CHENNAI: As much as we all love the big, epic long single-player stories that gamews can tell, there will always be a special place reserved for games that you could finish in the course of a single night with your friends. I’m not talking about actual co-op games as much as games that are almost as much fun to watch as to play, with everybody chiming in to help figure out tricky situations. Limbo is a great example of this, as is Portal; but today, I’m going to talk about a much older game that could be finished in one sitting if you pull an all-nighter — Max Payne.
Way back in 2001, Max Payne kicked the door down when it released. It fired on almost every level — story, gameplay and so on — but, most importantly, it had style. A style heavily inspired by noir detective stories, John Woo’s action movies and The Matrix, sure, but with a style all its own.
The story follows Max Payne’s search for vengeance and/or redemption through the seedy underworld of New York. I don’t know enough about the noir genre to definitively say that the story isn’t cliché; but it’s solid, it’s got just enough humour to leaven what would otherwise be a pretty grim tale, it’s got good writing, and it is going to surprise you. (Also, for gamers of a certain age, it would likely have been where they first learned about certain key aspects of Norse mythology — so educational, too!) The story is presented through beautifully illustrated comic-book style panels that accompany Max’s internal monologue — it’s superbly done. The graphics are a bit dated but still playable; although, even at the time, the strange expression on Max’s face was worthy of a few chuckles.
Coming to the gameplay, this is where the bullet-time concept took root and flowered. Max is a third-person shooter, but its biggest innovation was that it was built around bullet-time — the ability to slow the passage of time down enough that you can see the movement of individual bullets. Although Max himself is slowed down as well when bullet-time is activated, you can still aim in ‘real-time’ which will help you get the drop on otherwise unsurvivable shootouts. That wasn’t it, however - you could also have Payne pull off a ‘shootdodge’, which essentially consisted of a forward, backward or sideways leap while still retaining the ability to aim and fire. Not only are they extremely cinematic and very cool indeed, shootdodges are also absolutely invaluable to surviving Max Payne. I’m sure I spent at least 50% of my time in that game flying through the air.
It’s been nearly 17 years since Max Payne came out, and yet I can remember specific story beats, lines of dialogue, levels, moments — so many moments! There have been top-of-the-line games with gallons of polish, which have been launched in recent years that are instantly forgettable as soon as you finish them; maybe they just didn’t do enough to be original, or maybe they just lacked heart. It’s a testament to the enduring quality of Max Payne that, to this day, it can still hold its own in a shootout with just about any modern shooter you care to name.
If you’d like to
shoot your way through a hardboiled noir detective story
experience one of the all-time greats
feel like Neo
...you should give
Max Payne a call!
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