|
By Davion Vanste on December 10th, 2001
Introduction It’s been a small while since yours truly has had a game that didn’t bore the hell out of me. As far as pc gaming goes, the past few weeks have been meant with a certain less then enthusiastic sigh. The certain lack of great games (excusing No One Lives Forever2 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein from this statement.) for the PC has caused me to retreat into the servers of Blizzard’s Star-Craft servers, to issue out loses to anyone whom dare challenge the magnificent game genius that is Davion. But to my avail, not even dismissing newbies from their pro-hood made me feel any better. Enter Max Payne. So how did it fair up? Well… (drool.) It would seem that pairing up Matrix style camera angels and gameplay, with a smart mouth DEA agent with nothing to loose and revenge to gain, would apparently be stunningly attractive. Who knew? Presentation You Take part in playing character Max Payne. One faithful day, you happen to be feeling pretty good, a nice conversation with your best friend in the force ensures a day gone well. On the way home, you begin to reminisce about what you have going for yourself. A wife, a newborn baby, a house, the American dream. But as you pull up in your driveway, stick the house key in the door, and step foot inside your house, an unruly feeling crawls its way down your spine. Things are out of order and out of place, there are sure signs of struggle everywhere around you. As you take a couple of more steps into the small dim hallway that is your home entrance, you notice a sign on your wall, spray panted and tattooed there for you to see, delivering the silent message of a bad omen already in occurrence. As you gaze speechlessly onto the odd sign you begin to walk away, still gazing at the sure signs of a relentless fight that’s taken place here. You begin to walk more silently and suddenly a phone rings loudly, throwing your stealth movementation off core, and setting your heart rate into a frenzy. You pick up the phone, hoping to get some help, a strange voice on the phone answers you as you say with certain fright “help me, someone’s robbed my house and their still here!” there’s a moment before you hear “I’m sorry, I cant do that…” the person hangs up the phone, and leaves you in a deep confusion. But you don’t have time to think about what the voice meant, you have to see about your family! You rush up the hallway stairs to your babies’ room and to your very horror you see your newborn’s room painted in blood. You feel you mind beginning to slip as you flame into a rage, and then you hear it, someone in the other room, your room, laughing. You charge into the door, and it seems that you’ve caught a man off guard. Both of you have a puzzled look on your faces, as if extremely surprised. But then everything becomes apparent, the robber reaches for his gun, and you reach for yours; it’s a showdown and one of the very first times you get to use your bullet-time dive. Everything seems to happen in slow-motion as you dive toward your target unleashing rounds of unforgiving fury. The assailant drops to the floor, lifeless. And before you begin to hear anthor noise, you catch in the corner of your eye, blood, and a body lying slain on your bed. A thought crosses your mind about it, but there’s no real time to think, it was time to address the second racket you’ve heard. A door slams open, and there’s anthor thug that pears before it, this ones ready though, within a millisecond of the door opening, the man fires his gun repeatedly, but in a milliseconds time you’ve already dove to the left of the enemy dodging every bullet that’s flown your way. And now, while still airborne, it was time to relive that itchy trigger finger that’s been bugging you all afternoon. Anthor hoodlum’s body drops to the floor. You get up form your dive hastily. Flashes of blood repeatedly echo in your mind, and then you remember the body you saw on your bed. You walk upon the bed slowly, only to address your worst fear, the body that’s left bloody is your wife’s, you fall onto your knees and a loud, angered yell disbusts into the air. Graphics & Sound In order to play Max Payne, you need to have direct X 8 or higher, that should tell you straight form the get-go that MP is going to be pulling off some pretty stunning detail with real time light and shadow effects, gamers will be pleased. Attire looks totally real, moves with realism, each bullet fired is rendered and tracked individually allowing for some pretty inspiring times, it also makes it easier to time the bullet-time dive the only gripe one may have is with the music…there is none, or its totally limited. The game only plays music on certain occasions, no in-game music, which is, frankly, fine by me, I can party to the steady beat of my dual ingrams, there’s always enough action going on to keep your mind off of the music thing.Gameplay I was straight glued to my computer for 2 days straight playing MP. The sarcastic cop and his bad hobbit of letting his finger twitch whenever its behind the trigger kept me wanting more, the matrix like bullet-time dive enforced my opinion to keep on playing. The game is totally original and on an accord all its own. Built upon the tradional FPS theme, Max Payne runs around hunting down mobsters that might stand in his way, but the game is a bit more then Payne’s repetitive finger to trigger motion. It also takes a bit of wit to conquer Payne’s foes, nothing that majors too far away from the concept of spilling blood and laughing in the near distance. The game can take a quite Tomb Raider kind of prospective, the camera angle (when its not panning around fallen enemies like a scene from the Matrix.) is behind Payne, much like in Tomb Raider there is “chores” that have to be done in order to progress. No biggie though, nothing the average gamer couldn’t handle.Lasting Appeal The only real problem with games like MP is that once you’ve beaten it, you’ve beaten it. There’s nothing there to keep you coming back for more, of course, you could always replay it a couple of more times before that bullet-time dive becomes old and rancid, but after that, its doomed to sit there on the shelve and gather dust. A multiplayer mode added into the fray would have been so sweet! Playing co-op missions would have given the game the replay value it needed for a prefect score. But alas, we can only play the cards were dealt with. Perhaps the success of MP will prompt a decent sequel from the same creatures.Conclusion If feeling this good is sooo wrong, then I don’t want to be right. If your into the action, get this game, if your into guns and fun, get this game, if your into intense high paced gaming, get this game…. If you’re into wearing pink bunny outfits, then for heaven sakes, get this game! Nuff’ said. |
