GCP – Episode 97 - 08/10
GCP – Episode 96 - 07/20
Interview with Frictional Games - 07/14
GCP – Episode 95 - 07/13
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The Max Payne EffectPosted July 3, 2009, Comments (9) |
There are perhaps 16 games I should be playing right now. Probably more like 25, if you include games released over six months ago that I still haven’t beaten (Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, to name a paltry few). And here I am playing the original Max Payne instead, in all its noirish allegory-permeated glory. I’m completely overlooking Demigod and Plants vs. Zombies. I’ve even put my trusty Braid in the holding pattern. So what bizarre illicit infectious behavior has Mr. Payne cast upon my fragile psyche, causing me to ignore everything else and invest 100% of my free time into an interactive digital yarn spun almost 9 years ago?
I feel like I’ve been mugged and sacked by a thuggish shadow (in a strangely good way). It’s time to get to the bottom of this little caper. It’s time to gather up and handcuff the game’s main characteristics, stuff ‘em into the petty wagon, and and hold each of the proposed perpetrators under the interrogator’s 100 watt bulb and see if they sing. One of ‘em is bound to crack.
Graphics: Max Payne, from a visual standpoint, was considered the Crysis of 2001. It was a bona fide graphical battering ram, primed to bash down even the mightiest of GPUs. Some publications even went so far as to assert that after the release of Max Payne, we were now waist-deep in the luscious waters of yummy photorealism.
The publications were wrong. Very wrong. Not sure about you, but I don’t remember any of my friends’ faces never changing expressions no matter what, unless they died from a shotgun blast to the sternum (although, from an objective perspective, this never actually happened to any of my friends). I also don’t recall folk’s clothes and accessories being plastered to their bodies like super-glue with precisely zero depth when viewed from the side. And I might be mistaken, but I’m not so sure police cruisers and semi-trucks contained pointy octagonal tread-less wheels at that point in history. And was everything in real life so blocky, sparse, and fuzzy back then? Those Max Payne subway trains look more like hardened Twinkies than a true representation of a railed mass transit container.
If this is photo realism, then I really need glasses.
So, it appears that graphics are off the hook in the hidden motivation factor of Chris’s abandonment of newer gaming titles. Whatever nuance has hijacked my mind and forced me to neglect my latest library, it sure ain’t this game’s looks. Max Payne’s graphics: you are released from custody. You may go. Please never come back.
Every gun sounds unique.
Sound: Unlike rendered digital illustrations, which seem go from infant to elderly overnight, the sound arena seems to enjoy a far longer youth… or at least an extended mid-adulthood. Max Payne’s sound effects and music, simply put, are nothing short of iconic. From the opening menu’s over-the-top edgy theme song to the eerie ambient noises of archaic buildings settling on paper-thin bricks somewhere in the distance while you traverse the crumbling alleyways, this game is an auditory tour de force. Max Payne was one of 5.1 sound’s early champions, and the reverberating tones’ encoded positioning remains seamless and fluidic. If you implement a slow-mo diving pirouette around a furnace, the clanking innards of the heated metal housing will follow your ears appropriately, yet the cacophony of your haphazard shotgun blasts always stays anchored to the center. TVs’ static and goons’ banter are refreshingly muffled if listened to through a wall or door, but the moment you remove the barrier via an opening, their sounds become crisp and bright. Great stuff.
The musical score is sparse, and mostly limited to boss encounters, ultra high-tension shoot-outs, and static graphical cut-scenes. While I will normally chastise limited usage of music in modern games (I’m an orchestral reactionary. Get over it.) in Max Payne, it seems perfectly suited to the John Woo-esque action-charged overtures. Really, now that I ponder it, the main menu theme is equally as memorable as Red Alert’s Hell March or Duke 3D’s grab bag. And the foreboding beat-heavy melody that plays while you direct Max through a hallucinogenic drug-induced nightmare is nothing short of masterful.
Hmmm. It looks like Max Payne’s exceptional sound might very well be a strong suspect in the abrupt case of my sudden gaming monogamy. And yet, as captivating as the game’s concocted resonances are, I get the feeling the sonority is not the mastermind here. Let’s keep Mr. Payne’s sound overnight for additional questioning.
Bullet time used to be inspiring. Now it’s annoying.
Gameplay: Believe it or not, at one point in PC gaming history, bullet-time wasn’t clichéd. I know: it’s tough to imagine. But it’s true. Unfortunately, years of clinical abuse and needless over-indulgence have deformed a once magical innovative element into a twisted and rotten heap of shame. It’s particularly tough when an oldie like Max Payne centers its entire action round this singular dynamic. Yeah, it’s interesting to see where the concept all started, but the sad hard truth is that bullet-time is a broken record. Max Payne’s stick-rigid game play of: “get ammo, get guns, engage bullet-time, kill, and repeat” sure as hell ain’t guilty of anything except repetition. And mindless redundancy, unless I’m some type of digital masochist, is not the reason I’m happily watching my copy of Red Alert 3 weep in solitude while I cuddle with mistress Payne instead.
The rest of the manipulated maneuvering is standard 3rd person shooter fare; wander from location to location, make a few jumps, find a few keys, dispatch a few baddies. Max Payne did employ some uncommon choices for the time of its release in the HUD department. Rather than a numbered health meter or an armor gauge, Max’s life is a smallish silhouette of himself that fills up with maroon when damaged until he croaks (which, due to the insane difficulty at times, he does often). To decrease the agony, you eat painkillers scattered throughout the levels like red skittles. Simple and effective, but it’s hardly mesmerizing.
Max Payne’s sound: not only are you flagrantly innocent of any gaming entrapment crime, you’re also literally incapable of any type of seduction thanks to a decade’s worth of immoral bullet-time cloning. I’d suggest a lawsuit, but since you’ll probably be dead tomorrow anyways, I guess it really doesn’t matter. The officer will show you out.
Story: You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. And usually, that first impression is as accurate as a veteran British SAS sniper. In this case, Max Payne’s story appears in the room as a mustachioed sneering western villain wearing a black top hat and wringing his gloved hands to boot. And now that we have the suspect in the hot-seat, he’s sweatin’ it like a crowded Swedish bath-house. Max Payne’s writing will either make you want to apply upon the authors a savage beating, or it’ll cause you to escort the game box to bed with you naked. There’s no in-between.
You can skip these interludes; or you could buy champagne and just throw it away.
Well, I guess you can call me tickled pink, because Max Payne’s story and I have made sweet, sweet love. From the opening gritty words to the final narrative vowel, I was beguiled. The noir underpinnings (femme fatal, crass antihero, over-the-top dialogue, dark theme); the hilarious background sub-plots (Captain Baseballbat Boy, Lords and Ladies); and the psychological analogous setting situated inside a NYC blizzard… all of these are just small pieces of what makes Max Payne such a unique avenue of PC Gaming expositional exploration. If you fancy yourself a classic film buff, you simply cannot miss this title.
Yes, there are plenty of jackals that have lambasted Max Payne’s plot as empty literary fluff: a failed chronicle packed with laughable metaphors and groan-inducing attempted drama. Of course, these are probably the same educated folk that consider Blood Sport and Minesweeper works of art, so these criticisms are hardly surprising. As for me, I think I’ll stick with the likes of Memento and Max Payne. I guess I’m just a sucker for talent and depth.
The game’s story is shocking from the start: before you’re 5 minutes in, you get to helplessly witness the immediate aftermath of the slaughter of Max’s wife and infant child. And it only gets gleefully murkier from there. As you progress through the narrative (or regress, depending on your interpretation of Max’s fall) the characters’ numerous discourses crackle with wit and sharpness. Each static graphical interlude (which pepper Max’s dark crusade liberally) accentuates the overall turmoil of a man consumed by hatred and confusion. This is the stuff legends are made of, and Max Payne should rightfully be considered on the highest pedestals from the written standpoint.
As for me: I’m smitten. So, it looks like we’ve nailed our criminal. Guilty as charged. Full confession. Hardly even put up a fight. The sentence: life on my hard drive without the possibility of parole.
But naturally, conjugal visits are always a welcome possibility.
It’s a great game, no argument with that statement at all. I enjoyed the heck out of it both times I played it.
The pseudo-noir prose is facepalm-inducing at times to a Hammett lover, but the silliness has grown on me.
I loved the first one so much, and the character so much, that when I go to play the second one, I just can’t get through it because I identify the first one as Max Payne, it’s like if one of your best friends disappeared and then someone who looked kind of like him and acted sort of similar showed up, and said he was him, but wasn’t him.
it’s fucking weird.
I loved the story telling in these games. Unique and gritty.
Max Payne 2 was better IMO. The entire Address Unknown sub-story was great.
@Weclock: I completely understand, and I felt that way for a while as well.It was just… bizarre hearing the same voice with a new mug plastered over it. And the plaid tie? Come on! That’s not Max Payne! I never really got over that nuance.
@HOOfan_1: Max Payne 2 certainly had better graphics, better weapons, and the bullet-time recharger was better applied, but pulling the player our of Max’s shoes to play as Mona was almost a game-breaker for me. I mean,I’m already suffering from an identity crisis with Max’s odd looking grill, and now you put me in a killer chick’s role? Huh??
Max Payne is a brilliant game. It’s one of those games that as soon as you pick you you can’t stop playing it until you’ve beaten it.
The plot itself wasn’t great – but its unique storytelling and writing was captivating and enhanced the story so much more. It’s like Taxi Driver – gritty New York stuff that’s so noir it makes Humphrey Bogart look like Michael Cera.
Max Payne had so many unique approaches going for it that it’s easy to overlook its foibles.
The photoshopped comic book cut scenes neatly dodged a problem that many other games of the era had: rendering plotpoints in an awkward 3d engine optimized for running and gunning. There’s nothing that pulls me out of a game worse than a badly puppeteered character jerkily trying to emote in a cut scene.
I will always remember the psychedelic hallucination level. Following maze trails of blood, falling into nightmare darkness, reliving traumatic moments in Max’s life — it hammered the character home by forcing me to negotiate his terrible life instead of watch it as exposition.
Finally, I love the bullet time effect. Even now. Even after The Matrix, even after its overuse in movies, even after Force Speed in Jedi Knight II. Bullet time is only edge Max really ever gets, and it’s a resource to be husbanded carefully. Depend on it too much and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Now, Max Payne II … I tried it once. ONCE.
This article convinced me to finish Max Payne, which I picked up off of goozex a while back. I really got into and havent played anything else except a round or 2 of demigod. I love everything about it. I have 3 more levels left, and I have Max Payne 2 in the mail.
@Muppetmower: Yessssssss. Another Max Payne comrade joins us. Demigod WHO??