Let’s Play Max Payne! Around the tail end of my video game magazine phase, I was reading a lot about Max Payne. I guess this would be roughly 1999, and the game sounded amazing. It was only available on PC I believe at the time, and I wasn’t much in the space of buying PC games or any games at that time as I was just about to enter my video game hibernation period of 1999-2002 where I didn’t play any games, like ever.
Let’s Play Max Payne:
When I got back into games in 2002 and had a PS2, I finally pulled the trigger (pun intended) on Max Payne after remembering my curiosity from years before. And believe me, I was not disappointed in the least. This game was a breath of fresh air in the first person shooter genre, offering a much more realistic and immediate experience.
I feel like it was solely responsible in introducing the “bullet time” effect which would be replicated time and time again in future generations of shooters/video games, not to mention as special effects in films such as The Matrix which came out a year or so later. But yes the gameplay was rock solid and cavalierly diving into a room full of dudes in slow motion NEVER got old as you knew you always had the upper hand.
But where this game, and in my opinion to a greater extent its direct sequel, excelled was in the story telling. The writers redefined not only what a first person shooter could do with its overall story and plot but what video games in general could do as it was both a, and I’m going to use these words again, realistic and immediate story telling experience.
What brought the story telling to life was the poetic first person inner monologues of Payne itself, beautifully executed in the voice acting. This is likely the only time since learning his name that I’ve forgotten the name of the voice actor of Max Payne himself, and if I wasn’t on a train in a tunnel I’d look it up (McCaffrey maybe?). I still chuckle when I see him in a film or hear him doing a voice over for a steak house, but his over dramatic and poetic delivery of every single line as if it was the only words ever said aloud pushes this game (and its immediate sequel, again) to legendary status as far as I’m concerned. Yes I love it that much.
Let’s Play Battle Chess! Hopefully chess isn’t a gauge of one’s intelligence because I’m pretty pitiful when it comes to it. Actually I’ve since gotten chess on my tablet so I play it from time to time on my commute and I’ve gotten infinitely better at it and can even beat the compy on medium difficulty (on occasion)!