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Max Payne for Windows
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Max Payne for Windows
233 reviews   4.46 of 5

Product Description

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Summary

"I could be a better action hero... "Man, John Woo should star me in his next action, I would turn some heads... "If I could be in any movie, I'll pick the Matrix."
If you ever had thoughts about any of the aboved mention... Remdy has answer your call (and to the few... prayers). You star as Max Panye, an undercover (New York) cop framed for the muder of his best friend & family. Max is on a one man quest to find those responsible for the actions of those deaths and send them/they to hell! No one is above the PAIN... not the cops, mafia, crime lords, pimps, clubbers, druggies... etc. Not even YOU!
If you ever wanted to BE the action hero (like most guys), I suggest you go out and pick up this superb game. I'm sure your girlfriend is going to be pissed that the Max is seeing more of you than she is (You've been warned too... better have an excuse prepared). You will become Max Panye... the man with nothing to lose!
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Sound

The sounds are better than awsome, everything makes sounds: cars cruising in the background people talkin to each other, the different sound effect when you shoot is extremely realistic for each weapons. The music isn't bad, not my type, but still enjoyable.

Gameplay

The game play is the best. The controls are a bit hard at first, but once you get used to it, you're unstoppable, it's you against the world. Unlike what some might think, the crontols are still awsome for computers. You can go into bullet time which allows you to dodge bullets. You go all over the greater New York area, from Bronx to downtown, trying to find the killer. The game so realistic, you can hear gangsters and soldier talking to each other at the other end of the hall, you can even sit there and listen to them talk, they don't say anything important, mostly stupid stuff about things like the candy machine is broken or what his the guy did yesterday, but as soon as they see you, you have to move quick. There's even junkies doping themself with seringes, and if they get really high they start shooting everywhere.

The story line is awsome, it's like an interactive movie. The game itself is pretty challenging, there are few pain killers, and so many ennemies. But, challenging yes, impossible no which is great because you don't get stuck at some points for a very long time that you just give up and never play the game again. It also involves using you brain to get past some points
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Sound

Sound was top-notch, the strongest aesthetic area of Payne.

Good use was made of sound cards, and even with an inferior sound card the quality was very good.

Music was reasonable, but the sound effects and the general engine was superb.

The standard of the acting was, I felt, acceptable if not oscar standard, but it was technically well-presented.

Gameplay

Interesting area this.
I had a tremendous amount of pure 'fun' going through Max Payne. Mechanically the handling was spot on, the feel of shooting was superb, and the bullet-time was the most innovative idea in any recent game. In fugitive mode you won't find yourself using it often, but the next setting you will.
The story kept me totally gripped, given I was letting myself suspend my disbelief.
It was basically addictive.

Now here was the gripe: As addictive and fun as it was, Max didn't *do* much. Run, jump, shoot, activate. That's it. No climb ladders, no weapon second fire, no special moves really, nothing. It was just very basic.

For 4 years work you'd expect more.

Funny thing is that what was there, in a way, *was* enough. You'd expect a greater depth, but you're not *that* disappointed there wasn't.
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Sound

I really loved the sound in this game. The music wasn't too oppressive and didn't make it feel like Super Mario. The gunshots were also great and unique to each weapon. My favorite gunshot is probably the sniper rifle. Its just such a cool CRACK. I have no complaints here.

Gameplay

Max Payne was probably the most fun shooter game I have ever played. The story was smooth and seamless if a little uneventful. You fight your way through the dark underworld of New York in a variety of environments including an office building and parking garage. Once you start playing, you aren't able to stop either. I ended up going to bed at about 4 am on a school night when playing this because I was so lost in it. I am used to first person shooters more than third person so the aiming took me a little while to get used to but after the initial fiddling, it felt natural.

There are a few bad points though. The story is a little boring. It seems as though all you do is go after one mafia boss after another (no variety). The levels, while diverse, also get a little monotonous and all seem to be alike (the "Hotel-esk" levels especially). The final level (in the office building lobby) is also such a rip of the lobby scene in The Matrix that it made me laugh. Further, while the bullet time mode was exceptionally well done (as well as extremely useful), it got old fast. There are only so many ways you can make Max jump in slow motion. Still, probably one of the coolest features in this game. Finally, after you beat the game on Fugative and New York Minute, there isn't much replay value. The enemies are in the same places and the only difference is their accuracy and amount of damage they do (if youre playing at that difficulty though, youre good enough that its not much harder).
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Summary

Max Payne used to be a New York City cop until he came home and found his wife and child murdered, and subsequently finds himself on the run. Faced with a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation, he proceeds to take matters into his own hand. As you might imagine, the matters involve the systematic killing of a whole city full of seedy mobsters, drug dealers, addicts, cops gone bad, and greedy corporate barons.

The storyline is laced with allusions to a dastardly fictional drug and is colored by a dark and moody nordic style, proudly and excellently presented by the games Finnish artists and writers. It is full of shameless vice and merciless violence.

In light of that, the game is not intended for children of parents who might be a bit over-protective of their morals! This is part of its appeal. The storyline is mature and proceeds at a sweaty-palmed pace. It's interlaced with a cheesy, but compelling graphic comic and 3D movies.

While the genre (third-person-shooter) isn't my preferred one, I have to say that it's about as perfect a game as I've played on nearly every level -- and I'm a real jaded bastard when it comes to games.

Read on to see why I think it's so great ...

Sound

Another home run! The ambient sounds and music were way over the top. Water dripping, tv sets in the background getting louder as you move towards them, the idle chatter of gangsters around the corner, screeching tires and gunfire -- LOTS of gunfire.

Sound in Max Payne lacks the superfluous sounds you find in many games. It helps to navigate you, warn you, clue you in. And just when you think your heart can take no more, you're treated to a gentle piano interlude to guide you to the next scene.

Gameplay

This is a third-person shooter, but feels a bit like a first-person shooter. Max Payne's unfortunate situation is introduced as the game begins and the player is left to navigate him through New York City's seedy underworld in search of answers as the story progresses.

As Max moves about, he encounters violent people who will try to take him out. The kill-or-be-killed scenarios are interspersed with seeking out clues and solving problems of navigation through the underworld. Most of it is very intuitive, but you'll pull your hair out every now and then trying to figure things out.

The game is broken down into chapters and each chapter is set apart with a comic-book style storyline to help you gain clues and insight as you wind your way along.

Max will come across a decent, but manageable number of weapons -- mostly hard-core firearms -- to help him blaze his trail.

Two great innovations MUST be noted:

1) The game is designed to adjust to the skill of the player. As the player improves, the game gets tougher. If the player is struggling, the targets get a bit easier to hit. Don't kid yourself into thinking its a pushover -- it's still very challenging, but won't leave you stuck at a particularly difficult spot. For this reason, any gamer who's not overly skilled at a shooter would find it very appealing.

2) The "Matrix"-style 3d slow-motion animations are not just for graphic pleasure. They'll help get you through some of the more complicated spots as action is slowed down and you'll have a bit of an edge on the aggressive, heartless mobs.

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Sound

The sound is not particularly awe-inspiring, but gives me no problems, the gunshots match the gun well, a deep powerful one for the Desert Eagle, a short "BAM" for the Beretta, a formidable pow for the double-barreled shotgun and an ear-shattering crack accompanies a shot from the sniper rifle. In this game of course, gunshots and cries of pain are most of the sounds you will be hearing, for better or for worse. But the sound effectively accents the incredible graphics and Bullet-time is cooler still with the deep, distanced booms of bullets and gunfire. If only there was more variety in the mafia thugs you fight throughout the game, your entrance into a room is usually marked by a "What the hell?" or a "It's Payne!", and while the drugged up junkies you encounter scream horribly when shot, the enemies rarely give more than an "ah!" of pain.
However the enemies in the game are nothing spectacular, but definitely enough.

Gameplay

Too many games are coming out without any kind of innovation, particularly most shooter-type games. Max Payne does not contain a plethora of said innovation, but it does add one very sweet angle of the often repetitive action (that it does NOT exclude)that can make some games less interesting (think Unreal or Aliens Vs Predator 1 & 2). Max Payne is a game of truly mesmerising combat (for a while at least), remember all those perfect rolling and diving moves in slow motion that Keanu Reeves did in the Matrix? Imagine being able to pull those off exactly the way you want to! The game features a new special ability for the main character, Max Payne is an ace gunfighter who has the ability to speed up his conciousness or whatever, the developers included the good touch of directly dismissing any explanation about why Max can do this, but he can! With the stroke of a button you can slow down time to a crawl, this mode is awsome! You can actually see every single bullet in flight! While i am not quite sure about the accuracy of the bullets' speed (i have no evidence though) it is wonderfully fun to dive across three thugs' lines of fire while sending bullets on their way to open flesh. This game is all about dual Berettas baby! The weapons included and the rendering for them are incredible, from the beautiful gliding of a .50 Desert Eagle's mechanism to the balance between a pump-action or double-barreled shotgun and the deadly but sluggish assault of a molotov cocktail. Max is also reasonably well balanced against his numberous enemies, in general he is about the same durability as his mafia opponents and probably would never make it anywhere without his bullet-time slow motion ability. The game's plot is intriguing, I'm not going to spoil it but it is interestingly rendered in a sort of voice-acted comic book style. Max also talks a great deal, in thought or otherwise, making him a strong character, much unlike Half-Life's Gordon Freeman. The plot is suspensefull, entertaining, and is unfortunately unrelated to what you actually do in the game. this brings me to the bad parts of the game, despite how much fun it is, the gameplay is very simple-minded compared to some more complicated games such as No One Lives Forever (an excellent program by the way) and mostly involves little more than following the only open path and shooting everyone in your way. This is remedied by the bullet-time function which keeps it from being completely repetitive. The game does have variations though, such as a pair of unusual "nightmare" levels, but they can be quite annoying. The shortcomings definitely do not limit the fun of the game though.
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Sound

The sound is pretty good. You can hear people talking to others and be able to tell what direction they are in. The bad guys can hear your foot steps and they will run to you screaming, "It's Payne, shoot him". All the gun fire sounds really good. Voice actng is ok, sometimes it sounds like it was not recorded to clearly though, but it doesn't matter. You will be so into the game, you will not even notice.

Gameplay

The gameplay is awesome in Max Payne. You control Max with the directional buttons on the keyboard but you aim with the mouse at the same time. Takes a little getting use to but it will come to you naturally soon enough. The action is fast in a gun fight, but if you want some really awesome action, just hit the right mouse button and hit the jump button in any direction. You are now in "bullet time", everything is in slow motion but you can still move the mouse at the same speed. It looks so cool. You can see the bullets flying toward you in the air while you dodge them. And when you get the sniper rifle, oh the fun you will have. A successful hit on someone will take you on a ride behind the bullet until it hits the guy you shot at. Wow. I love it. At first I thought the "bullet time" was just a cool looking addition to the game, but later in the game, I found out that it is a necessity to survive. When you are in a room with 15 guys shooting at you, you will need it. All the action gets your heart pounding and your adrenaline flowing. Doors, switches, boxes, etc are all interactive with Max. I just wish you could use some of the vehicles that are in the game.
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Summary

New York. Fugitive Undercover Cop. Nothing To Lose.
What a perfect summary for such and action-packed game, and it's printed right on the front of the game cover! This game was destined from the start: A New York Cop (best city in the world might I add)named Max Payne (come on, you Gotta admit that it's a clever name), a heartbreaking story about how the scum of New York killed his wife and clild, and the rest is history.. Video Game History! This game did for the gaming experience what the Matrix did for the movie experience; Revolutionized the genre of special effects. On the same note, Max Payne flows so smoothly through the plot of the game that he gives you that Action Hero feeling that we get from most movies out there today. So how did they do it? To me, it goes a little like this
A touch of tradition: making it a third person game.
A touch of Non-tradition: making it a third person game that has the control of a first person game (aiming with the mouse while walking with the keyboard gives us liberation from auto-aim, which most third person shooter games consistently have).
A touch of tradition: a full variety of weapons used to gun down masses of enemies.
A touch of Non-tradition- using this variety of weapons while soaring through a door head first, in slow motion might I add!, and landing on your back while pumpin those gangsta full of metal!
A touch of tradition: Beginning-to-end plot sequence with a cinematic ending.
A touch of Non-tradition: A plot sequence that makes you Feel everything that is going on around you while the plot twists and turns throughout New York, the past (Max's life before the murders), the present (the amazing game!) and the future (predicted by Max's poetic monologues, and Dreams!)
This is my impression of how this game became the blockbuster hit that it did. The adjoined creators made sure they clung to the popular and successful aspects of a traditional game, and strayed from them only to add ground-breaking features like Bullet Time, the Sniper Gun's awesome bullet camera, and creating a hybrid of first-person and third-person gameplay. If you havn't played this game yet, you're in for one hell of a ride. So get out there and buy it, believe me, you got Nothing To Lose.

Sound

Never in my gaming career have I seen the sound effects and music tie in so well with the flow of the game. I'd even go so far as to call them Sound Graphics, because they are so sharp and realistic that they cant just be for the ears. the second you press the button for Bullet Time, all sounds fade away momentarily, and the sound of Max's heart becomes the prominent noise. gun shots are muffled, the screams of the enemies are decreased in pitch, bullet shells hit the floor like needles on glass, and explosions seem to arise like volcanoes. And just when your jaw starts to drop over how incredibly detailed the sounds are, you come back out of bullet time, and every sound that u heard now instantly becomes a different sound that perfectly depicts real-to-life bullet shells, gun shots, etc. Wow, anything more like a movie and it'll actually Have to be a movie folks. So enjoy the highest level of action/adventure games out there so far, and for your own enjoyment, be keen enough to pick up on some of the games more subtle accomplishments, aside from countless prominent ones.
Now... Voice Acting... Not too Bad!
Max Payne's voice accurately fulfills his role as an apathetic, New York cop who is filled with desires for revenge and to find out the truth behind his wife and child's deaths. Although it doesn't seem too hard to screw up the voices of New York scum bags and drug addicts, but I'm sure that theres some game out there that already has, so lets give credit when credit's due. Sound completes the perfect score of 5's across the board.

Max Payne: Great Gameplay. Great Graphics. Great Sound.
Like I said.. You got Nothin to lose.

Gameplay

Lets face it, games are always gonna be That much harder to play when ur moving a mouse with one hand, while pushing four buttons on the keyboard with your other. So the objective is to make the button assignments as user-friendly as possible, and the creators of Max Payne did a grat job. One trip through the training level of the game and your set to go. Not bad in comparison for what you need to play one board in Ghost Recon don't you think?? Once you got the controls down, the rest is smooth sailin. Max Payne glides through the levels with his guns pointed and his trench coat flaring in the wind. The enemies are a challenge simply because of their multitude, but that can be taken care of with a grenade or two (makes for good eye candy too!), and theres nothing more fun than cathing an enemy off guard with Max's signature diving attack.
Controls are suprisingly tight too. This games got the look of a RPG and the controls of a finely polished platform game. Most third person games have a problem getting the character controls to react perfectly to their environments (I have games like Tomb Raider and Silent Hill floating around my mind when I address this). Max Payne has Zero environment interaction problems, and my best example to prove it is this: In a particular incident where Max might be heading toward a table during one of his classic dives, theres a bunch of different ways that the creators Could've approached this situation..
1) Eliminating environment interaction completely and have Max lose momentum (while still in mid air) and float to the ground as if theres some invisible wall in front of the table (not a good choice correct?)
2) Attempting at environment interaction by having Max sail through the table, and leaving itup to our judgement about whether we think he actually cleared the table, or if he jst defied physics and morphed through the table (not too good a choice either, agree?)
3) Do a professional job with environment interaction, and have Max either land on and slide over the table, knocking over the bottles and papers that may be there, or not reaching the table and sliding under it. (Very Good Choice, agree?)
Little details like this shows us, the gamers, that the creators of this game put their All into making sure that it has all of the aspect we want, and none of the ones that we dont. I appreciate that, any game that has Me in mind while it was being made deserves a 5 for gameplay.
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Sound

The music has a dark and foreboding nature, as if a long, unalterable journey of death and revenge is taking place, which is the truth.

Gunshots vary and enemies have many things to shout at you and each other. They also vary depending on who they are: Mafia, Russian thugs, Secret Service looking Mercenaries, or militia like goons.

Gameplay

Aside from the over the shoulder, 3rd person viewpoint (which makes you feel more in tune with Max) Bullet-Time is the most important aspect of this game, and the most innovative.

Like the Matrix, time slows down for Max, and he can see bullet trails stream by him. This makes aiming and placing your shots while jumping left, right, back or forward in a John Woo movie style (the director is mentioned in the dialogue several times during the game) much easier.

Max Payne's gameplay doesn't involve switches and doors, for the most part. The level design guides you where you need to go, while appearing authentic to real world architecture. A good feat.
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Sound

The sound in this game is very very very good. The guns sound realy cool & realy life like. The voice acting is the best I have heard in any game. The voices suit each character & suit each moment very well. Its the little things that make you think that this is the real thing. If you come up behind an opponent they will scream out things like "Its Payne, get him!", "Hes over here!" & things like "Get him!". Over all the sound is tops. You cant go past Max Payne

Gameplay

Gameplay was one of the best things about this game. The camera never got in the way of the action. If you have every played Tomb Raider you will soon notice that the camera always is in the wrong spot making it difficult to find your way around. This is not a problem with Max Payne. The camera always seems to be in the right spot to suit the situation. Even when you are doing bullet time (bullet time makes the game you in slow motion) you can move around from left to right & the camera always is on the right track.
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Sound

Unbelievable. Music, FX, voice acting, it's all here and on the same level as the graphics. It's truly unbelievable how well it comes off. Between enemies having conversations (some that help you later in levels, as long as you don't blast them before it's over) to your baby and wife screaming in the disturbing and chilling nightmares, you'll wish you had spent more cash on your sound card.

Gameplay

In the first five minutes of Max Payne, you'll realize this game is mature and real. You come home to a trashed house and your wife crying upstairs. You walk in your baby's nursary only to see perhaps the most disturbing sight witnessed in a video game. Your infant child is lying dead on the floor. Blood is everywhere. A shot rings out, twice. You walk into your room only to see a cracked out killer and your dead wife on the bed. So begins Max Payne. It's an intense TPS that follows the trail of Payne in his revenge mission. The game follows a gripping story line in graphic noir type cutscenes. The action is great and bullet time is a must. You have the ability to slow time in comic book fashion to get shots off, like the Matrix. But bullet time is where the similarities to anything end. Max Payne is original and good. It's chilling to play. Some levels are all action, while others are disturbing nightmares that Payne has while unconciouss, ones that require walking in pitch blackness over an abyss, with only a trail of your loved one's blood to guide you. Absolutely gripping and almost sureal. There isn't enough room for me to fully describe it.
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