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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Max my Day, 17 Aug 2001
By A Customer
Long awaited. Highly anticipated. Was it worth the wait? Take yer pick! Perhaps such an opener is appropriate for a title like Remedy's action shooter though, being the epitome of cliche and melodrama that it is. To its credit, Max Payne walks a courageous tightrope between telling a serious, gritty story and spoofing both itself and the action-adventure movie and game genres in general. But is that a reasonable excuse for daring to include countless corny lines, such as: "He was dead; I could tell by the empty, accusing stare in his eyes" and "The police sirens wailed like the off-key harmony of a manic-depressive choir"? The game's most charming attribute is how it likes to poke fun at itself; henchmen will often be deep in conversation trying to disprove the laws of action movies. For example, one guy on patrol tells his buddy that he's not just a cardboard cutout to shoot down, that he has a wife and kids to feed and needs this steady job with a decent paycheck. Max is also often making less subtle jibes at the cliche of it all. The funniest moment is undoubtedly during a hallucination from a forced drug overdose, which is too good to spoil here (the joke, not the drug trip). Gameplay is perplexingly both innovative and run-of-the-mill. The Bullet Time and consequently real-world physics of the bullets makes for an experience that truly is unlike anything you'll have played before, and is far from a simple gimmick. AI is decent in that the enemies will flee, duck for cover and run to set off alarms, but it's all easy to recognize patterned behavior. Unfortunately, although helped by Bullet Time, the game really does suffer from repetitiveness. Unlike titles like Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and No One Lives Forever, there's no real variation in gameplay style. With few exceptions and puzzles to solve, it's shoot, dodge, shoot all the way. This is a shame because some of Max's most shining moments are when it gets really creative, like the fantastic and disturbing dream sequences. Another sequence has Max attempting to escape a burning building that is undergoing a chain reaction of explosions -- even though this turns into an almost Dragon's Lair type of experience (go right, die, reload, try the left, etc.), it's a thrilling break from room after room of the same drably-dressed baddies. Max does offer the usual assortment of rewards to keep you interested, including new weapons to discover and, of course, the graphics, which are their own incentive. The engine's most astonishing accomplishments are the level of detail in the environments, with even the smallest objects being sharply rendered, and the creamy smooth and varied animations of Max and his enemies. Flames and weapon discharge effects are also noteworthy, the latter being especially cool in Bullet Time. It's odd that with so much attention invested into this engine, some moderately important elements, like making character's mouths move when they speak, were omitted -- even the ageing Half-Life fulfilled this obligation to some extent. They try to distract you from this by avoiding close-ups whenever possible, but it's still quite noticeable. What good are the almost photo-realistic faces when the camera's too scared to go near them in case the character has something to say? A few other minor flaws include the lack of discernible locational damage - while baddies go down in less shots when hit in certain areas (yes, very gruesome, I know), their physical reaction is always identical and, oddly, a snipe shot to the foot yields the same result as one to the head. This is a bit of a step back in the shooter field. Also, multiplayer is completely absent; the developer's defense is that all attention had to be paid to the single-player experience, but even a lackluster deathmatch mode (with or without Bullet Time) would have been a welcome addition. Max Payne leaves us in a slight predicament. As is evident from this review, for every compliment one can bestow on the game, there's an inevitable "but..." that follows. Its predominant flaw is that it whets our appetite for something unimaginably amazing but only fulfills half of that unveiled promise. Nevertheless, that half is better than many wholes, so I'm compelled to slap a "Highly Recommended" badge on this review. The Max Payne experience is exciting, original and enticing enough to warrant the time and money of any dedicated action gamer.
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Suitable for 15 years and over. Not for sale to persons under age 15. By placing an order for this product, you declare that you are 15 years of age or over.
