max payne is a character action game, a character action shooter specifically. there's much debate online weather character action is even a real genre and to me it is, it's just a subgenre of action game that focuses more on either stylish combat or on looking cool, not necessarily being deeper or better but more about looking and being cooler than your average action game, it can have both like with DMC but its not necessarily just deep games i think fit it, think of it like say, bujingai, a game that doesn't have the deepest mechanics but that has style for days, same with the likes of dirge of Cerberus or even a game like max payne or wet, where i wouldn't consider say, a god of war or a hellblade or a gears of war to be part of that, not because they're less deep, but because style is not their focus. these shooters i do think are part of that, it's the likes of games like wet, vanquish, max payne, stranglehold, devils third and even quantum theory or resident evil 6, shooters with more movement mechanics or alternate combat mechanics like swordplay, it can be something like max paynes dodges, wets acrobatics, all of the advance movement tech in vanquish or the slow motion slides in devils third, things that make you look so cool and it's something that elevates the combat to levels of style beyond your average cover shooter.

the main thing here that's stylish is the movement mechanics, the actual shooting itself isn't anything super different but it's how you move about that is, you can dive in slow motion and take guys out that way and slow down time normally to get better shots off standing still, it makes for a ton of cool scenes and it's never not fun to dive in slow motion and oneshot guy with a sawed off shotgun (my favourite weapon that sadly you lose halfway through the game), sure it's not the best implementation of it with games like wet or vanquish having more options, but the simplicity here works so well for it. it's a simple loop but it never gets boring, the levels are varied and you get a ton of weapons to use here, every weapon type usually has a variant or two, like the fast barettas vs the stronger desert eagle, or the assault rifle with more power and range vs the duel wield SMGs with much faster rate of fire, the shotguns were the most fun for me though, that sawed off was magic and i'm sad you lose it, but the full auto one you get later on more than makes up for it, explosives aren't great though and neither are the melee weapons which i never used unless i had to, the granades are pretty useful once you get the hang of them but the molotovs and launcher are more likely to kill you than the enemy, they're so finnicky, but it is funny when it happens, dying here is funnier than anything because of how sudden and because of the funny death pan you get, you'll be dying a lot here in the later levels but it's never super frustratingly difficult beyond the final level which is a really overly tough gauntlet, especially that damn elevator at the end.

one thing i do really like that helps make the game easier is a trick you can learn, your slow motion is on a gage that fills by killing enemies so you can't spam it too much, but when you do use it with a dive you actually auto-reload, you can use this with some of the longer to reload guns and just chain them like its nothing, this makes the sawed off shotgun almost broken earlier in the game since its one downside becomes mute, and it makes me miss that gun so much more after. the health system is also a little weird, it has slight health regen but only up to a point and the rest is refilled by downing pain meds you find, its a weird system, i think the slight regen is started when you move? but i'm not sure, i never figured it out fully, but it works, i just wish it refilled more, but i always had just enough pills to get me by (except that docks level, it had way too few) there's also a dynamic difficulty system in play a little like resi 4 that dictates difficulty in addition to whatever mode you pick, but i never figured out how it worked, it seemed pretty consistant for me across deaths so i just dont know if maybe the ps2 port didn't have that even though the box said it did or what, but it's not a super tough game either way outside of a few pretty bad levels and segments like the nightmare sequences that were far too difficult without a guide, though i somehow managed to do both without one, those sequences are cool as hell though and genuinely really scary, they were a total highlight for me even if the platforming did not work in the slightest, it's got such a unique vibe in those levels thats scary in a way most horror games don't even manage to be.

the story and the writing are standouts too, there's so much funny or quotable dialogue in it, the funny gangsters with exaggerated accents spouting the funniest dialogue of any npc in any games, every level had at least one funny conversation you could listen to and the game leans into the comedy of these characters a lot, talk of vampires and movie endings and people prepping cool entrances only for max to bust through the door with a shotgun, it's a funny game when you're actually playing it (and sometimes even during the real cutscenes like the OH GOD YOU SHOT MEEEE guy or the twins in the hotel), the games story itself is very dark and pretty serious for a lot of it but that makes the humour shine so much more, a little like yakuza i guess. that darker story is really good though, i love how the game is written, its very like, myspace emo poetry vibes and i mean that in a super positive way, max is a really interesting protag and you feel so bad for him throughout, it gives you such a well rounded view on him and it's always really interesting to hear what he has to say, i just love how he's written so much, even the side cast are memorable, he has tons of fun villains like the occultist crime boss or the funny wise guys or the dirtbag CEO and the cartoonishly evil corrupt cop and even his allies are fun, the femme fatale girl the sequel seems to focus on was super fun and i love the Russian mobster and the not-illuminauti guy a lot, but the game is very dark and you should know that going in, like it starts with max's family being murdered in a scene thats very rough to watch and you have to revisit it multiple times throughout the game, it's a hard sit. even beyond all that there's still more cool stuff here, there's the norse mythology stuff tossed every where and some supernatural plotlines thrown in there because why not, it's so cool, all the references to things like ragnarok and Valkyries tossed into a cool noir story gives it such a distinct vibe and while the supernatural stuff is a little silly? it's also just, kind of cool in a dumb action game kind of way, like resi and it's a cool look into a direction remedy would eventually go all in on!

the setting is so cool too, a neo noire new York adventure set during the night of a snowstorm and the game uses it really well, there's a few levels where you get to just exist in the snowstorm and it's just so dead and empty, it's nice, the game even ends on a rooftop overlooking the city and you can see it snowing, it's really beautiful sometimes, inbetween all the levels of dingy grunge, which are also a vibe all their own. you go to tons of places, subways and abandoned crackhouses, sleazy hotels, docks and even a cool goth club level, it's interesting though how it progresses, with it starting in the city's dingiest zones and growing to more affluent areas as it goes on, with places like a mafia mansion, high tech labs, a government building and even a huge skyscraper level that admittedly is the games low point. there's so much level variety here and most of them feel pretty distinct, even the dingier levels and they all keep that cold winter vibe to them, they feel half abandoned and dead beyond the criminals and crackheads and it makes the levels that are in nicer areas feel oddly warmer, if that makes sense, except the skyscraper which just feels as cold and dead as the games most deprived areas, probably something thematic there i don't know, the goth club full of occult stuff, the starting subway and the cozy government buildings were my favourite levels i think, plus the gimmick level in the resteraunt thats on fire that you have to rush through, just such nice environments to explore.

the character models are also just so cool and so iconic with them using real faces scanned in akin to like, forbidden siren and it's equally as scary sometimes, sam lakes max payne is a memable image but he's so iconic and cool looking with all the funny faces and during the comic book cutscenes he just has such a vibe to him (he also wrote the game and has been a big part of remedy ever since, even appearing in games like alan wake 2), though the performance by james macaffre does deserve special mention, the way he performs max is just so cool. the other vocal performances are also really iconic and fun, as is the music by Kimmo Kajasto (who also did the sequel) and Kärtsy Hatakka (who also only did the sequel). the main theme is really good and it reuses it a bunch in the levels, it's got such an atmospheric score, though there isn't a ton of music in the game and many levels do just prefer letting the silence and atmosphere speak for itself, which works great for the dark, cold atmosphere.

it's a decently long game too, took me about 7 hours to finish but for most people i imagine 5 or 6 but its so well paced and varied that you probably won't mind how long it is and there's even a ton of replayability beyond just how fun the game is to play, there's tons of difficulties including a super fun time crisis style mode called new york minuite and you even have a secret level unlocked for beating it on harder difficulties with a secret attached to it, i'd reccomend at least trying new york mode since it's such a cool change of pace and really changes up how you play the game. there would be a few ports of it, personally i stuck with the ps2 version which is generally considered the worst way to play but it is also the cheapest, but no port of this game is really all that expensive anyway for a physical copy, its just the one i had and i prefer the ps2 to the xbox and doubly to pc, i mean my ps2 is pink and it has a pink controller, the xbox can't top that, so i can put up with a worse version for the aesthetics. it's got some slowdown, a bad frame rate (god you could not pay me to care about frame rates, 60 and 30 look the same to me and even below that like, i beat drak 3, i beat borderlands vita, this stuff does not even occur to me while i play) and some blur but it's the full game and it's beatable and thats enough for me, it even has some accessability stuff like an autoaim that i kept on. the xbox version is a good bit better from what i hear so maybe go for that if you're bothered by the ps2 version and it has a xbox ond and series port if you somehow own either of those consoles, or alternately there is a ps4 port of the ps2 version via backwards compatability that might fix some issues, but that's digital only so be warned there. the pc version is the default version so many might want to go that way, it's even pretty affordable for a physical copy in pal regions! overall there's tons of ways to play this and you can't go wrong with any of them, heck, it even had a cool GBA port that plays radically differently and might be the most impressive port on the system, i need to play it someday.

there's also a remake coming out but, lets be honest, it won't capture how special this is, the games limitations make it too charming for it to really be the same without, it needs those janky models, that cheesy dialogue and those dingy environments, but it is made by remedy so maybe it'll be good. the sequels are a mixed bag from what i can tell, 2 seems amazing and a great continuation on the story and themes and i'm really excited to play it! but max payne 3 looks..... rough, the gameplay seems very fun and i briefly dipped into its multiplayer before it shut down back when and thought how it worked was very cool (localised slow motion during gunfights) but the story seems like, god how do i put this in the nicest way, the nasty mouthpiece for a hackjob developer to aspouse garbage views and anti art made to trample over a legacy made by real artists, so, really, like any other rockstar game out there, very typical of them, i might cover it, i might not, i hate rockstar and nothing will convince me otherwise. remedy would only make that first sequel before the rockstar IP thingy happened, but they did go on to make tons of other great games (though the games director Petri Järvilehto would mostly go on to work on angry birds spinoffs, weirdly), the amazing alan wake, the less than amazing quantum break (which i couldn't finish but might try my best to someday) and the really cool looking control, plus a recent sequel to alan wake and even more on the horizon, just try and forget about crossfire X, remedy probably do, but i actually covered that game a long time ago and it wasn't so bad, but for sure their weakest project, unlike this game, which is my favourite of theirs and if i'm being honest one of my favourite games, it's up there for sure, a real masterpiece and a must play. oh and there's a movie with mark "convicted of hate crimes" whalberg and it looks awful, i have a sealed copy and i'm so hype to watch it, i'll cover that one down the line.