Max Payne

Max Payne

Developer:Remedy
Publisher: 3DRealms

Payne is my Last Name

Max Payne has been at E3 for quite a few years now. Not that this is a bad thing. With each following year Max Payne brings something new to see. This is one game that won't be dated, even though it is delayed.

Greetings and salutations

It's a M.A.C.

The Schpiel

The character, Max Payne, is about as hard as hard can get. His loved ones killed, and framed for murders he didn't commit, Max Payne has very little left to lose. Combine that with New York City, and you have a man with nothing to lose in a very large, crime-ridden area. The story is told in comic book style with panels, pictures and voices to add a bit of style. While not as gratifying as a CG sequence, the game promises to provide many panels and lots of story building. During the game, Max also comments randomly on objects like locked doors in classic hard-boiled fashion. Hopefully they find a really convincing voice for the character. My personal choice for the role would be Joe Frank, while some of the other FS guys wanted Bruce Willis or possibly Christian Slater, since Max does bear a resemblance to Slater.

Max Headroom?

Max Payne boasts a graphics engine that can rival those of the big boys. Dubbed the MAX-FX engine, it truly does some pretty spectacular things. The developers gave us a tour of the large buildings from not only the inside, but the outside as well. We were standing near the edge of the building looking down some odd 30 stories, which was very cool. A lot of other games have similar scenes, only the neighboring buildings look much lower detail and show an awkward scale and sense of perspective. There were no such problems with Max Payne.

Hello there

I'm wincing

It only got better from there. They then proceeded to show us how the guns fired and the bullets that were fired. By slowing down time, they gave us a look at the 9mm slug that had just been fired. The same thing was done in slow motion for the guns. We could actually see the top of the gun slide back and forth, like in real life. It's also worth noting that the game engine ran very quickly for the high level of detail you could see in the models and textures. You could just about see the scratches and imperfections in Max's Berreta.