Max Payne Review
By Blackclaw
Snow fell down around me in a swirling mist of white that danced
seductively in front of my eyes before dying in the darkness of the night. Every step I took crunched deeply into the soft white powder and in my mind echoed down the city streets shouting my location to every thug, killer, and hitman within a mile.
As I rounded the corner of a decaying red brick building they were
there, waiting for me in a side alley that smelled so bad that even the winos passed it by. The three mob boys reached into their overstuffed jackets as I pulled out my own shiny black talisman of death. Time seemed to slow down. My pistol cracked loudly, its automatic chamber flying back and ejecting the spent cartridge with ruthless efficently. A mob boy clutched his chest and began his death spiral to the pavement. His two friends freed their guns from their leather jackets and fired at me wildly. I dove for cover in slow motion, my long coat billowing out behind me as their bullets buzzed past me like angry hornets. I fired in mid-air, catching the middle one in the face so that his whole head just snapped back like a pez dispenser. His body was just hitting the ground as I came up from behind the garbage dumpster. The final mobster's rounds richocheted loudly off its rusting green skin as I sent one more wise guy to an early grave.
This is the world of Max Payne.
Game Play
Max Payne's CD comes not in a traditional game CD jewel box, but something that resembles a DVD box. Max
Payne is meant to evoke the intensity of a big action cinema feature, complete with explosions and Matrix like special effects. It succeeds in ways that no other computer action game ever has. 
Max Payne is also meant to convey the atmosphere of an old detective comic book. The majority of the cut scenes are drawn as such complete with over-the-top
bad dialogue that takes an incredible amount of imagination to write.
The major innovation that Max Payne brings us is something that it's developers call "bullet time." Contrary to its name, this effect allows the player to
slow down action sequences in order to pull off amazing stunts and feats of marksmanship. Players can fire at the bad guys while flying through a sheet of glass in slow
motion. In such a sequence, bullets can be seen flying through the air, spent cartridges tumble towards
the floor while shards of glass cascade through the room. Bullet time allows players to effectively deal
with a room full of bad guys and look good doing it. Well once you get the hang of it that is. Sooner or later you'll do a slow motion head first dive into a china cabinet.
Max Payne also brings us a highly interactive environment - pop machines dispense beverages, water
coolers gurgle, toilets flush, and slot machines spin. Players are highly encouraged to experiment with
their surroundings and indeed will need to do so in order to figure out how to move through some of the game's areas. I always spend a few minutes trashing a room I've emptied of bad guys with a
baseball bat. Overall, it's an enjoyable experience - glass shatters, TVs explode with a shower of sparks, but not all the objects in the game are interactive. In fairness, they couldn't be and still have a
game with playable frame rates, but it's still a bit odd to encounter a cardboard box that can take a beating with a bat or a candlestick that I can't seem to touch. But all is forgiven because I was allowed
to blast the elevator musak speaker with a 12 gauge. 
Max Payne is story driven which means what you readers know I hate most, a linear campaign with all of the "you will do this one way and one way only and
you will do it over and over until you get right" that such a game entails. Having a compelling, in-depth storyline almost inevitably means having scripted forced
gameplay. I love open-ended style games, but in all fairness I don't know how else Max Payne could have succeeded in moving the story along. Still, there's nothing fun about being hopelessly stuck. Replaying the
same scene again and again is the same punishment used in hell for serial murderers. Max Payne helps alleviate this problem by making the bad guys self adjusting to how well you are playing. (At least the
first time you play through the game.) If you get stuck in Max Payne, it probably won't be the bad guys that caused it because really, once you know where they are, it's not too hard to handle them.
What will cause endless frustration is the obscure puzzle like problems that you sometimes must solve
to be able to advance the game. There are two dream sequences that are excellent in artistic value but not much fun to play through. There are also several points in the game which require some action
from you that will not be intuitive to all users. Max Payne could have benefited from a hint system similar to the one Phantasmagoria used. That way those of us who want no help at all can plow
through as best we can, while those who are hopelessly stuck can get some chance of being able to play through the full game.
Graphics
 The actual polygon count in the Max Payne isn't all
that impressive. Many objects and actors come off as either blocky or two-dimensional. It's the textures and special effects that make the game look incredible.
Some of the textures in the game are almost photo-realistic. Many of the weapons feature a beautiful, smooth, metallic finish that looks like you could reach out and touch it. Max himself looks like a
live action hero, although he has the oddest expression on his face. Some have complained that he looks constipated. Perhaps he should mix some Ex-Lax into those pain pills that he chugs.
The particle generator that the game uses really helps the graphics shine. Pieces of glass, plaster,
brick, and wood go flying when a firefight breaks out. Rooms are simply trashed after a good fight. The fire effects in Max Payne are simply unbelivable. From the muzzle flash of the guns to the fiery
end of a diner, the fire effects in Max Payne are simply the best yet ever put into a computer game.
And then of course there is "bullet time." The smooth transition from guns blazing full speed into slow
motion is simply incredible. The blur of bullets whipping by, particles of plaster and wood cascading down as your own rounds chew up the wall behind your enemies and your brief defiance of gravity all
contribute enormously to making the game play fun. I do wish that there were more aerial manuvers for Max to perform. It can get kind of repetitious continually throwing oneself around corners, but
damn it looks good.
Customization
Remedy included free editing tools along with the game. Like most development tools, they are not
easy to use, but you will be able to count on the busy gaming community to provide you with free maps so that you'll be able to keep on playing Max Payne for a long time to come. 
Community
The developer site for Max Payne can be found here.
Remedy has a patch out already, so if your having any problems you might want to check it out. I didn't have any real problems with the game's stability myself, but
some folks have been experiencing a crash to desktop bug while others have had trouble with the security model that the game CD uses. The patch addresses both of these issues.
The wise decision to ship the game with editing tools means you can count on the gaming community to provide you with free entertainment from this game
long after you've finished the included storyline. A good place to start your search for more Max goodness is The Max Payne Center. You'll also be able to find scripting tutorials, wallpapers, skins for winamp and other goodies there as well.
Requirements
The minimum requirements for this game are Pentium 2 450 with 96 MB of Ram. A Direct 3D compatible video card is required. The developers of Max Payne have done an excellent job of code
optimization with this game. It may actually be possible to play the game with the minimum requirements. Of course you won't be able to turn all the detail up. I was able to play in 800 by 600
with all the options up on my Pentium 3 600 with 256 MB.
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