Today’s game is Max Payne. I went ahead and figured out how to renable the Developer tools again and was just playing around with it. Remedy games are always the most fun to do this with because not only does it let you get out neat screenshots (like the one above), but theres some interesting things to be found out of bounds.
With having played the game before, i’ve taken to just exploring and watching the environment. Max Payne has some of my favorite ambient areas with the snow. I didn’t grow up with it, but something about it is just really pretty looking and nice to just chill and watch. So far this has been my favorite spot to watch. It’s right next to the fire barrel above and the ambient noise is nice to listen too.
I had a clip of me just sitting there watching it but i didn’t realize my mic was on so i can’t share it.
I went and sough out a close up of the rats wandering around the map to get an idea of what they look like up close. I did a similar thing in Halo 3 so i wanted to get an idea here too. Funnily enough they’re pretty close to me, at least on a surface level. I guess at the level of fidelity you don’t really need Rats to have a high polygon count.
I got as far as taking the elevator up before the game crashed as soon as i left it. I’m not really sure what the crash was because its been pretty stable so far. My last save wasn’t too far off though so i just need to load it up again and take the elevator back up before continuing.
Max Payne is still on my list of to-play games
Do it! The story and writing is still great and the gameplay holds up surprisingly well for such an old game (not that it will feel modern, but it’s not a chore to play).
Just checked my steam library, I have all three games. 2001, 2003, and 2012.
I still remember seeing the demo on a pcgamer demo disc, back when coconut monkey was still a thing. I remember thinking that the game seemed fun, but probably relied on the matrix mechanic too much. And have wanted to play it, but haven’t been strongly driven to for many years now.
Maybe it’s time.
Man, old paper magazine PC Gamer… Strong nostalgia overload. Getting a copy was always the highlight of the month, that era of like 1995-2009 was really the golden age of PC gaming.
It definitely is time for Max Payne! Well, unless you want to wait for the RTC Remix mod. And it’s the first step into the wonderful Remedyverse too, culminating in the fantastic Alan Wake 2!
Both MP 1&2 are honestly amazing, and they are very short games too so not really a huge commitment compared to some modern titles. The comic book style slideshow used instead of cutscenes was also ingenious as it has let the game age incredibly gracefully.
Alan Wake universe wat
Is 3 bad or something?
Remedy are doing a connected universe, kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. People are calling it the Remedyverse. They’ve started blending their IPs into each other, even IPs they no longer own like Max Payne and Quantum Break (where they just change the names pretty much so “Alex Casey” becomes “legally distinct Max Payne”). It’s very cool and really comes to its head in Alan Wake 2, which really is enhanced quite a bit by playing the other Remedy games in order first.
Max Payne 3 isn’t bad at all - it’s a very tight 3rd person shooter. It’s just that it was made by Rockstar and not Remedy (Rockstar had bought the IP after Max Payne 2). So Max Payne 3 doesn’t really “feel” like a Max Payne game. It’s still a good game though, I just kind of wish it was independent of the Max Payne franchise.
I think it mostly just didn’t feel like a Max Payne game because of the setting. Not New York? Not Max Payne.
Gameplay wise, it was definitely on the right track; and in a way - I remember it fondly as was the last time Rockstar seemingly experimented with game mechanics ahead of incorporating them into the next GTA game.
That’s part of it sure, but it just… doesn’t feel right. Someone else pointed out how it is almost an “alternate universe Max Payne 2” with how it feels narratively like a more follow-up to the first game than the second. It also just has a very different tone and style in the writing. It doesn’t have that Remedy vibe. Everything from the characters and main story to the TV bits, which feel very different compared to Lords and Ladies and Adress Unknown.
It’s by no means a bad game, and the action bits are awesome. It just doesn’t feel like a Max Payne game to me.
I always need the dev console in Max Payne because I like setting the bullet time speed to half of what it normally is so it’s more Matrix-like.
And of course I have to have the plaza shootout level and kung fu construct (for the kung fu mod) from the film, too.
Sidenote: Altering the bullet time affects cutscenes. So, like, the part where the door blows off in the subway can actually kill you cuz the cutscene ends before the door is actually moving. But it also makes catching one of the bosses that you have to chase around the rooftops so much easier because he’ll still be monologuing when you get control after the cutscene.
I almost added the Kung Fu mod, but this is also my first playthrough with the adaptive difficulty patched so I decided to keep it. Plus I saw footage for the first time the other day, and while it was cool, I think it was just a tad too flashy for my taste
Oh man… I was gonna guess hobo simulator ⚠️
Does hobo simulator have bullet time?
I don’t see why not… but you can’t actually move when it kicks in… I mean, you can, just not fast enough to actually dodge a bullet.
If Max Payne wasn’t in the pic, it would’ve been pretty difficult to guess.
Yeah… he’s the one that looks like a burning oil can right?
This really hammers home how naff the rats in Dishonored were. They’re slightly prettier than these but with eleven years of additional technological progress my expectations were a smidge higher.
My guess is just that the rat making industry didn’t have much of a reason to grow until we got to like 1080p (internal resolution I mean). I suppose you don’t need to worry about that when you don’t usually see the rat
