Maximum adrenaline rush - UPDATED (Max Payne (PC))

Member Name: Del_Boy

Product:	Max Payne (PC)
Date:	15/08/01 (232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Continually interesting, Plotline

Disadvantages: Short, Needs a good PC

Max Payne

Max Payne starts with Max returning home from work. He hears noises and his wife and child screaming, as he runs upstairs as fast as he can you see a man bursting out of one of the rooms high on Valkyr (a drug). Once in the bedroom you see your wife being shot and lying dead on the bed. Once the drug obsessed fiends have been dispatched you survey the damage... your wife, and young child both brutally murdered in cold blood.....

What is unusual is instead of all of that part being played out in a cutscene, in Max Payne you play out that scene. From start to finish this game is pure cinema of the highest quality. What further enhances the cinematic feel of the game is little things such as when you kill certain enemies the game will go into slow motion and will pan around the character you have killed. This is very classy.

From that the game plot advances 3 years this is done via use of a Comic Strip style storyboard. This fits the game perfectly, the comic strip idea is used throughout the game. At one point when Max is injected with Valkyr he is taunted via the comic strip idea. The two taunts are:

Your in a graphic novel Max........
Your in a computer game Max.....

These two taunts are wonderfully scripted within the comic book section.

So 3 years later you are in New York working with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Your assignment is infilitrating a drugs Mafia.... suddenly things take an abrupt turn for the worse with the death of one of your best friends. The worst thing about that is that you are framed for doing it.

Soon everyone is after you, you are cast as the bad guy. Luckily you are a very adept person with fire arms as well as possessing supreme levels of concentration and athleticsm.

The concentration aspect is highligted via use of 2 special abilities:

Bullet time
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This is where you press a button to enter bullet time (this is
an enhanced state of concentration). Thus everything goes into slow motion, apart from your aiming cursor. This enables you to go into a room, enter bullet time, target every bad person (nearly) and fire a shot into each one of them. Bullet time is not infinite though. Every time you go into bullet time your bullet time meter will disminish. In order for it to replenish you need to kill enemies, by doing that you will get a small amount of it back. My recommendation to all players would be to conserve as much bullet time as possible, or you will end up regretting it when you run out!

Bullet time dodge
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The same as bullet time except you use this in combination with a direction key, by doing that everything goes into slow motion as before. This time however you are diving in slow motion, this is handy for diving around corners, behind obstacles etc, whilst still being able to target enemies and shoot them down.

Combine bullet time abilities with Max's array of firepower, which includes:

Barettas (inc Dual Barettas)
Desert Eagles
Pump action shotgun
Sawn off shotgun
Jackhammer shotgun
Uzis (inc Dual Uzis)
Grenade Launcher
Molotov Cocktails
Grenades
Sniper rifle - If you shoot someone in the head, you will get to watch the bullet travel towards it's target.... stunning
You also have a Baseball bat, and Iron pipe at your disposal.

As you can no doubt start to believe, Max is a very good character, the perfect Action Movie hero.. which is good as an Action Movie based on this character is in the works as I type.

This game is incredibly fun, and sure gets the adrenaline flowing. The game has the lot, emotion when seeing his wife and child dead, humour from Max's wisecracks, tension, and plot twists.

This game is wonderfully scripted from start to finish, alas that finish comes all too soon. As the game is too short sadly - i
t can be finished within a couple of days. I have to say though even though I have completed it, there is replay value. Due to several more modes becoming unlockable, tougher enemies and limited amount of saves. The last mode is called New York Minute in which you are given a minute which counts down to get through levels, by killing enemies you get more time which means it's an out and out race against the clock and the enemies.

Max Payne does come with several editors including a map and character editor in order for you to make your own levels. Though if that sounds too complex new levels and modifications of the game are available to download on the internet. Sites such as www.maxpaynecenter.com are where you can get these from.

A word of warning, Max Payne requires a quite powerful system. Anything above a P3, 96mb Ram and a decent (16mb +) graphics card should run it well though.

For the record I run it on a:

Thunderbird 900
384 Mbs Ram
GeForce2 MX graphics card (32mb)

I run it at maximum details settings and 1024x768 32 bit colour resolution. Anything above that quality of system and you can start messing about with Anti Aliasing settings and upping the resolution.

This game is basically an out and out Third Person Shooter - a complete no brainer. If you are after complicated puzzles that require great feats of mental ingenuity then I would advise looking elsewhere. If you can look at this game for what it is, a straightforward shooter that gets the adrenaline flowing, then you will enjoy the game. Their are a couple of platform type elements in this game which may frustrate a few people though they are few and far between.

Graphics 95%
A whole gamut of graphical tricks have been used in this game which help convey the movie atmosphere further. My personal favourite is the animations that the guns use.

Sound 85%
Didn't strike me in any particular way, b
ut the sound effects do their job adequately and help to sustain the atmosphere of the game. One neat touch is being able to hear your enemies having conversations as you are sneaking up on them.

Gameplay 95%
Pure gameplay, no hideously long list of controls for this game. Standard WASD layout works well, combined with a couple of other keys and the mouse. Max is very responsive.

Lifespan 90%
I have given this 90% as despite having a limited gameplaying time, and a lack of multiplayer this game has incredible scope for modifications. These should ensure you will be playing this game for some considerable time to come.

Overall 92%
Not a gaming revolution, but a startlingly brilliant game that I would advise anyone with a love of shooting games to buy.

Kev

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