A few weeks ago I went to see the 4K Remasters of The Killer & Hard Boiled in the cinema. I haven't watched Hard Boiled in a few years and I think I only ever saw the dubbed version. The Killer I maybe saw when I was younger but have no memory of it, my main memory of The Killer is a character model from Action Half-Life a mod for Half-Life I played a lot as a teenager. They're both still really fun movies, the action is a sight to behold with everything exploding apart from the gun fire and while the stories are fairly forgettable the bromance in The Killer is good fun. Seeing both of these reminded me I haven't revisited either of the heavily inspired by John Woo movies Max Payne games in years and gave me the itch to play them again.

Max Payne

I love the tone of this game. Set in the slums of a gritty turn of the century New York exactly the way a European at the time would imagine them to be the set up of a man out to avenge his murdered family is a great pulpy setup. The dialog for Max is fantastic with the perfect amount of melodrama and dead pan jokes with James McCaffrey nailing the tone.

The gameplay is fun vut frustrating these days with a heavy reliance on memorising that there will be an enemy around the corner not to mention the broken adaptive difficulty system that you'll want to find a mod to disable. Without it the game just gets more and more difficult until you walk into a room and die from a single shot!

It really tails off in the third Chapter too with a bunch of repetitive levels full of copy & pasted areas the padding of an already short game is noticeable. Still overall it was fun to revisit this and the presentation more than makes up for a gameplay loop that becomes lackluster before you get to the end.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

At the time I remember this feeling like such a huge improvement over the first game in absolutely every aspect and I still feel like that today except for the level design which is better but has a habit of falling into the same pitfalls of the first game with a requirement to go into a room and be gunned down instantly only to run in shooting first once you reload. It does it less but still does it sometimes.

In terms of story and presentation this sequel is in another league. It takes some of the characters from the first game and gives them much more background while also introducing a few new people. The main story between Max & Mona works well with great performances and writing for both characters. The presentation of the graphic novel story parts is also a big upgrade not only in the art but the sound design used to punctuate certain moments. The casting of actual actors to portray the characters in these parts over members fo the development team pays off big time.

The New York this one is set in feels more representative of the NYC of the early 2000s, fewer slums and more high end apartments and a general feeling of cleanliness. It still works though, there are some grittier areas and the Autumn setting is captured well with rain drenched streets littered with orange leaves.

A big wow factor at the time was the physics system, this was one of the first games I played with so many active physics objects in the environment. It doesn't wow the way it once did but the novelty is still there with many areas set up specifically to show off this feature. With a big upgrade to the quality of 3D models & textures as well as the movement feeling much more smoother this is a far easier game to revisit than the first which despite being only 2 years older feels more like a game from the 90s.

So that's the first 2 Max Payne games, I think both are worth picking up cheap in a sale and playing through. Neither of them takes more than about 7 hours to complete. I considered going back to the third but despite some fun moments and excellent shooting I remember the story being a mess and it turning into a slog towards the end. As for the movie, I have no interest in ever watching that again. It's incredible how much they fumbled what should have been a fun pulpy action movie.