty cool stunts and some cool-looking gameplay. Does it enhance the action? Sure does…without bullet-time this game would probably be darned impossible…during real time, everything travels really quickly and enemies can kill you quite easily if you miss. This effect will take the new gamer a while to get used to, but it’ll become second-nature after around 15 minutes of gameplay.

4) Realistic NYC environments. I live in NYC, and I’ve seen Deus Ex’s take on it. It was pretty bad, the Statue of Liberty was totally made-up on the inside, and it lacked a whole lot of realism. Deus Ex had oversized and under detailed levels of NYC. Max Payne is the opposite. The realism of the NYC subway is amazing; they have the metrocard booths, the turn aisles and the subways in such high detail that I didn’t think it was possible. Unfortunately there aren’t any actual NYC locations used- but nonetheless the sheer realism takes a new level with Max Payne. In addition we have some interesting texture damage effects here. When you shoot cement walls- plaster bounces off and dust seeps, exactly the same as they did in the lobby shootout in the Matrix. Damage is left on the walls, so you can litter a wall with bullet holes, write your name, and gun down whatever you want until you run out of computer memory (at that point, no more damage is left). It’s a cool feature that just allows you to have that “stuff blowing up effect” that you see in action flicks, especially John Woo flicks, where the lead actor dives backwards, both guns ablazing and dust, bottles explode as the enemy gets plugged with bullets…pretty cool.

5) Comic-book like storytelling. I didn’t expect this- and it was pretty cool. The game is told through comic book panels, very detailed art is shown, and narrated with some great voice acting. Just a cool style, rather than using in-game renderings, and the game allows you to skip them as well if you simply don’t care. The plot is a gangster-based one. You are Max Payne, policeman. One day your family gets shot and then your friend and finally you decide to seek out retribution…and become ultra-powered by revenge.

Cons –

Ah the fun part. I loved the game, but I always have complaints. Here goes.

1) The plot/ending stank. Since I mostly don’t care about the plot in most 3d-shooters, this isn’t all too bad of a con. It started out somewhat interesting but then it got annoying. At the end, the game was devoid of all plotline, one second you were Max Payne out for revenge, the next you were out to stop satanic cult leader and then you were seen killing your own family, you discover you’re in a video game, and you simply grin like a maniac throughout the whole thing. (I’m bloody serious about all this).

2) Which leads me to the next problem. Max Payne grins throughout this entire game with perhaps the stupidest facial expression ever. He looks like he’s watching x-rated films 24-7, not the type of face expression you’d expect while gunning down hordes of mobsters. He’s got a weird- soppy grin stuck forever on his face, regardless of what’s happening and it never changes even as your friend gets shot. Pretty weird guy, but then again that would explain his actions.

3) Which leads me to another problem. His freaking dreams, and yes they are freaking weird. I’ve never seen a game with mental anguish of this sort, not even when I played American McGee’s Alice. There are prologue levels to the three acts in this game all of which are around 10 chapters each. That adds up to a good 12 hours of gameplay unless you decide to cheat. Anyhow, so these prologue levels are basically dream sequences, used to fill up random plot holes and also reshow the moment that Max’s family dies. He runs through his house the first time, we hear some moaning and wailing of his wife being murdered, and it all makes sense for a revenge-based game. However the second and third time these dreams reoccur, the game developers were taking acid or something, because the game loses all focus and in fact has now two frustrating and psychologically disturbing levels that have no purpose. You run through the same beginning prologue, except there are now long empty corridors in the house, some more maniacal cackling, and the worst of all, paper thin trails of blood that you have to walk and jump through. You don’t get any weapons during these dream sequences or bad guys to kill, instead you have to tight-rope walk trails of freaking blood. If you fall you die…in your dream…ABSURD. This is my biggest peeve about the game. While the dream sequences have cool camera effects and such, they are totally filled with suck.

4) The game is too darned difficult. You can’t quite run through this game as I would like to, because you can easily die if you jump in the wrong direction at the wrong time trying to dodge a flurry of bullets. The problem is when you jump you have a certain pause when you have to get up, at which a shotgun blast can kill Max on the spot. So you have to time your jumps in between the times that your enemy has to reload. This is okay- but when you have multiple enemies, it can be nearly impossible. Getting killed in one shot is realistic, but takes more away from the gameplay than anything. The game features three modes, besides the basic, and two are just harder versions of the game (not more enemies, but simply more damage taken). There's also the New York Minute, which is more intriguing…a special time mode where you have to beat each level in a minute; +5 seconds for each bad guy you kill. So for the convenience of the reader- if you want to cheat, I don’t blame you, here are some codes:

When running the game edit or type in your command prompt: -

“C:\(Location of Game)\MaxPayne.exe” –developer

And in game get the console using F12, you can type in these codes- which are pretty self explanatory.

God
Mortal
NoClip
NoClip_off
ShowFPS
GetHealth
GetInfiniteAmmo
GetbulletTime
GetAllWeapons
GetPainkillers

And Get…(weapon/ammo) of your choice also works, but I never use that, just use GetAllWeapons.

4) Finally there’s the tedium factor. The game loses its flavor too soon, because the enemies lack flavor. Different mobsters in different costumes, but ultimately same A.I. The only major differences that other mobsters have over others are the weapon load they carry. Some have grenades, some have grenade launchers. But they all fight the same. The level variety keeps it interesting, but a bit more toward creating more enemies and also tougher bosses would have been cooler. Bosses in Max Payne are basically henchmen with more life and better aim.

Final Score – 9.5/10.0

Max Payne is a refreshing breath of new air into an genre where we see tons of Doom/Half-Life/Quake clones to no end. It’s unique in all the things mentioned above-. Features some mature situations- a few pictures here and there that can be turned off. As for live women, there are only two (not including Max’s dead wife) in the entire game. The game does however integrate mature situations into its plot. Max Payne mentions strippers, and contains lots of blood and violence. Don’t expect a light-hearted Duke-3D like humor or action, it’s pretty gruesome and disturbing. Quite simply, I found nothing funny about this game, although Max Payne somehow did-…but it was quite fun in its action and gameplay. If you like that stuff, go for it, I fully recommend this as a 3d-shooter.

The Ending- ***Semi-spoiler

Since I beat my games before I write reviews on them…for those wondering, Max Payne has a crappy ending. After the short- not so fun ending about Max Payne getting busted by the cops, credits scroll….boring and quite endlessly…and then the game blabs something about this being the first, and there will be more. AHHH NO MORE. And that’s that…it sends you back to the menu.