Max Payne Review (Snort Cannon)
A trek though the night.
Story;
You play as the titular Max Payne. A detective in the NYPD, Max has a seemingly great life with a wife and a newborn daughter. However all that changes when one day junkies high on a new drug Valkyr raid your home and kill your wife and your daughter. Three years later, you've joined the DEA and find yourself thrust in a conspiracy trying to track down the origins of Valkyr and with a death wish, Max is determined to get revenge by any means.
The story of Max Payne is dark and engaging tale of a man's quest for vengeance. While I don't think most of the other aspects of the game aged as a gracefully, the story still stands the test the time. From the writing, to the characters and just how all of it pans out is a great adventure and still well worth delving into. Apart from a few weird monologues of Max, it's writing is still as good as ever.
Graphics:
Visually Max Payne definitely aged roughly. Everyone is aware of the characters having a constant shit eating grin on their faces and it feels a bit out of place. Sam Lake's face on Max looks like he's constantly smiling and while I don't personally like it all that much, it does sort of add to the charm of it all.
Everything else also has taken a hit. Environments often look very bland with environments being barren and just sort of lackluster. I do have to say I'm a massive fan of the New York night during heavy snow storm setting. It adds to noir atmosphere the game goes for, however just overall it's a rather minimal game. I will also say that the texture glitch out like clothing items just sort of floating nearby the character instead of being on them.
Audio:
I'll start off with the voice acting, cause for the most part the voice acting is absolutely top notch. James McCaffrey as Max does an absolutely phenomenal job and his line delivery is icing on the cake. I do not imagine this game having the impact it does without his voice attached to the role. However the other voice acting ranges from really good to downright horrible. Some of the goon characters you encounter sound like they're from 40:s gangster movie and I get that it's there as a reference to that type media, but it does not mesh well with the serious tone.
The soundtrack and other sound effects are also pretty damn good. Guns sound pretty decent, although they do sound a bit low quality and I'm not really huge how abrupt the music cuts out once the action stops. I also can't tell if it's a bug or not considering I had to reinstall audio files for the game to actually have audio.
Gameplay:
If you play PC games, you likely already know what Max Payne is all about. It's a third person shooter with the mechanic that it helped popularize, bullet time. Due to Max's reflexes he has the ability to slow down time and perform some Hard Boiled style moves by diving around and gunning his enemies down while he's falling down.
The gunplay did not really stood the test of time and while don't get me wrong it's nowhere near unplayable it is rough around the edges and you notice it pretty quickly. The hitboxes of enemies and sometimes your aiming feels off. And it some harder areas of the game it becomes really difficult cause your bullets don't go where you aim.
The difficulty of this game is also all over the place. It ranges from pretty easy, to absurdly hard. If I can say one thing about this is that this is an F5 simulator. After every major gunfight you need to save cause the actual save system isn't that good.
Now I have to talk about the thing that really made my blood boil and that is the absurd amount of technical issues. I already talked about the audio issues, but there was also an issue with it crashing after every cutscene, vsync issues causing certain areas of the game becoming unbeatable just to name a few. I had to spend an hour troubleshooting until I managed to fix everything and even then I had to stick with certain issues, cause fixes would not work for me, so keep that in mind.
Verdict:
Max Payne has not stood the test of time well. It's very rough around the edges and is a mess to get running, but I still recommend it to those that haven't played it. The tragedy of Max Payne is a great adventure that is worth experiencing even. So take the journey through the night.
Final Rating:
7.5/10
Pros:
+ Dark and engaging story
+ Incredibly fun combat
+ Great voice acting
Cons:
- Technical nightmare
- Aged pretty poorly in areas
- Difficulty is all over the place
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