Max Payne was perhaps the first video game I ever really got into. That is to say, when I fired up my Xbox and popped the disc in, for the first time ever, I actually paid attention to the plot and the characters, and played all the way to the end with a relentless resolve like that of a Wiccan listening to a Godsmack album. I was in video games years before this was released, but somehow I think this turned me into a true gamer.
Not that paying attention helped. This game crams more convoluted plot twists into its ten or so hours of play than most soap operas manage to whip out in several seasons. Truth be told, by the time I had finished the game, I could not remember how the plot went from beginning to middle to end at all, and ended up playing through a second time in an attempt to understand how it all went down. It helped...a little. You star as Max Payne (let's ignore all the overused jokes here) who rampages through New York City's underworld as he seeks vengeance for his family, killed by the mob. One of the better, or at least more interesting, design choices was the addition of a comic-book-style presentation of events between chapters. The script is a bit hammy and cliche, but that seems to have been the point of the exercise.
The game's controls are tight and well executed. Max moves fluidly and in just the ways you want him to move. The auto-aim nudges bullets so subtly you often don't realize you were off slightly. The game even features an auto-adjusting difficulty--if you're breezing through a level too easily, the bad guys get better weapons, or greater numbers, to try to give you more of a challenge.
The inclusion of bullet-time, ripped right out of the Wachowski brothers, only makes things more fun. One creative way to use bullet-time is when entering an unknown room, using it to dive in in slow motion while turning...it's a great scouting tactic. If nothing else, bullet-time is good for the coolness factor, swinging around a room faster than the enemy goons can aim at you. When you kill the last baddie in a room, the camera will usually do a Matrix-style circle pan as his body falls to the ground.
The game engine in general, while looking dated even at original release, is solid and--unlike most games of this genre--no more complicated than it really needs to be. Rarely have I encountered a glitch or bug that causes issues; the worst I've seen throughout the game is a handful of collision errors involving walls or doors. Other than that, it's smooth as butter.
If you need a game with a contorted plot, buy this. If you just like to shoot things up and do your best impression of Neo, buy this too. In fact, just buy it and play it. It's great either way you shoot it.
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