Just ask U2.īut Max Payne has certainly aged well. See, even though the Max Payne franchise practically has a responsibility to utilize Bullet Time, they also need to create an experience that's altogether different from the dozens of copycat titles that have surfaced over the last decade just because you invented something doesn't mean you're exempted from the stereotype. However, as with most good ideas, developers managed to quickly overuse the feature, turning it into an industry cliché and relegating it to the same category as most Law and Order episodes.Īnd this was my biggest worry when I sat down to play the game. When Max Payne showed up on the scene in 2001, the gaming masses were quick to latch onto Rockstar's newfangled Bullet Time mechanic. But even as we're becoming reacquainted with the franchise, it's immediately clear that this is an entirely new game.
Noire with the composition of Grand Theft Auto to shape Payne's particular purgatory. Sure, it's darker and more disheveled than most suburban white kids are used to, but they've managed to blend the storytelling of L.A.
While developers like Bethesda are focusing on spells and dragons, and companies like Activision are preoccupied with military-based narratives, Rockstar places their characters into a universe that borders on our own. Thematically speaking, Rockstar Games is really playing to their strengths some might even say that they've found an interesting storytelling niche. But when Branco's trophy wife is kidnapped by an army of ski mask-wearing, AK47-toting goons, Max's vacation is evidently over in favor of yet another damsel in distress story. His new digs are the product of an old Police Academy friend named Raul, who thought it would be a slick way for Max to take a Brazilian vacation. Payne spends his days playing babysitter to the socialite family of industrialist Rodrigo Branco, and spends his nights downing pills and drunkenly stumbling into a bed that makes a wooden sound when he collapses. He's has traded his Detective's shield and crappy New York City apartment for a private security job and an even crappier apartment in São Paulo.
But in a franchise whose primary gameplay mechanic is a tortured metaphor for lost time, we certainly can't expect our protagonist to have recovered from his past.Īctually, Max's pain actually seems to have grown deeper over the last decade. Well, nine years later, life has proven to be far less sunny than Max Payne might have hoped for. Those of you who made it through Max Payne 2 (and happen to possess a particularly well-focused memory) might recollect a hint of optimism in our hero's closing line: "I had a dream of my wife.
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