Alrighty then kiddos. You've seen me shower praise on games so far, but now, now you get to feel my terribly efficient wrath. You see, I detest Max Payne. I got it off Steam for 10 dollars American, by all rights an extremely cheap price, and I'm still not sure that it was worth it.
For those of you unfamiliar with the "bullet hell" genre, look up some information on old-school games like Raiden. Also, a quick visit to this page [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ&feature=channel_page] ought to give you some sense of how ridiculously evil these games can get. Well, Max Payne feels like a bullet hell game stuck in a third-person shooter, and the result is madness in digital form.
Let me start off by saying that this game is broken. No literally, the game came broken the second it finished downloading off Steam, with no updates in sight. It wasn't even a small issue either: the bug either disabled the sound entirely, or made it sound like it was being played by an gramaphone possessed by Satan. Luckily, a quick trip to the Steam forums devoted to the game revealed a patch, but the devs won't get any credit for that from me: especially since this problem was in the CD format, and they've had plenty of time to fix it. It's not like I'm petty, but your average Joe wouldn't know what to do in that situation (other than wrestling the spikey elephant that is tech support), and thus I started this game up with the game already down a few points in my mind.
Developers, your laziness forces me to this level: a LOLcat is your punishment.
The "story" for Max Payne starts out strong: one of the few benefits to the game. You play as the titular hero Max Payne, your average cop and wannabe Boy Scout. Well, Max comes home to find his wife and infant child murdered, the victims of addicts of the latest drug in the Big Apple, known as Valkyr. Max promptly decides to join the DEA, in order to get his revenge on the drug's pushers, the Punchinello crime family. Some of the game's story is told through the in-game engine, while other bits are conveyed through comic book panels that pop up when you interact with important items. The panels are often fun to read: but for some reason in most of them Payne looks almost nothing like the in-game version of him. It's not really relevant, but it can be kinda unsettling. The voice-overs in the panels can be hit-or-miss, but I think that largely has to do with the lines that these poor actors are being given: some of them are annoying as hell. 90% of Max's lines tend to be either a grim metaphor or simile about the hellish nightmare that is New York, a pun or joke of some sort thrown at his opponents, or a statement about how he's gonna kill the next dumb shmuck in his way. It's supposed to add up to give you the "HARD CORE COP GONE OVER THE EDGE" feel, but in the end it just feels lacking in some fundamental way, and as such trying to empathize with Max is akin to trying to empathize with a rather disgruntled goldfish. Payne winds up being only halfway likeable due to the fact that his nemeses are all the literary spawn of Satan: all of them are complete douchebags out to ruin Max's already far too pitiful life.
While the story starts out strong, it quickly reveals itself to have more holes and be stretchier than a piece of putty molded to look like swiss cheese. Once you reach the end of the story it's as if the writers were attempting to commit harakiri by reading their own work. Every single person in this game winds up being tied to Max's revenge plans, save for his spunky female love interest that could be the sole entertainment value (other than Max's voice) in this game, no matter the cost to relevancy or continuity. To lay out the bare bones of the plot: Max kills a bunch of guys, only to find out that they're goons for X, who is working for Y, who is tied to company Z that is a front for pushing Valkyr, and Z is actually the remnants of a old military operation that was made to make the Captain America serum, but instead wound up making the Valkyr drug, and sent a fucking shipment of druggies(test subjects) to your house by accident. I only wish that I was joking about this: it's the stone cold truth.
What is with that shirt? And why does Max's face look like a steak? The world will never know...
While that might sound bad by itself, the true horror of Max Payne doesn't really set in until you get into the meat and potatoes of the game: actually running about NYC , taking down enough goons to fill several graveyards. This game's big tactic is slow-mo, but like most of this game the implemenation is a bit screwed. You only get two choices on how to use it: slow-mo dodging, or implementing bullet time. Having bullet time wastes a TON of your slow-mo gauge though, so 90% of the time slow-mo dodging should do the trick, right? WRONG. In fact, it's dubious as to whether or not using it at times is even worth it: it gives you more time to aim, but most of the time you'll fail to kill an enemy, hit the floor, and watch as he pumps you full of lead. Hell, a third of the time I would dodge into enemy fire by slow-dodging. What's even more asinine is the fact that you CAN WALK IN CIRCLES AROUND AN ENEMY or simply STAND STILL and it winds up being a 50-50 chance as to whether or not his AI is sharp enough to hit you. The amount of enemy fire reaches absurd levels far too often, and the player winds up paying the price for it. The whole mechanic feels like a layer of polish added to a rusty clock, and while it did need the shining, what it needed more was some oil.
That metaphor makes more sense when you understand how broken the enemies are. While the amount of damage they can take is certainly ok (for a game of this sort), it often feels as if they have far better guns than you, because they can wipe your health out in seconds on the EASIEST difficulty, which you have to play through first to unlock the harder ones. One would assume that you have a lot of health items then, right? Well, no. The pills that you get work over time: something that makes them near-useless in firefights, and the amount that they heal just doesn't feel like enough afterwards. Also, grenade traps are the biggest BULLSHIT that I've seen in a game recently. You can bet your bottom dollar that they pop up frequently, as any place that seems remotely unguarded is likely an explosive deathtrap. The enemies also have fighteningly ridiculous accuracy with them too: even if you don't die, you will take damage from them, unless you got lucky.
Look at your keyboard. See F9? Get friendly with it: it's the Quick-Load key.
To be honest, I went into this game not expecting much of a story, and thinking that it would be a nice way to spend my spare time. The time I squeezed out of Max Payne was about 10 hours(according to Steam), so at least you'll be getting your money's worth time-wise. All in all, Max Payne comes across as a bland, redundant romp filled with guns and fleshy things to kill. If you get this, you'll be dying more often than your enemies, and you'll be suffering through a script so hammy that the disc is practically composed of pork, but I tried to warn you. It's just your fault that you didn't listen to me.
Oh yeah, that's right: my bottom line. Do yourself a favor, and get yourself a good [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.108202#1817369] game with those 10 dollars.
Editors notes: I'll be doing Jade Empire or a manga mashup next week. I'm sorry that I keep forgetting to do JE, please don't flay me alive! I like my skin! Also, I'll be including a links to other reviews section from now on, so that people who enjoy reading my reviews don't have to muck about through my profile.
Double Notes: Added a review schedule of stuff I have in store for you all.
For those of you unfamiliar with the "bullet hell" genre, look up some information on old-school games like Raiden. Also, a quick visit to this page [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ&feature=channel_page] ought to give you some sense of how ridiculously evil these games can get. Well, Max Payne feels like a bullet hell game stuck in a third-person shooter, and the result is madness in digital form.
Let me start off by saying that this game is broken. No literally, the game came broken the second it finished downloading off Steam, with no updates in sight. It wasn't even a small issue either: the bug either disabled the sound entirely, or made it sound like it was being played by an gramaphone possessed by Satan. Luckily, a quick trip to the Steam forums devoted to the game revealed a patch, but the devs won't get any credit for that from me: especially since this problem was in the CD format, and they've had plenty of time to fix it. It's not like I'm petty, but your average Joe wouldn't know what to do in that situation (other than wrestling the spikey elephant that is tech support), and thus I started this game up with the game already down a few points in my mind.
Developers, your laziness forces me to this level: a LOLcat is your punishment.
The "story" for Max Payne starts out strong: one of the few benefits to the game. You play as the titular hero Max Payne, your average cop and wannabe Boy Scout. Well, Max comes home to find his wife and infant child murdered, the victims of addicts of the latest drug in the Big Apple, known as Valkyr. Max promptly decides to join the DEA, in order to get his revenge on the drug's pushers, the Punchinello crime family. Some of the game's story is told through the in-game engine, while other bits are conveyed through comic book panels that pop up when you interact with important items. The panels are often fun to read: but for some reason in most of them Payne looks almost nothing like the in-game version of him. It's not really relevant, but it can be kinda unsettling. The voice-overs in the panels can be hit-or-miss, but I think that largely has to do with the lines that these poor actors are being given: some of them are annoying as hell. 90% of Max's lines tend to be either a grim metaphor or simile about the hellish nightmare that is New York, a pun or joke of some sort thrown at his opponents, or a statement about how he's gonna kill the next dumb shmuck in his way. It's supposed to add up to give you the "HARD CORE COP GONE OVER THE EDGE" feel, but in the end it just feels lacking in some fundamental way, and as such trying to empathize with Max is akin to trying to empathize with a rather disgruntled goldfish. Payne winds up being only halfway likeable due to the fact that his nemeses are all the literary spawn of Satan: all of them are complete douchebags out to ruin Max's already far too pitiful life.
While the story starts out strong, it quickly reveals itself to have more holes and be stretchier than a piece of putty molded to look like swiss cheese. Once you reach the end of the story it's as if the writers were attempting to commit harakiri by reading their own work. Every single person in this game winds up being tied to Max's revenge plans, save for his spunky female love interest that could be the sole entertainment value (other than Max's voice) in this game, no matter the cost to relevancy or continuity. To lay out the bare bones of the plot: Max kills a bunch of guys, only to find out that they're goons for X, who is working for Y, who is tied to company Z that is a front for pushing Valkyr, and Z is actually the remnants of a old military operation that was made to make the Captain America serum, but instead wound up making the Valkyr drug, and sent a fucking shipment of druggies(test subjects) to your house by accident. I only wish that I was joking about this: it's the stone cold truth.
What is with that shirt? And why does Max's face look like a steak? The world will never know...
While that might sound bad by itself, the true horror of Max Payne doesn't really set in until you get into the meat and potatoes of the game: actually running about NYC , taking down enough goons to fill several graveyards. This game's big tactic is slow-mo, but like most of this game the implemenation is a bit screwed. You only get two choices on how to use it: slow-mo dodging, or implementing bullet time. Having bullet time wastes a TON of your slow-mo gauge though, so 90% of the time slow-mo dodging should do the trick, right? WRONG. In fact, it's dubious as to whether or not using it at times is even worth it: it gives you more time to aim, but most of the time you'll fail to kill an enemy, hit the floor, and watch as he pumps you full of lead. Hell, a third of the time I would dodge into enemy fire by slow-dodging. What's even more asinine is the fact that you CAN WALK IN CIRCLES AROUND AN ENEMY or simply STAND STILL and it winds up being a 50-50 chance as to whether or not his AI is sharp enough to hit you. The amount of enemy fire reaches absurd levels far too often, and the player winds up paying the price for it. The whole mechanic feels like a layer of polish added to a rusty clock, and while it did need the shining, what it needed more was some oil.
That metaphor makes more sense when you understand how broken the enemies are. While the amount of damage they can take is certainly ok (for a game of this sort), it often feels as if they have far better guns than you, because they can wipe your health out in seconds on the EASIEST difficulty, which you have to play through first to unlock the harder ones. One would assume that you have a lot of health items then, right? Well, no. The pills that you get work over time: something that makes them near-useless in firefights, and the amount that they heal just doesn't feel like enough afterwards. Also, grenade traps are the biggest BULLSHIT that I've seen in a game recently. You can bet your bottom dollar that they pop up frequently, as any place that seems remotely unguarded is likely an explosive deathtrap. The enemies also have fighteningly ridiculous accuracy with them too: even if you don't die, you will take damage from them, unless you got lucky.
Look at your keyboard. See F9? Get friendly with it: it's the Quick-Load key.
To be honest, I went into this game not expecting much of a story, and thinking that it would be a nice way to spend my spare time. The time I squeezed out of Max Payne was about 10 hours(according to Steam), so at least you'll be getting your money's worth time-wise. All in all, Max Payne comes across as a bland, redundant romp filled with guns and fleshy things to kill. If you get this, you'll be dying more often than your enemies, and you'll be suffering through a script so hammy that the disc is practically composed of pork, but I tried to warn you. It's just your fault that you didn't listen to me.
Oh yeah, that's right: my bottom line. Do yourself a favor, and get yourself a good [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.108202#1817369] game with those 10 dollars.
Editors notes: I'll be doing Jade Empire or a manga mashup next week. I'm sorry that I keep forgetting to do JE, please don't flay me alive! I like my skin! Also, I'll be including a links to other reviews section from now on, so that people who enjoy reading my reviews don't have to muck about through my profile.
Indigo Prophecy [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.108202#1817369]
WarCraft 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.107685]
Fallout 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.105151#1683250]
Mirror's Edge [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.102291#1586312]
WarCraft 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.107685]
Fallout 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.105151#1683250]
Mirror's Edge [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.102291#1586312]
Double Notes: Added a review schedule of stuff I have in store for you all.
Braid
Splinter Cell
Jade Empire (I NEED TO DO THIS ALREADY, I've been stuck with this in my skull for several weeks.)
Hitman
World of Goo
The Longest Journey
Prince of Persia
Darwinia
Deus Ex
DEFCON
Beyond Good and Evil
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War
STALKER
Far Cry
Team Fortress 2
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Full Spectrum Warrior
Titan Quest
and whatever the hell else I happen to get between then and now.
Also: I had a plan to do a manga mashup line: a series of short mini-reviews of mangas clustered together, at maybe 6-7 at a time. Clue me in as to where I should stick these in.
I have no plans to do movies though: I can't write in that style. It feels formal in some way. I'll only do cheeseballishly bad movies like the Dragonball one, or comic book movies, as those are the only movies that I can really get worked up about.
Splinter Cell
Jade Empire (I NEED TO DO THIS ALREADY, I've been stuck with this in my skull for several weeks.)
Hitman
World of Goo
The Longest Journey
Prince of Persia
Darwinia
Deus Ex
DEFCON
Beyond Good and Evil
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War
STALKER
Far Cry
Team Fortress 2
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Full Spectrum Warrior
Titan Quest
and whatever the hell else I happen to get between then and now.
Also: I had a plan to do a manga mashup line: a series of short mini-reviews of mangas clustered together, at maybe 6-7 at a time. Clue me in as to where I should stick these in.
I have no plans to do movies though: I can't write in that style. It feels formal in some way. I'll only do cheeseballishly bad movies like the Dragonball one, or comic book movies, as those are the only movies that I can really get worked up about.