Max Payne Review

When we first heard about Max Payne heading to the GameBoy Advance we were intrigued; having seen the first selection of screens we found ourselves disheartened by the isometric adaptation, a legacy of days gone by; however having finally played the finished build weâ??ve got nothing but admiration to the way Mobius Entertainment have brought Max to the small-screen.

Naturally Max Payne is all about the â??bullet-timeâ?? and in this respect the isometric viewpoint and control system does a surprisingly good job of letting the player do exactly what they could in the PC and console versions. Using a fixed control system itâ??s easy to control Max and navigate him through the levels, however activate bullet-time and youâ??ll find it pleasantly easy to do the whole Matrix thing, rotating whilst youâ??re shooting, defying gravity and just generally looking as cool as you could possibly hope for from a handheld adaptation. Our only concern with the isometric viewpoint is that occasionally itâ??s hard to tell whether youâ??re under cover or not â?“ however this just has the impact of making the game even more action packed and less reliant on positioning.

Itâ??s quite surprising just how accurate the GBA adaptation is, each of the levels have been faithfully replicated so youâ??ll soon find yourself strolling down memory lane, whilst the developers have thankfully removed the nightmare scenes. Completing the game which can be done in around 5 hours also opens up the â??New York Minuteâ?? mode, whilst the graphic-novel style has been pushed across to great effect.

We found ourselves surprised at just how well Max Payne translates to the small-screen; Mobius have done a great job on the control system to ensure itâ??s just as fluid as its predecessors, anyone looking for a quick action blast would be well advised to stick this in their GBA.