Max Payne

Max Payne (James McCaffrey) is a game about a detective with nothing to lose. Max has been obsessed with revenging his wife Michelle Payne (Haviland Morris) and his baby's death. Max starts out at Roscoe street station, where he is undercover and supposed to meet fellow DEA agent Alex Balder (Chris Phillips). He stumbles onto a big crime scene and begins shooting it out with thugs who are pulling a bank job. Once Payne meet up with Alex they begin talking and Alex is shot mysteriously. In his quest for answers about his wife's death Max is lead into a tangled web about a new drug called Valkyr. Max finds out from two mob brothers Joey and Virgilio Finito (Tye Reign) that someone had paid the hitman Rico Meurte (Joe Maruzzo) to take Payne out. Payne then had a run in with the thug/psycho killer Frankie "The Bat" Niagra (Bruce Kronenberg).

Max meets Jack Lapino (Jeff Gurner) in a satanistic night club called the Ragnaroc. This leads him to Angelo Punchinello (Joe Ragno) the head mafia boss who was backing him and his underling Vinnie Gognitti (Joe Dallo). In return for taking out a traitor Boris Dime (Peter Appel) Max gets the backing of the excentric Russian Mob Boss Vladimir Lem (Dominic Hawksley). Payne finds out from Mona Sax (Julia K. Murney) the sister of Punchinello's wife, where Punchinello can be found, and that the conspiracy is much deeper then Max could have ever imagined. The valkyr conspiracy had something to do with a mysterious group called the Order whose members include the AESIR corporation president Nicole Horne (Jane Gennaro) and senator Alfred Woden (John Randolf). In the end it is up to Max Payne to solve the mystery of the Valkyr case while not getting shot by gangsters or his co-workers in the NYPD under Deputy Police Chief Jim Bravura (Peter Appel).

This game is awesome. The graphics are amazing for its time and the enviroment is very interactive. The plot is very well done in a 1920's gumshoe kind of style, that is set in the present or near future. The game is accentuated with Max's cheesy, over dramatic, artsy commentary, which really gives the game its feel. Its full of twists and turns, and has alot more depth than the average shoot 'em up video game. The tie in with Norse Mythology and the gangsters and valkyr and the order are all really well done. There are comic book sequences complete with voice actors that help guide you through the game. The best thing about this game is bullet time. Bullet time is an effect that lets you slow down time to get an awesome/slow motion view of the action. You can dodge and go into bullet time at the same time, and this makes for really fun play, plus allowing you to dodge bullets better.

The only thing I didn't like about this game and I found really annoying was the sequences when Max was on V and he was running through the weird blood trail levels. If you get to those levels in the game save often in case you fall and get out of there as soon as possible and back to the action! Even with the stupid blood trail/baby crying levels this game is a classic that was ahead of its time. Some of my favourite cheesy Max lines are "Bullets were flying at me like rain drops" and I loved what the enemies said when you met them for the first time, Boris Dime "When you see the devil tell him the Dime sent you!" Vlad "Clear as Vodka". A nice touch is the television programs they made up to be on during the game, I myself prefer Lords and Ladies! If you like video games go buy/rent this one right now!

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Max Payne at IMDB
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