Like Mirror’s Edge, Max Payne is a game about flow, and if that flow is repeatedly broken, it rapidly ceases to be fun. This toxic combination usually results in Max leaping onto the floor and staying there permanently. Max is slow to right himself after one of his trademark leaps, and enemies can absorb an admirable amount of gunfire. That said, in mechanical terms the first game doesn’t always play to its own strengths. It’s precisely because Max Payne has the luxury of concentrating entirely on getting Bullet Time right, and doesn’t have to justify its presence with any further bells or whistles, that eleven years on it still does it better than anyone else. Max hits the floor hard, but not as hard as the unfortunate goons on the receiving end of his fiery blessing. He leaps through a doorway, twin Berettas bucking in his hands, bullets sliding inexorably through the syrupy air. With a click of the mouse the screen flashes white and sound turns to soup, the noise of gunfire and explosions suppressed by that of Max’s own heartbeat. Looking back now, there’s astonishingly little else to Max Payne as a game, but that doesn’t really matter when turning an entire manor house into Swiss cheese and splintery crackers in slow motion is this much fun. But there was a point of conception, and it so happened that Remedy’s baby was born first. Nowadays it’s difficult to imagine a time before Bullet Time, so pervasive has it become in action games. Nothing makes this clearer than Max’s flagship gimmick: that old familiar feeling, Bullet Time. You run gleefully around, frequently diving onto the ground, telling the story to yourself as you go along, and making an enormous mess for tired grownups to clear up behind you.
No, Max Payne is child’s play for adults. That’s Max Payne at its core: it isn’t a gripping story of revenge, or an interesting commentary on how games work. I love it because it tries unbelievably hard to be more than what it is – a game about falling over in cool ways. I love each lugubrious simile that emerges from Max’s corrugated face, all the stumbling attempts at metafiction within the frames of his *ahem* “graphic novel”.
0 kommentar(er)
