Max Payne Review Max Payne is the story of a undercover cop whose family was slain three years ago He becomes an undercover cop and as the game start stumbles upon some trouble By the end of the second level he is a fugitive on the run no real friends to speak of and nothing to lose The Basics Company Author Max Payne was developed by Remedy Entertainment published by God Games and produced by 3D Realms Price When new it sold for abut 50 dollars Type of game The best classification I can find for this game is perhaps action fps However for several reasons most notably the fact its all in third person it stands out among shooter games Requirements The box states that the minimum requirements are a 3DMark 2001 score of 900 In terms of hardware the requirements are 450Mhz Intel or AMD Processor 96MB of ram 16MB Direct3D compatible graphics card The box recommends a score of 2200 on the 3DMark2001 benchmark In terms of hardware the recommended requirements are 700Mhz Intel or AMD Processor 128MB Ram 32MB Direct3D Compatible Graphics Card My machine scores a paltry 1640 on the 3dmark2001 benchmark and is configured like this Windows 2000 Professional AMD Athlon 1 2Ghz 512MB Ram ATI Radeon 32MB DDR I m fairly happy with the performance of the game with my configuration I don t have any anti aliasing on because with my card it can cause some low frame rates in places Max Payne Review Pg 1 I have at least a few of the graphics settings set to full on the system and I don t notice any real problems while playing the game I left things like texture detail and level geometry at medium settings The engine seems to perform very well for the level of detail this game provides Though I think that playing it on the minimum recommended machine would probably be a nightmare Game Summary Quick Overview Max Payne is the story of an undercover cop with nothing to lose on a quest to find out who is responsible for all trouble in his life Story Line The games story begins with showing a part of the same cut scene you will see at the end if you complete the game From there it goes back three years to when his family was killed you play through the scene where they are killed and it jumps ahead to Max being an undercover cop During the first two stages we find Max at a closed subway station trying to figure out what is going on You eventually discover and foil a bank robbery but not before the cops get called and you get placed at the scene After finding your way back to the subway you meet up with your contact and have a very short conversation before he is gunned down by an unknown assassin You of course leave the scene and as you later find out are the prime suspect in the case To add to the mayhem your cover as an officer has been blown and not only do the cops want you but the Mafia wants you dead as well So now it becomes a quest to stay alive find out who is behind all this As the game progresses you start to uncover clues to both your contact s murder and your family s murder Slowly things go from investigation to retaliation The story is moved along by somewhat random clues laying around and interactions with key characters that bring up a comic book like story board to progress the game In between stages this method is also used along with a few cut scenes The writing for these story boards as well as Max s dialogue is very good in my opinion Of course I m a CIS major not a writer However I was very interested to figure out what was going on and the story boards were involving enough for me Max Payne Review Pg 2 Player s Role The player is always the character Max Payne whose main goal throughout the game is to find out who is responsible for the trouble he s in and get revenge User Interface The user interface employs the tried and true health weapon display to give you information about your characters status When the player changes weapons a weapons select H U D pops up above the character It stays out of the way and has yet to interfere with game play Life is measured by a little Max Payne silhouette in the bottom left corner As you get injured a red shading moves up from the feet to the head Once it reaches the top you die Beside this silhouette is a hourglass shape full with blue shading This is the Bullet Time indicator I ll explain bullet time in more detail in the special features section Next to the hourglass is a little pill bottle picture with a number next to it this tells you how many pain relievers you are carrying up to a maximum of eight Pain relievers are used to heal your character On the lower right is a current weapon display showing you ammunition remaining the name of the weapon Installation The installation of the game is fairly simple next next finish Each time you run Max Payne you get a dialogue for graphics configuration so that is omitted from the install program Game Play The game play is fairly simple walk around the levels kill the bad guys Most of the time there aren t any true puzzles to solve just the typical maze plot device Somehow every obvious way you can think of to get through the building has been blocked There are a few breaks from this pattern however In at least two parts that I can recall someone else has to open a door for you In one case a scared subway worker in another case a junkie that you take hostage Naturally killing either of them ends the game instantly Of course along the way there are interactions with the environment or Max Payne Review Pg 3 items to look at that keep the story going Max s head will actually turn to look at items that should be picked up this and a large exclamation point on the screen will tip you off as to when where there are items to read or look at There is also a level in which you must escape from a burning building the only puzzle of its type in the game and I m thankful for that Once and awhile boss or mini boss fights with characters with more than the normal amount of hit points or a combination of too many henchmen are thrown into the mix to add some more challenge Another aspect of added challenge is the health system It is indeed possible to get killed by a single shot Life can fade away quickly in a fire fight and to add to the challenge the painkillers don t instantly heal you its a gradual process The same applies to the …
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