Max Payne Review

There are about ten weapons in the game, split into several categories. The first category contains a crowbar and a baseball bat; then you have the handguns (Beretta and Desert Eagle), three types of shotguns (Pump-action Shotgun, Sawed-off Shotgun and Jackhammer), a couple of automatic rifles (Ingram and Colt Commando), a sniper rifle and several explosives like the M79, grenades and Molotov cocktails, which should make sufficient means for you to wreak your revenge. What's more, you can hold two Ingrams or Beretas at a time... As this is a primarily arcade game, the developers altered some weapons to improve playability; for instance, the Desert Eagle can here hold twelve in stead of 6+1 bullets. I preferred using the automatic weapons, especially the Commando as it gives the enemies a chance of actually doing something if they survive the first shot. Now, if you want a proper mass-murder in a small room, you better use a Jackhammer. Unfortunately, I did not find too much use for the sniper, as everything takes place in relatively small confined spaces. You should always try to achieve a head-shot as that can save you a lot of ammo and some hit-points. Additional ammo and weapons can be taken from dead opponents or found somewhere on the levels (the same goes for the health-packs or "painkillers" as they are referred to here). Only the relatively small crosshair can pose as a problem, but I didn't have any trouble with it. It is, however, highly inconvenient when it totally disappears from the screen, which happened a couple of times.

The enemies are relatively smart and there are about ten to fifteen types of them: ranging from the some junkies to smartly dressed guys in suits and spec. op.'s... There are only two or three characters in the game that won't shoot you at sight, which makes your job much easier: just shoot anything that moves... for that matter - just shoot anything! The enemies will tend to barge at you, but don't think this makes them easy to kill. Every shootout can prove fatal, especially as you have to partially rely on luck. So, before every gunfight, you better pray and save your status... maybe you will survive, maybe the first bullet goes right between your eyes.

The graphics are simply beautiful. I mean what could you expect from the guys who created 3D Mark anyway? The 3D engine resembles Half-Life, but it it able to use the computer resources far better. The first announcements that you would need a Pentium X running @ YYYYMHz, were not true. I played the game on a PII400 with 128RAM and a GeForce 2... I didn't get the highest of resolutions, and the textures and level of detail were less than perfect, but the game ran smoothly. Later I tried the game on a more powerful computer, on which I was able to increase the resolution and LoD and the game looked substantially better. The only thing they didn't pay much attention to were the shadows. (The particle system is truly amazing - Ed)

My personal favorite was the gunfight segment. The programmers obviously had the right idea of what they were trying to create in their minds, and they made a good shooter. You are able to see where every bullet and every piece of the shotgun shell went to, and the damage that caused, especially in the slow-motion mode. Each object will react differently depending on the material it had been made of: If you shoot at metal objects, the bullets may ricochet with sparks, or pierce it, scrapping some of the paint away. Shooting at somewhat softer materials was even more fun: walls and wood create a lot of sawdust and debris flying all around. In some situations, it is far more fun to just shoot at the scenery than at your enemies, and enjoy the spectacular sights. The fire effects also look great and leave a very positive visual impression.

After you finish the entire campaign (which shouldn't take you more than two to three days of casual playing) you will be rewarded by two more game mods. To be more specific, what the authors called mods here, are nothing but two more difficulty levels. So, when you finish the game for the first time, the medium difficulty level and once you completed that, you can play the game on the most difficult time mod. You'll also get New York Minute mod. Now, this mode of play is a bit more interesting and challenging as you have to go against the clock. A stop-watch will keep ticking away in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and if it reaches zero - you're done for. You always gain some extra time with the stop-watch by killing an enemy. This mode proved to be very hard.

The guys from Remedy announced that they will soon publish the first mods for the game, and they also included all the original development tools they used to design the game, including the level editor, particle editor, skinning editor and the 3DStudioMAX export plug-ins. It is unfortunately clear that there can be no multiplayer mode thanks to the slow-motion feature. We can only wait and see how this will influence Mr. Payne's replay value. As it stands though, Max Payne is a stunning techincal (gameplay) achievement that may be lacking a decent script to truly lead the way into the era of interactive PC movies.