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Max Payne Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Max Payne finally finds his way to the PS2 with a few sacrifices, but basically the same game that got us all in a bother last year.
Max Payne finally became one of the great success stories of last year. Having been in development for aeons, the game finally emerged to universal acclaim and success. The port to the next-generation systems was an easy decision for someone at Rockstar, a license to print money but has Max survived the conversion?
Those familiar with the PC version, and lets admit it whoās not, will know the story. Max Payne had it all, a special agent in the DEA, a loving husband, a doting parent, he was living the American dream. However it didnāt take long for it all to come crushing down, as he arrives home from work one day to find his baby daughter and wife brutally killed by a group of Valkyr junkies. The games narrative is classic Film Noir material, as the story progresses through a series of comic-book illustrations, complemented with a gritty visual style and dark soundtrack.
Even if you havenāt played the PC original youāll know about ābullet timeā. Activating it slows down time, allowing Max to accurately pinpoint shots and dodge bullets with his name on it. Before the PC game was released, this feature was an unknown quantity it could have been nothing more than a novelty, something to dress up a standard action title. However the feature became intertwined into the gameplay in better ways then we could possible have imagined, it actually became essential to the game in later missions as you try to conserve it until you crucially need it. It also became apparent that beneath ābullet-timeā lied a solid and enthralling adventure, with only one misgiving, it was so good that the end came too soon.
The good news is that the core components that made Max Payne a classic the first time around have survived the port intact. The action is still as fun as it was the first time around giving the sense that youāre taking place in the latest John Woo flick, the presentation and story hold up for a second serving and hey itās Max Payne one of the best titles of last year.
Unfortunately, and this only comes if youāve played the PC version, Max Payne on the PS2 is a little rough in comparison. The overly detailed and crisp textures have been downgraded, character models sport lower polygon counts, on occasions the framerate becomes extremely choppy, during bullet-time the actual bullets are hard to distinguish making dodging bullets a hard task, whilst the control on the dualshock just isnāt as intuitive as a mouse and keyboard combo. The biggest complain is with the load times, to get around the limited 32MB Remedy have chopped the levels down into smaller chunks, increasing the load times and affecting the immersive nature of the game.
