Welcome back.

First post of the year huh?

Pretty strange, never thought I'd be doing this for 2 years, but here we are.

Enough yapping, let's get into Max Payne.

Carlos! What's with you playing old ass games from 2008 and 2001!?

Admittedly I had no intention of playing Max Payne, not for any particular reason, just didn't think I'd enjoy it.

But I got a Steam Giftcard while I was out and felt like getting something and saw that Rockstar was having a discount across their franchises.

Including all 3 Max Payne Games. And seeing that I really had nothing to lose, I decided to pick it up.

Unlike with my GTA IV Review, I'll start with the gameplay first.

Gameplay

Bullet Time is probably one of the greatest features to have been created in the history of games.

Especially Max Payne's version of it, dodging and shooting in slowmo made me feel very cool.

Even more so when diving into a room and taking out a few guys or better yet diving into an enemy with the sawed off shotgun and absolutely decimating him within the first shot.

Though I will say it does feel extremely unintuitive at first, but once you get the hang of it, it feels great and you will just start aura farming all the time.

 

I can say that unlike with most other Third Person Shooters, I did actually use most of my weapons not just for fun, but cause it was necessary.

Plus the guns are great, the only ones I didn't use were the Single Beretta and Metal Pipe.

The Bat I did use it a few times, but mostly for just smashing crates open to not waste ammo.

 

Enemies, despite not being balanced as much as I would've liked, are varied well enough.

Though that isn't to say that the gameplay doesn't have its faults.

 

Later on in the game, there are just times where you'll enter a room and just get shot instantly with no way to actually fight back.

It's worse when you reload a quick-save, try to dive in and then oh right, they're behind an obstacle or oh they have perfect aim with barely any spread.

Making it just kind of frustrating and I won't lie, it does feel like bad design.

Especially when those enemies have automatic rifles and are paired with another enemy with a shotgun with perfect aim.

And another thing is that Bosses are a joke and can be killed really easily.

One of the bosses, I literally just stood behind cover and continuously sniped him until he died and there was nothing he could do.

B.B., another one of the bosses, was a little more challenging, but 2 grenades and the Dual Ingrams was enough to kill him.

Level Navigation

One last thing is that sometimes that game wants you to do something, but doesn't hint at it or makes you do it in a really dumbass way.

 

In Part 2 Chapter 2, there's a section where you need to bring down the bridge.

Your options are a boat stuck on land, backtracking all the way back, an inaccessible car with something under the wheel behind a fence, terrain you could swim to.

Which do you choose?

 

If you chose swimming, then no.

Max Payne cannot swim, nor can he push the boat nor is backtracking the option.

Instead you have to go up to this fence and shoot this wedge under the truck's tire, so that it crashes into the bridge and pushes it down.

 

How the fuck was I supposed to know that?

 

And then sometimes the thing you need to interact with is just blending in with the environment or outside of where you'll naturally look.

Don't get me wrong, I love when games make me figure out what I have to do, but only when it’s intuitive and I don’t have to look up a guide.

 

With that, you probably think that this game is pretty shit and that you shouldn't play it.

No, it's just that the good parts are simple and fun, so there isn't exactly much to talk about, but it is really great and makes all of this worth it.

Ok ok, stop your yapping, what about the story?

The Story is pretty good, but there are a couple parts where I feel like it's demanding emotional moments, but without the buildup.

Like in the beginning of the game with 2 Deaths (Your Wife & Child) was fine, but then 30 mins later, your "best friend" just dies.

Then a few characters just show up randomly, unless I forgot. Which in that case, is worse cause the game is expecting me to remember some random ass character from 10 chapters ago that appeared once.

 

Either way, Max is a really cool character, especially with the edgy and poetic way he speaks.

It's pretty earned cause well this guy just lost his wife and child to drug fueled thugs and is narrating everything that happened up until the last moment of the game.

If the gameplay was bad and the context was just not there, it would not work and just feel like Edginess for the sake of it.

 

One joke I have a love-hate relationship with is the random Pain/Paid/Payne jokes where Max will say some dumb shit like

"No Payne, No Gain."
"You gotta payne the price."

It's so stupid, I love it.

 

Vladimir, despite being a stereotype, is really fun for the few minutes of screentime he gets and honestly is probably one of Max's only friends.

Mona is a strange one, I'm not sure how to feel about her, but I will say she is very interesting.

Nicole Horne is pretty hateable, but is a little bit too one dimensional and doesn't have as much screentime or focus as the other antagonists.

 

Forgot to mention, the comics!

The comics are probably one of the greatest additions to this game, they are just drawn (painted?) in a really nice way.

You can tell the actors had a lot of fun posing and dressing up, and the colors/effects are really nice,

I don't think it would've worked well if they were actual pre-rendered or in-engine cutscenes.

 

Overall, the story is really fun and nice to go through, especially with the environments it brings you.

I think this may be one of the most atmospheric games I've played.

Times up! Summarize it!

Don't you speak to me like that you bum!

But either way, here's a few others things I like/dislike:

Like:

Dislike:

Now what?

Max Payne is a great game, that unfortunately like the a lot of Rockstars' catalogue faces some of the bad Old-School Game Design issues that seem to have stuck up until GTA IV.

 

The Music, Gameplay, Atmosphere, Levels and Story combine into a great game, that I do wish we saw more from other developers and Rockstar.

 

Not every game needs to be this super detailed open world story, some can be a linear and smaller-scope story.

Max Payne took me 7.7 hours to beat within 2 days and in those 7 hours, made hell of an impression on me.

If it were any longer or an open world game, I’m not sure I’d have finished it or liked it as much.

 

Now it's onto Max Payne 2.

Thank you for reading, I'll see you next time.