Not everything that humanity has invented has been purely beneficial, and urbanization is one. The complications brought about by bringing together a lot of people into a single, dense population center lead to unpleasant life-styles for some denizens - life-styles that would seem astonishingly nasty to those who do not know better.
This issue has inspired the emergence of "noir" themes for use in fictional works which portray (and sometimes exaggerate) the seedy and shady sides of heavily urbanized civilization. The protagonists of these stories tend to have ambiguous moral compasses and conflicts between personal desires and their sworn duties. Perhaps not surprisingly, police officers who tread in gray zones often make great protagonists of this sort.
Max Payne is one such fictional work, albeit it is also a video game. It is set in New York, which is an apparently popular locale for the setting of noir stories. Its protagonist, Max Payne, happens to be a deep undercover cop with a huge axe to grind with the city's underground narcotics network.
A treacherous turn early in the plot of the story has Max Payne becoming a fugitive from the law and also a target for the criminal elements of New York. He would have to shoot his way out of his mess, with no other apparent choice for Max Payne to save himself.
The basic premise would have been quite the well-worn one, but the game compensates by having great presentation for plot development.
One noteworthy presentation device is the use of graphic novels (otherwise known as particularly well-illustrated and -written comics) that appears to be made from brushed-up photo-shoots of live actors. Graphic novel sequences kick in whenever the player reaches important points in the storyline, namely plot-twists and chapter transitions. The writing and voice-acting for these sequences are especially top-notch; Max Payne, being the protagonist, fittingly gets the most entertaining (and sobering) lines, as well as a voice-actor that can portray his character surprisingly well. Most of the other characters also have lines and voice-acting of similar calibre.
Unfortunately, the same praise could not be attributed to the live actors. Most of them present exaggerated faces and goofy sneers, damaging the otherwise stellar panels of graphic novel.
Plot development that occur outside of these graphic novel sequences usually involve changes in combat situations, e.g. script triggers that bring in more enemies for Max to shoot at. These are punctuated with lines and voice-acting that is on par with those in the graphic novel sequences. (The player can also choose to hang back a bit to eaves-drop on casual conversations between enemies who are yet to be aware of Max's presence. These conversations, which include musings on the game mechanics that are in this very game, can be plenty amusing.)
The gameplay itself would seem familiar to those who had played third-person shooters. Max Payne is a protagonist shown on-screen, with the camera situated behind him. The view given is one that shows a generous portion of Max's surroundings, so the player would not be found wanting for a better camera. On the other hand, there are issues with the camera when Max has his back to a wall, but this is a rare occasion because the gameplay does not encourage players to hug walls too much.
Max appears to have great aptitude with modern weapons, as well as the capability to hide a whole armoury of weapons underneath his clothes (not unlike other protagonists in the shooter games of yore). He moves about at a decent clip: not too fast as to be uncontrollable, and not too slow to be Swiss cheese. The player points at where he needs to shoot, and simple button presses send munitions that way.
In other words, Max Payne's core gameplay, which have been done before in so many other shooters, would have been quite mundane.
Yet, the secondary gameplay designs - and how they are presented - spice up the action, breathing new life into an otherwise tired genre (regardless of great story-telling).
One of the first gameplay mechanics that players will notice is Bullet Time, which has been (wisely) trademarked by Remedy Entertainment. This mechanic is only unique to Max. The player can choose to trigger this ability at any time with just a button. Bullet Time has the game going into de-compressed time, slowing down everything except Max Payne's aiming speed. As a bonus, the accuracy of enemies appears to suffer hiccups as well. In other words, the protagonist effectively becomes a paragon of awesomely stylized shooting - just as the game designers have intended him to be, being fans of John Woo that they are.
The player can also combine the activation of Bullet Time with dodging manoeuvres, further improving Payne's skill at dealing damage while maintaining a high degree of evasion. Of course, if the player could not make use of these "Shoot-Dodges" (as coined - and trademarked - by Remedy), Max would end up sprawled on the ground, wasting precious time to get up.
Conveniently enough, Bullet Time can be toggled off with the same button. This is useful because Bullet Time cannot be used indefinitely, in an apparent game design decision to balance it. An hourglass icon indicates the amount of Bullet Time that the player has left, with a full one giving close to ten seconds of slow-motion. To refill the hourglass, the player has to kill enemies, with slight bonuses given for rapid murdering of consecutive enemies.
Despite his prowess at perceiving the world in dilated time (a trait that he will humorously note at one point in the storyline), Max is still very much a (virtual) mortal man. He has a health meter that players have to look after, though Max can take quite a lot of shots (but fewer at higher difficulty settings). To maintain Max's health, the player makes use of another game mechanic that has been presented in an entertainingly appropriate, if rather grim, way.
Max has to collect bottles of painkillers, which apparently are of the pre-dominant (fictional) brand, Interfectum. Max may make remarks whenever he comes across a cache of painkillers, which are often located at obvious places (such as inside first-aid cabinets) or less-obvious but otherwise still-plausible ones, such as on top of desks. The role and themes of these items are noted in the canon of the game, and are also featured in several graphic novel sequences, usually as a source of relief for many of New York's embittered inhabitants (Max himself included).
Otherwise, the painkillers act as health kits, not unlike those found in other shooters (albeit that they are conveniently portable and Max can carry several of them at one time).
(It is worth noting here too that to encourage the player to stay playing longer without resorting to an immersion-breaking reload, the game designers included a feature that allows Max to regain some health when he is near-dead by simply staying away from combat for a while. This is perhaps one of the earliest implementations of regenerative health in shooter games.)
Other than the two mechanics above, the combat in this game would appear to be not much different from other shooters at the time; Max runs around spaces that are effectively walled in by various things that restrict free-range movement, makes use of obstacles that break up line of sight (and most of which are indestructible regardless of how much they are shot-up) and generally getting the jump on enemies before they can react.
There is a decent variety of weapons in this game, all of them obviously based on real-world counterparts. While the designs for weapons in this game are appropriate and satisfactorily functional, they are also unremarkable. Like other protagonists of shooters at the time, Max Payne can carry a plethora of weapons that range from handguns and shotguns to sniper rifles and grenade launchers on his person without any encumbrance.
Most enemies in this game are just there for Max Payne to shoot at, assuming that the player is able to control Max well enough such that he doesn't get shot-up in return. That is not saying that they are stupid; they take cover to reload, coordinate with each other and call out Payne's location in the level. Yet, their AI is not any more remarkable than those seen in other shooters of the time - especially considering that their AI is used for every enemy in the game, regardless of their character and relevance to the current point in the storyline.
What is more impressive about them is that their models are generated from random combinations of body parts and polygons that are unique to the current level at hand. For example, one of the early levels of the game takes place in alleys and subways, so the player will encounter enemies who are clad in hoodies, parkas and jackets, as (perhaps stereotypically) befitting New Yorkers who frequent such places. The same gangster who jumped Max around a certain corner will not look the same for the next time that the segment of the game is played (though he most likely will act in the same way).
The voice-acting for enemies are very much in character with their nature, but the variety in the voice-acting is quite lacking. The player will hear some entertaining quips throughout the game, but he/she will soon notice that they belong to only a few voice-actors.
Their behaviour alone will not be enough for the player to derive enough entertainment from fighting them. Fortunately, the game designers appear to realize this too, so they have made use of very fun situations that utilize the game's urban themes to introduce enemies into the current level at hand.
Max will be fighting goons in the aforementioned alleyways that funnel enemies at him, subways that have him and his enemies on different levels, roof-tops that have Max sniping at targets across the road and indoor environments with enemies waiting just around every corner. All of these environments play into the context of the storyline, so none of them felt too out-of-place. On the other hand, the game is set entirely in New York, so a player should not be expecting anything other than urban locales.
However, far from being boring, these locales have interesting things to look at. Every level in the game has at least a few interesting objects to look at. These can range from posters that contain pop culture references and books which when looked closely upon appear to spoof modern literary works to billboards that poke at well-known real-life product brands.
The most impressive of these objects are radios and TVs, which broadcast episodes of programmes that have a surprising amount of content. These programmes include murder-thriller serials, blaxploitation entertainment and soap operas. All of them benefit from the same quality of writing that went into the main story, and each is a worthwhile distraction from actually playing the game.
The graphics in this game are not technically impressive; there is not any remarkable new technique to render the shadows, lighting and generation and animation of models and polygons in this game that would make it different from its peers in the same genre. Yet, the graphics are still more than decent at portraying the noir themes of the game: the urban locales have deep contrasts between well-lit areas (which usually include advertisement for in-game products) and the dark, grim ones (which include shady alleyways that have nasty graffiti and murals painted over their walls), a variety of urban environments that range from night clubs to factories and an oppressive night atmosphere (the game mainly takes place during the darker hours of the day).
However, urban areas will not be the only places that the player would visit in the game. Max Payne is a person with a tortured psyche, and there will be a few points in the game where he has to delve into his mind to sort out dreams and memories that would reveal to the player his motivations and reservations at doing what he does. These levels can be quite creepy, especially considering that Max is completely unarmed and is curiously sluggish during these parts of the game. The imagery in these levels provides an unsettling contrast to the more familiar locations in New York.
Character models are as a player would expect from inhabitants of a highly urbanized American city, as has been described earlier for enemies in the game. Max himself appears to be in streetwise get-up for the entire game, but he has a weird head polygon that places his face in a perpetual and perhaps even annoying smirk - which is also sported by his live-actor in the graphic novel sequences, unfortunately.
The designs for sound effects in this game are inspired by John Woo's films, as the game designers have already publicly stated. They are pleasantly faithful enough to the film-maker's style of direction. Every noise that occurs during battle is subtly exaggerated: shredding cardboard, splintering wood and screeching metal accentuate battles as bullets strike the appropriate objects, gun-fire sounds just like those in action-packed shooting-heavy films and every fallen enemy makes a satisfying wail or scream as he falls.
Most of the soundtracks in this game are used for the cutscenes or graphic novel sequences; these fit in with the themes of forlorn hope and bitter determination that the latter often have. Otherwise, in-game, the soundtracks are subdued, likely so to give emphasis to the sound effects of battle.
There is no multiplayer mode for this game, a fact that makes for a stark difference with other shooter titles at the time. Most of the reasoning for this involves the difficulty of implementing the most notable game mechanics, namely Bullet Time and the hoard-able painkillers, in multiplayer without damaging game balance or the pace of the gameplay. On the other hand, one of the biggest attractions of Max Payne is its story; a multiplayer mode with little context or relevance with respect to the story may detract from the whole package.
In conclusion, the gameplay in Max Payne would have been quite mundane and no different from other shooters, but interesting game mechanics and great presentation of its themes place this game among the ranks of the outstanding ones.