Max Payne, Minimum Effort! (Max Payne (PS2))

Member Name: tom1clare

Product:	Max Payne (PS2)
Date:	28/08/05 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice level design, stylish presentation, bullet-time concept, weapons, story

Disadvantages: Some tricky sections, horrible slow-down at times, unskippable cut-scenes, short

Flashback to 2001, less than a year after the launch of the PlayStation2 and a crucial time in determining how successful Sony’s next-generation console may ultimately become. But Sony had a bit of a problem on their hands, and it lay in the shoot ‘em up genre. Blasters had for a long-time been a favourite amongst gamers, but despite solid PC-ports of older classics Unreal Tournament and Quake III, the PS2 still didn’t really have a shoot ‘em up to turn heads and shift consoles – would Max Payne come to Sony’s rescue?

Rescue is perhaps too strong a word, though Max Payne certainly had the desired effect as far as the gaming public were concerned, breathing new life into a stagnating genre, setting things up nicely for the likes of Timesplitters 2, Medal Of Honor: Frontline and Killzone to continue the good work later on.

A third-person (above and behind the player) shoot ‘em up, Max Payne (MP) is produced by 3D Realms – the more gaming-savvy among you may remember them for Duke Nukem 3D. Similarities are obvious – charismatic, wise-cracking lead characters; a mighty array of weapons; lively music and the now-customary trawl through a seedy strip-club to name but a few. But things have changed a fair bit since the Duke’s hey-day back in the mid-nineties, and Max Payne is an altogether darker, more serious and grittier affair.

What is perhaps most strikingly unusual for a shoot ‘em up of this type is the emphasis on storyline. The opening level is a terrific, playable prologue that takes place three years before the main bulk of the game, seeing Max, a trenchcoat-wearing New York cop, returning home to a nightmare – his wife and child have been murdered. Fast-forward to within two days of the present, and his former detective-partner Alex is gunned-down before his eyes in a deserted subway. That, as they say, was the last straw. News and radio reports appear to suggest that Max Payne is (wrongly) suspected of the killing, and so with the police in pursuit, he begins a personal crusade to purge the city of all the big-time criminals that have wronged him in the past, as well as finding out the truth behind the slaying of his family.

MP mixes tried-and-tested shoot ‘em up elements with a film-noir atmosphere and some inspired gameplay tricks, to near-excellent effect. The adventure is split into many ‘chapters’ (short level-sections), most of which opening with a brief but clever graphic-novel style cut-out, concisely summing up the scene. This, combined with Max’s near-endless supply of dark witticisms and the ominous, dingy setting means you’ll quickly find yourself becoming engrossed in the criminal underworld, and from the get-go Max Payne is addictive stuff.

MP sets its stall somewhere between a detective story and an action-thriller; whilst the plot and characters are vividly depicted and examined in the cut-scenes, it’s the guns that do the talking as far as gameplay is concerned. There is just a dash of exploration thrown in for good measure, whereby the odd secret area may yield some painkillers (for health) and ammunition, whilst the very occasional ‘puzzle’ (if they can be described as such) requires little more than a tap of the X button to press a switch or pull a leaver. Everything in MP seems to have been designed with a view to keeping the pace and tempo high; controls and movement are brisk, responsive and pleasantly simple whilst the levels themselves are almost always short, sharp and explosive – and it’s absolutely gripping as a result.

Regardless of whether you’re sneaking around a deserted New York subway, charging all-guns-blazing through a crime lord’s manor-house or leaping roof-to-roof across the snow-covered city skyline, the gameplay in essence remains relatively simple and rarely deviates greatly. It’s all about the combat; as with most games of this ilk a squeeze of the R1 button will deliver a blast from your selected weapon, though Max Payne’s main innovation comes in the form of its Matrix-esque bullet-time. Max can perform a slow-motion dive with the help of L1 and a chosen direction, whilst L2 slows the action down so you can actually see and dodge travelling bullets. It’s a sound concept and it all looks rather snazzy thanks to a cool blurring effect; those who loved The Matrix will find it to be a real perk and its great fun to play around with, though in practice ‘bullet-time’ is difficult to master to the degree whereby its use could be considered a clear advantage to the player; dives don’t last long and though you have greater time to aim than if you simply charged straight in, weapons take longer to fire and if you don’t take out all your targets quickly, you may find yourself in a rather vulnerable position after the dive finishes.

Still, the addition of ‘bullet-time’ adds a fair amount to the games cool factor and there are no real technical problems with the system. To further reduce the sense of repetition, there is the occasional break in the shooting, with the emergence of some nifty sections that serve either to supplement the plot or simply inject a little more variety into the proceedings. There’s no denying that Max Payne’s main strength lies in its fire-fights and it never pretends to be anything other than a shoot ‘em up, but the interludes in the action are generally really well-designed, from the surreal and disarming flashbacks Max has of the fated night he found his wife and child murdered, to a brief stealth section and outrunning the flames in a burning restaurant, its all fun and well-crafted stuff on the developers part.

The parts all fit together to form a very nice overall package. Like Duke Nukem before it MP sports a ridiculously large arsenal of weapons, ranging from the classic Dual-Berretta pistols setup, to Ingram machine-guns, double-barrelled shotguns, sniper rifles and grenade-guns – each naturally carrying its own pros and cons. It has a top-class storyline with some genuinely menacing foes (quite rare in shoot ‘em ups these days), an accessible and pleasantly smooth control method and also some surprisingly well-judged humour – nearby enemies can be heard having comical conversations, ranging from ‘I hate being stereotyped as a cold-blooded killer. I’m really a nice family guy’ to discussions about which colour of wire needs to be cut to defuse a bomb and what the best ending to a film is – this kind of dark humour is used sparingly and seems perfectly suitable.

On the whole its top fun, but no game is perfect and inevitably Max Payne is not without its problems either. Whilst it is understandable that some of the tougher sections will require a few attempts to master, it seems something of an oversight on the developers’ part that in-game cut-scenes cannot be skipped, meaning you may have to watch the same ones over and over should you die a few times. Whilst the A.I. on the whole isn’t too shabby, the real technical concern is that, despite levels often being extremely short (the adventure is split into well over sixty sub-sections), the PS2 really struggles at times – fight more than a couple of enemies at once and the frame-rate suddenly becomes extremely jerky, which makes for one form of slow-motion that certainly isn’t welcome!

Visually, MP fairs moderately well thanks to some top-notch presentation, as well as superbly-designed and highly atmospheric playing environments that fit the story like a glove. Character animation lets it down quite a bit though sadly, with unimpressive-looking enemy gang-members whose odd movement isn’t much better than their levels of detail – perhaps the fact that it was a PC-conversion meant that it all looked ever so slightly dated on release. The Max Payne character suffers from square-head and joints syndrome that I was convinced died away with the early Syphon Filter games, plus he manages to sport a remarkably constipated look throughout. Ouch!

The sheer volume of levels contained within the game tend to belie the fact that it is not lengthy by any stretch of the imagination and can be finished off in just a few days play. The more positive news is that the difficulty setting is self-adjusting, which is a bit of genius as it can allow novice players to work their way into things, and those who become engrossed early on are more than likely to want to play the game through to completion. For Max Payne aficionado’s, there are three additional game-scenarios to attempt following completion – including ‘Hard-Boiled’, which is simply a tougher version of the normal game, and ‘New York Minute’, which challenges you to complete levels with a minute timer counting down, that can be topped up slightly by killing enemies, though this is something that only the real experts should sink their teeth into, I think.

It’s a 15 certificate and this is because of all the fun you can have with a baseball bat and various guns – blood is used in fairly ample supply though nothing overly graphic such as the decapitation of limbs and so forth, plus given the more-adult nature of the storyline, expect the odd naughty word to appear here and there in cut-scenes. Would kids like it anyway? Well, they probably would is the truthful answer and despite the odd tricky part popping up from time to time; all things considered it’s a pretty accessible game by shoot ‘em up standards, and the numerous save-points keep frustration levels to a minimum, with the aforementioned bullet-time sure to impress those new (and not so new) to gaming. Max Payne’s widespread popularity on both PC and PS2 formats suggest that you don’t have to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy it.

Overall, Max Payne is bags of fun. It tests your trigger-finger a lot more than your brainpower, and may just prove the antidote required for those who have become frustrated by slow, frustrating stealth adventures that, in terms of enjoyment, shoot themselves in the foot in their attempts to make a game more realistic than fun. It’s certainly not the best shoot ‘em up available now, and the lack of a multiplayer mode may deter some, but if you are after a stylish, plot-driven one-player blaster then there are few that can match it on the PlayStation2.

Summary: The Matrix-meets-Duke Nukem, complete with bullet-time and trenchcoats