The Burrow

“Pain to the Max”

Remedy Entertainment has become a household name among enthusiasts by now. We know them for games like Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break, but before that, there was Max Payne. A bullet-laden noir trip through New York City’s insidious underbelly. This game put Remedy on the map. However, it is actually their second game, Death Rally being the first and one I have never played.

Max Payne is a third-person shooter and an excellent one. It’s level after level of mafia-filled action. Max is a cop undercover, trying to piece together why his family was murdered some years earlier. One night during a historic snowstorm, your contact within the DEA calls you urgently to an old subway station in the city’s heart. However, when you arrive, you find it filled with thugs. Naturally, you take them on, and the story kicks off and seldom slows down from there.

I played the Xbox release this time around, though I have played both the PlayStation 2 and PC versions as well. PC is the best way to play these days, but playing on a Series X was a great time, too. The PS2 is definitely playable but the framerate is all over the place and there are several compromises to make it work. To my knowledge, the Xbox port is basically the same game as it is on PC but plays at 4:3 on Series X, but at a lock 60fps and upscaled to 4K.

Mechanically, Max Payne is somewhat limited. There is no analog movement, and on the console, you cannot move the reticle diagonally. To compensate, they employ heavy aim assist and some really strong bullet magnetism. It works great and lends to the cinematic flair. The hero is unnaturally accurate. The defining gameplay system, however, is Bullet Time. Released two years after The Matrix, Max Payne wears its influence on its shoulders. When the player triggers Bullet Time, the game slows down, you can see bullets flying in mid-air while Max runs around them, blasting his enemies at the same time. It is awesome and a lot of fun to do. Diving around corners in slow motion to catch a half dozen mobsters unaware. It never really gets old and the game is generous with it, allowing you to use it as often as you want.

The narrative is also excellent. The story has an almost poetic cadence. Comic style stills stand in for flashy cinematics. Max delivers morose line after line in descriptive detail. The game does not shy away from dark themes; the criminal cast regularly engages in heinous and illicit activities. It is mature in a way that feels grown up, not adult. Hopefully, that makes sense as folks often seem to look toward violence when it comes to mature games over substance. Though there is plenty of violence as well. It is a love letter to pulpy detective stories from the old days.

Reading all of that may give you the impression that this is a game without fault. Sadly you would be mistaken. Sometimes, you’ll see people say that some games have not “aged well.” Often, I take umbrage with that statement. Games are time capsules in many ways. When you go back, you can see mechanics or systems that once were commonplace but have fallen out of favor in modern games. Does that disqualify those games or mechanics? Does it somehow make them bad? I say no, the player has a responsibility to meet the game where it lies. That is to say, you need to be willing to play on the terms laid out by the developer.

Max Payne is one such game. While there is so much to love, there are levels that have a “trial and error” design. While this is not a bad thing in general, I don’t think it serves this game very well. In one particular level, Max flees from a burning building. Fire spreads rapidly throughout, cutting you off from would-be exits and forcing you to find other ways out. It can be a maze, and you will find yourself utilizing the quick save function a lot as the fire will make quick work of Max. Similarly, there are two dream sequences that you’ll encounter. At first, they have some clever flourishes. The field of view is pulled back, everything has a blue/green tint, and the levels have an unorthodox layout. But to cap these off, you must navigate a thin trail of blood in a dark abyss; falling results in death, and you are sent back to your last saved point. Thematically, these sections serve a purpose; it is a nightmare, after all. But I find that they offer very little in the otherwise stellar gameplay department. Indeed, I feel they are the worst part of the game.

All of this to say, Max Payne is every bit as good as it was back in 2001. Great gunplay, weapon variety, combat encounters, and a dark, noir, poetic narrative make it a classic worthy of play. There really isn’t anything quite like it being made today. Remedy had announced they are remaking the first two games themselves. Though I have not played it, I hear that the Alan Wake remake was an effort that paid off, so it is probably a safe bet that these will, too. The best experience is perhaps the PC version on Steam; the Xbox port on Series X or S is the second. The PlayStation 2 port was a worthy effort but, unfortunately, does not hold up nearly as well.