Description Max Payne is a third-person shooter video game developed by Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment and published by Gathering of Developers in July 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Ports created later in the year for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and the Game Boy Advance were published by Rockstar Games. A Macintosh port was published in July 2002 by MacSoft in North America and by Feral Interactive in the rest of the world. There were plans for a Dreamcast version of Max Payne, but they were canceled due to the discontinuation of the console. The game was re-released on April 29, 2009 as a downloadable game in the Xbox Originals program for the Xbox 360. The game was also re-released in the spring of 2012 as a downloadable game in the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 3.
The game features a gritty neo-noir style and uses graphic novel panels (with voice-overs) in place of animated cutscenes to narrate the game, as it draws inspiration from hard-boiled detective novels by authors like Mickey Spillane. The game contains many allusions to Norse mythology, particularly the myth of Ragnarök, and several of the names used in the game are those of the Norse gods and mythos. The gameplay is heavily influenced by the Hong Kong action cinema genre, particularly the work of director John Woo, and it was the first game to feature the bullet time effect popularized by The Matrix.
Max Payne received very positive reviews and was praised for its exciting gunplay and use of noir storytelling devices. Critically acclaimed, the game won a large number of accolades, including the BAFTA Award. As of 2011, the Max Payne game franchise has sold over 7.5 million copies. It also inspired a feature film under the same title.
Gameplay
Max Payne is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Almost all the gameplay involves bullet time-based gun-fights and levels are generally straightforward, occasionally incorporating platforming and puzzle-solving elements. The game's storyline is advanced by the player following Max's internal monologue as the character determines what his next steps should be. Several of the game's levels involve surrealistic nightmares and drug-related hallucinations of Payne.
Initially, the player's only weapon is a semi-automatic pistol. As the player progresses, access to other firearms is given, including melee and hand-thrown weapons. Some of the game's weapons can be dual wielded. Max regains health by taking painkillers, which the player collects. The game's AI is heavily dependent on pre-scripted commands: most of the apparently intelligent behavior exhibited by enemies (such as taking cover, retreating from the player, or throwing grenades) actually is pre-scripted.
The gameplay of Max Payne revolves around bullet time, a form of slow motion — when triggered, the passage of time is slowed down to such extent that the movements of bullets can be seen by the naked eye and enables Max to perform special moves. Although Payne's movement is also slowed, the player is still able to position the aiming reticle and react in real time, providing an advantage over enemies. Occasionally, when the last character of an enemy group is killed, the viewpoint switches to a third-person view circling a falling body. Likewise, the camera may follow the path of a bullet fired from a sniper rifle.
The "Dead on Arrival" game mode limits the player to only seven saves per chapter, and the "New York Minute" mode forces the player to complete each chapter before the allotted time — replenished by killing enemies — is exhausted. Upon completing the game on "Dead on Arrival", the player unlocks "The Last Challenge" ("End Combat" or "Final Battle" in the different versions), featuring a fight in perpetual bullet time against the "Killer Suit" hitmen.
Plot
The story consists of three volumes: "The American Dream", "A Cold Day in Hell", and "A Bit Closer to Heaven". The game begins in medias res in December 2001, as New York City finishes experiencing the worst blizzard in the history of the city. The intro sequence shows Max Payne, a renegade DEA agent and former NYPD officer, standing at the top of a skyscraper building as police units arrive. He then experiences a flashback from three years ago.
Back on August 22, 1998, Max returned home to find that a trio of apparent junkies had broken into his house while high on a new designer drug called Valkyr. Max rushed to aid his family, but was too late and his wife and their newborn daughter had already been brutally murdered. After his family's funeral, Payne transferred to the DEA.
Three years later, Max Payne is employed as an undercover operative inside the Punchinello Mafia family responsible for the trafficking of Valkyr. His DEA colleague B.B. gives Max a message asking him to meet another DEA agent, who is also Max's best friend, Alex Balder, in the NYC Subway station. Max's arrival at the subway results in a shoot-out after he encounters mobsters working for Jack Lupino, a Mafia underboss in the Punchinello crime family, attempting a bank robbery by breaking through from the station. Working his way back to the surface, Max encounters Alex, who is then killed by an unknown assassin.
Payne becomes the prime suspect in the murder because he is still undercover and the fact that he fled the crime scene, while the Mafia find out that he is a cop and now want him dead.
While searching for Lupino in "businesses" owned by him, Max busts a Valkyr drug deal and discovers that the Russian mobster Vladimir Lem is engaged in a fierce turf war against Punchinello's men. Max eventually finds Vinnie Gognitti, Lupino's right-hand man. He wounds and chases Gognitti ,while also shooting mobsters that accompanied him. Chasing Gognitti through the city, Max learns about the location of Lupino's hideout, a nightclub named Ragna Rock. After gunning down the insane Lupino, Payne meets Mona Sax, a female contract killer, who pours him a drink which turns out to be laced with a sedative. In this state Max is found by the Mafia and is dragged away to be tortured.
Max manages to escape from the Mafia-owned slaughterhouse and enters a brief alliance with Vladimir Lem. He agrees to kill one of Vladimir's traitors, Boris Dime, and his men aboard the cargo ship Charon at the Brooklyn riverfront, which contains a shipment of high-powered firearms belonging to the Russian mob, which Max keeps in exchange for the favor. After surviving a bomb ambush at the Mafia restaurant Casa di Angelo, Max uses the new-found Russian mob's weapons to storm the residence of Don Angelo Punchinello. There he finds the body of Lisa Punchinello, Mona's sister, and discovers that the Don is only a puppet in the Valkyr market when the mafioso is killed in front of Payne by agents of Nicole Horne, the CEO of the mysterious Aesir Corporation. Horne then injects Max with an overdose of Valkyr and leaves him for dead, as he experiences a drug-induced nightmare and suffers his internal torment and guilt for not being able to save his family (as well as strange letters allegedly written by his deceased wife telling him that he is a character in a video game).
After surviving the overdose and awakening, Payne pursues his only lead to a steel foundry located over a hidden underground military research complex. Inside he discovers that Valkyr is the result of Valhalla Project, an early 1990s U.S. military attempt to improve soldiers' stamina and morale following earlier The Ladder experiments; the project that was sharply halted due to poor results, but was later restarted by Horne and Aesir. He also discovers that his wife accidentally found out about the project, and Horne let loose the crazed Valkyr test subjects into his house. Aesir initiates "Operation Dead Eyes" to get rid of evidence and witnesses, including their own scientists. Max escapes the bunker at the last moment just as it self-destructs.
Max then gets a call from B.B., who arranges a meeting at an underground parking lot and reveals he shot Alex and framed Max for his murder. A running gunfight then commences as Max chases him through the garage. After killing the traitor, Max gets a phone call from a man named Alfred Woden asking him to come to the Asgard Building. Alfred reveals himself to be part of a powerful secret society called the Inner Circle, which has strong ties to the U.S. government. The Inner Circle members inform Max about Nicole Horne's identity but cannot pursue her themselves because "their hands are tied". They ask Max to kill Horne in exchange for dropping any criminal charges against him. Suddenly, Asgard is overrun by Aesir gunmen who kill everyone in the meeting room except for Max, who escapes, and Woden, who pretends to be shot. Max has to fight his way out of the building.
Max arrives at the main office of Aesir Corporation and makes his way through this high-tech security building while avoiding strafing runs by a minigun-armed helicopter. Along the way he runs into Mona Sax again in an elevator, but she is shot in the head by Horne's men after she refuses to shoot Max (her body vanishes when Max goes back to the elevator). At the top Max finally confronts Nicole, who escapes to the roof and boards the helicopter. Max shoots the guy wires of the building's antenna, which snaps off and crashes into the helicopter, killing Horne.
The game's storyline returns at the very point where it had first started, as Payne's three-night rampage is over. The NYPD ESU arrives at the scene, arresting Max and leading him out of the Aesir building, where he sees Alfred Woden. Knowing that Woden will ensure his safe passage through the judicial system, Max smiles genuinely.
Characters
Max Payne
Main article: Max Payne (character)
Max Payne (voiced by James McCaffrey) is a fugitive DEA agent and former NYPD detective whose wife Michelle and newborn daughter were killed in connection with the Valkyr drug case. Max then goes undercover in the mob, and eventually becomes a one-man-army vigilante waging a personal war on crime (and in particular, those criminals responsible for his family's death). Max ends up killing hundreds of gangsters and conspiracy enforcers while on the run from the police determined on stopping his vendetta against all those responsible for his family's death. He uses metaphors and wordplay to describe the world around him within his inner monologues, which often contradict his external responses to characters he speaks with. The first game presents the story as retold by Max from his point of view.
Other characters
Nicole Horne
(voiced by Jane Gennaro): The game's main antagonist who led a secret military program code-named Valhalla. She had Michelle Payne killed after she viewed a document that shows that Horne is still producing the Valkyr drug despite the fact that the project was suspended. Horne commands a well-armed private army of hitmen and mercenaries. She is killed by Max at the end of the game.
Alfred Woden
(voiced by John Randolph Jones): For most of the game he remains a mysterious unseen character, only interacting with Max through phone calls where he either warns him of a coming threat or provides information. Towards the end of the game he meets Max face-to-face and introduces him to an Illuminati-like society known as the Inner Circle. Woden tells Payne that Horne is his real enemy and expresses his wishes for Payne to get rid of her. He is seemingly gunned down by Horne's men while in a meeting with Max, but is later seen on a security terminal getting up off the ground and leaving his dead comrades. He reappears in the sequel as a U.S. senator.
Don Angelo Punchinello
(voiced by Joe Ragno): An Italian mob boss who distributes Valkyr and become involved in a gang war against the Russians. He remains the main villain throughout most of the game until it was discovered that he was being controlled by Horne. He is later killed by her before he can give Max too much information.
Vinnie Gognitti
(voiced by Joe Dallo): A high-strung mobster working for Lupino who is terrified that his boss will kill him due to Lupino's Valkyr-induced psychosis. Max confronts him to discover where he can find Lupino, but this encounter results in Payne shooting Gognitti in the gut and then pursuing him through the city's buildings and rooftops. When Max catches up with him he forces the information out of Gognitti and leaves him bleeding in an alley (in the 1998 trailer Vinnie was shown being summarily executed by Payne in a cut scene, but this was changed later along with an other tweaks to the story). He reappears in the sequel as a Mafia underboss.
Vladimir Lem
(voiced by Dominic Hawksley): A Russian mob boss and prominent gunrunner currently in a war against Angelo Punchinello. He teams up with Max providing him with weapons in one part of the game and occasionally chauffering him around to key locations. He reappears in the sequel as a charismatic restauranteer who maintains his shady connections in organized crime. He is portrayed by Marko Saaresto of Poets of the Fall (a friend of the game's writer Sam Lake). The band also wrote the main theme, "Late Goodbye", for Max Payne 2.
Jack Lupino
(voiced by Jeff Gurner): A Mafia underboss and an occultist, who oversees Valkyr distribution for the Punchinello crime syndicate. He has been driven crazy by his Valkyr addiction and has become a Satanist, obsessed with making a Faustian pact with the Devil (he also owns Necronomicon, a fictional book from the Cthulhu Mythos and Cthulhu is one of the deities he worships). When Max confronts him he is the middle of a Satanic prayer; a gun fight ensues and Lupino is killed by Payne.
B.B. Hensley
(voiced by Adam Grupper): A corrupt DEA agent and a supposed friend of Max. Receiving pay outs from Horne, he radios Max telling him to meet agent Alex Balder at the train station and then shoots Balder dead, framing Max for his murder. Towards the end of the game he meets Max and is revealed as a traitor working for Horne. Payne kills him in a gun fight.
Deputy Chief Jim Bravura
(voiced by Peter Appel): A high-ranking NYPD officer who is pursuing Max for most of the game and is not deterred in arresting him, even though the TV commentators don't see the violence as a bad thing because mobsters are the only victims. At the end he finally arrests Max, but in the game's sequel he becomes Max's boss.
Michelle Payne
(voiced by Haviland Morris): Working for the district attorney’s office, Michelle came across a file that incriminated Horne, which later led to her murder and the killing of her child by Valkyr junkies sent to her home. She repeatedly appears through the game in flashback and nightmare sequences.
--- System Requirement---
---Max Payne 1 Game Microsoft Windows 95 OSR2---
---Max Payne 1 Game 450 MHz Intel or AMD CPU---
---Max Payne 1 Game 96 MB RAM---
---Max Payne 1 Game 16 MB Direct3D compatible GPU
---Max Payne 1 Game DirectSound compatible SPU---
---Max Payne 1 Game DirectX 8.0---
---Max Payne 1 Game Recommended System Requirement---
---Max Payne 1 Game 700 MHz Intel or AMD CPU---
---Max Payne 1 Game 128 MB RAM---
---Max Payne 1 Game 32 MB Direct3D compatible GPU---
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