It's new to me: Max Payne

Not Remedy Entertainment's first game, no, but the one that established just what Remedy was going to be about.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Max Payne wasn’t Remedy Entertainment’s first video game. In 1996, they developed Death Rally for PC and MS-DOS, published by Apogee Software. This was a vehicular combat game with an overhead view, and was pretty light on story, with your goal being to become the champion of the Death Rally by winning/surviving the races. So fun, sure, but not the kind of thing Remedy, an ambitious narratively driven studio heavily focused on tech that pushes the platforms it works on, would become known for.

Max Payne, released in 2001, was the start of Remedy Entertainment as it’s better known. A third-person shooter combining a dark, noir-heavy tale with some impressive visual effects and gameplay mechanics, and a story told in a way that differed from what everyone else at the time was doing. There was some dabbling in the meta here “You are in a computer game, Max!” — something that Remedy certainly peaked with the use of in 2023’s Alan Wake II — and, despite the undeniably heavy nature of the story, it’s also just a funny game. The protagonist’s name is literally Max Payne, people, you don’t make that pun if everything is supposed to be pure darkness and seriousness. You make that pun if you’re going to have random guards humorously discussing their favorite action movies as you leap out from behind a wall and blow them both away before they can react. Part of what makes Max Payne work is that it’s a serious game that knows when not to take itself seriously, tongue planted firmly in cheek when it has to be, and extremely self-aware. It’s a genre love letter that also wants to be an important part of that genre, and succeeded on both fronts.

Max Payne is not subtle. This is true whether you’re talking about the game or the character. And the sheer volume of killing and violence for a story where you’re playing as someone on the side of the police might feel a little off (as far as media depictions of American police go, I mean, not the real thing) if not for the flashing neon sign that displays “John Woo” on it contained within, mixed with the inherent cynicism and moral ambiguity of noir. Are we supposed to feel that Max Payne is justified in his killing of hundreds of members of mafia and rogue federal agents? That part actually doesn’t matter so much, as the point of the story is that Max himself feels that he’s justified, and cares for little else at this point besides revenge and the answers that will come with it. Which is to say, people who consume their media by assuming that, for instance, a game developer is saying, “what the protagonist did is Morally Good and we approve of it” just because it’s what happens in the story they’re telling might struggle with the likes of Max Payne, which is unapologetically itself from start to finish. But if you’re capable of understanding that the telling of a story is not the same thing as approving of the actions of its characters, then Max Payne has plenty to offer you, even over two decades later.

Image credit: MobyGames

There are some bits of Max Payne that haven’t aged super well, like the controls for the console versions — they’re just a little awkward by nature of their 2001-ness, is all, but it’s honestly nothing you can’t get used to if you’re willing to put in the time to pretend it’s 23 years ago. Being able to save whenever you want to — albeit in a single save slot — alleviates much of the frustration of whatever the controls might cause you to do or fail to do, at least, and by the time the quality of the arsenal and enemies you’re facing increases, your familiarity with how everything works will have, too.

There are other parts of Max Payne that have aged splendidly, and in fact are likely easier to appreciate now than they were in 2001 when the game first released. The graphic novel storyboards, with the voice actors for the characters reading their lines from the page and Max Payne’s actor, the recently departed James McCaffrey, serving as narrator by way of a spoken internal monologue, were criticized at the time by some for not being graphically ambitious, for not fully utilizing the power of PCs at the time or of the powerful Playstation 2 and Xbox consoles. Look at how a lot of cutscenes in games from 2001 appear to us now, though, when we’re used to such higher fidelity and smoother, more realistic animations, and then compare them to these static storyboards full of life and personality, and then tell me Remedy was wrong to go this direction instead.

Or, to put it another way, Max Payne released during an era where there simply were no facial animations for character models. The faces of developers were often utilized instead of actors, and they were static — Sam Lake, who wrote Max Payne for Remedy, is the face of the game’s protagonist, with said face locked into one look throughout. Max Payne came out on Windows, Playstation 2, and Xbox the same time that Rare released Perfect Dark, with similar facial technology and sourcing, on the Nintendo 64. Of course these graphic novel-style elements, where Max’s face can actually be drawn to fit the moment it’s supposed to be reacting to, are going to age better! You can see the difference by simply watching the very 2001 cutscenes from the game followed by the more expressive, more interesting to look at storyboard-style ones:

What truly makes them sing, however, is the work of James McCaffrey. He sets that noir tone with that tired, resigned voice, and makes the world it inhabits feel believable. Payne’s voice keeps the game’s over-the-top violence and intense body count from feeling out of place — it brings you not to a place of justification of his acts, no, but at least to an understanding of them. Here is a man who has seen too much, who has known too much, and not nearly enough of it happy, and he’s simply had enough. No innocents will be harmed, and Payne’s actions will ensure that he is not an innocent by the time things are over, either.

Payne is truly just done with the rules around enforcing the law, outside of the ones he now feels are necessary. He’s tired, but not ready to rest yet, his voice imbued with a weariness that can only be relieved with the spilling of the blood of his foes. A bloodletting that, again, he feels is righteous, and justified. Payne is beyond thinking he’s a good guy, but he does believe he’s a necessary one, and that this problem won’t be solved the traditional way. He’s not all that concerned about coming out the other side unscathed or unpunished, which is a level of belief in your own cause that is, admittedly, terrifying to consider, but it all serves to show you just how otherwise broken he has become by this point.

Max Payne’s wife and baby were both gunned down by unknown assailants, and for years, he silently blamed himself for what happened: for not being home to protect them, for not making time to listen in the moment when his wife shared a tidbit that would later prove to be a vital clue that would solve the mystery of who his enemies actually were. Payne worked undercover, cozying up to drug-pushing mafiosos (with fitting-for-the-setting outrageous New York Italian accents) to try to learn about who the higher ups were behind the latest designer drug craze, Valkyr. When his contact with the force is gunned down in what Payne suspects is an inside-job setup meant to end the progress he’s made, though, he decides that it’s time to stop hiding, and to start shooting. He knows who knows things, he knows where they are, and he knows how to make these birds sing.

Payne is so done with the way things used to be that, when he comes across what would be vital evidence in a court case, he either comments on it and ignores it, or outright destroys it. Evidence will not help him in his quest, and there will be no need for evidence for the people it could be used against, either: Payne intends to take them out forever before it ever reaches the point where someone besides himself would intervene. And if he fails? Well, Payne doesn’t seem as concerned with the idea of bringing these people to justice as he is with his bringing them to the kind of justice he believes they deserve. Which is to say, the same fate they granted his family.

Max Payne is famous for its bullet time elements, which feel a little quaint in some respects now that they’ve been utilized in so many games, but are still plenty enjoyable so long as you’re the kind of person who will never tire of watching Chow Yun-fat diving in all directions while firing dual pistols in slow motion as doves fly by. The John Woo vibes are so heavy, even, that when the sequel to the Hong Kong film Hard Boiled released in 2007 as a video game — Stranglehold — it received comparisons to Max Payne for its gameplay. The bullet time elements are a bit simple and limited, but also, you can dive backwards while blasting a shotgun in slow motion, so do you really need anything more?

The game’s action starts out simple enough, against pistol-toting low-level mafia guys who have clearly spent more intimidating with their weapons than using them, but the bigger guns and strong enemies — and more of both — show up, especially in the game’s third act. Payne’s arsenal also grows, as he gains access to illegally imported heavy weaponry and assault weapons, and it’s all in parallel with a story that grows beyond “just” dealing with the New York City mobs.

To be fair, Max was tripping balls when he had this realization, so did he pierce the veil or just need to lie down?

Payne is going to take damage. You can do all the bullet time dives you want, but there are loads of dudes firing guns at you, and sometimes they’re going to successfully manage that. To recover health, Payne downs painkillers. There’s something to the health recovery system being painkillers, too, rather than the standard for-the-time of generic first aid kits. Painkillers numb, not heal. They desensitize the user, not fix them up. The damage is done, and now what’s left is how you live with it. Max Payne must go on as is, both as a reaction to the murder of his family and the tired, physically hurting man he is after every gunfight and baseball bat to the skull. He must push through to complete his mission, to have his revenge, his justice, and painkillers that numb him, physically and mentally, are his only respite.

And it’s not that Max can’t feel anything anymore, either. It’s that he’s chosen not to; to cut himself off, to separate himself from the rules of the world, to live with his own thoughts as much as he can stand to. On multiple occasions, Payne has hallucinatory dreams that show off what the inside of his head is like when he’s not able to actively repress and push through, and on occasion, like a punch to the gut, he’s hit by memories while awake and sober due to the resemblance of a scene to the ones that haunt his nightmares. We are not seeing Max Payne at the beginning of his journey that led to his rampage through New York City’s underbelly. We’re seeing him once he’s made the final decision to do something about what tortures him, and then it’s slowly revealed over time how he can justify such a thing to himself. One is supposed to come away thinking that it wasn’t an easy decision, but, at least to Max, it felt like the only one to make.

Like the vast majority of Remedy titles, Max Payne isn’t particularly lengthy. It’s as long as it needs to be to tell its story, which might start off a bit cliche just to set the scene, but grows in depth and complexity to show off far more than just a surface-level understanding of the genres it’s representing — Payne is an homage, yes, but so much more than that, too, a worthy successor in the noir space that also understands what makes action sing. You can spend far more time with it than one playthrough if you wish: the “Hard-Boiled” difficulty increases how much damage you take while cutting back on your stores of ammo and painkillers, “Dead on Arrival” gets rid of infinite quick saves, and “New York Minute” forces you to finish each chapter before time runs out. (And yes, those difficulty levels are also movie titles, but they weren’t back in 2001. Max Payne was made so long ago now that the Olsen twins weren’t done making movies together yet!)

Max Payne is still available in the present: it’s available for purchase on Steam, Humble Bundle, etc. for all of $10, and you can digitally purchase the Xbox version for use on an Xbox One or Series X|S for $14.99. Both Remedy-developed Max Payne titles are also being remade, with Rockstar once again the publisher, though, it’s unclear at this point when that project will be finished, and also what’s going to happen with, say, the voice acting since James McCaffrey passed away at the end of 2023. Those are all questions for later, though: the original Max Payne is available in the present, and it’s still obvious to this day why it was often considered one of the all-time greats.

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