Max Payne 1 & 2 Discussion

[Ezekiel]

Only played MP3. It had good shooting but otherwise it was a repetitive piece of crap. Way too many cutscenes, boring story. I was ready for it to be over after a few hours and then it went on forever. Control shits right in it's mouth. Does literally everything better.

Max Payne 3 has better music than Control. As much as I enjoyed Control's three-dimensional paranormal combat, I still ended getting more out of Max Payne 3's action in the long term. I think it's partly the balance of weight and speed, that the temporary carry system always has you trying other guns (though they could have let him carry four if the long weapons had slings) and how roll, crouch (absent in Control) and shoot dodge interplay. Also, not being a linear game without stat systems and perks keeps the action purer. I favored later enemies in MP3 that couldn't be killed with a single bullet to the head. It's sad the game's qualities were largely wasted on such small, closed off environments. Only had one area in which you could use a sniper rifle freely and try out hip-fire with it, the dilapidated building late in the game, after the scripted sniping part.

 

[Ezekiel]

Also, other guy is correct about RE4, Ash is wrong. It's not really a third-person shooter. You don't go to it for pure action.

 

[Atlantico]

Anglos in general and Americans in particular have a hard time understanding Max Payne 1, which isn't really their fault. If an American would write a social-drama that happened on a summer day in Helsinki, I'm certain it wouldn't make much sense to the Scandos and Finns either.

Max Payne 1 isn't talking to Americans. That's a barrier some Anglos can never really pass. Some can, but most can't. Still a good game, fond of it and replay it once in a while. Infinitron's comments on Max Payne 2 are very on point, and Max Payne 3 is just lol cover shooter garbage fuck that game.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Do you ever stop bringing your garbage worldview into discussions about GAMES

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Whoever made that video is just taking advantage of AI issues.

Are you serious? Any tactic in any single player video game can be described like that, does it make all of them invalid somehow?

Well, let's see. Max Payne, as shitty as it is, is meant to mimic those 90s/early 2000s action movies, like the one wiht Chow Yun Fat and Matrix and so on. This is pretty obvious (they even name-drop this shit in the game, and some scenes/moves are lifted verbatim). In those movies, characters slow down time, shoot from behind cover, and do the slow-time shoot dodge. I don't recall them ever rolling around like a retard or someone in Dark Souls. So yeah, that cheesy tactic you found, it's not really meant to be played that way. For most people on this side of you this is pretty obvious just because it looks absolutely retarded. But you do you.

 

[Modron]

The Saboteur

is trash.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Haven't played it in 20 years, but I have fond memories of MP1. From what I recall the third act and the dream sequences were utter garbage, but the rest of the game was the right kind of dumb fun.

MP2 same deal, but I definitely played less of it than I did the first game. I remember thinking gameplay was overall improved and that the graphics were pretty good, but that the story/setting/art design were all strictly inferior.

MP3 I bought on sale for $5 about a year ago. I played it for 30 minutes and uninstalled. Loathed it.

 

[KIss My Ass]

I always thought that scrunched up PS2 Max face looked awful, even back in the day. Max looks like he's perpetually trying to shit his pants but his butthole can't loosen enough.

 

[Ezekiel]

I understand that the first game was very limited, but it's a pity they never made any of Payne's enemies shoot-dodge in the sequels. A real pity.

 

[garren]

I always thought that scrunched up PS2 Max face looked awful, even back in the day. Max looks like he's perpetually trying to shit his pants but his butthole can't loosen enough.

 

[schru]

I always thought that scrunched up PS2 Max face looked awful, even back in the day. Max looks like he's perpetually trying to shit his pants but his butthole can't loosen enough.

That's a PC Direct3D 8.0a face and it's irreplaceable.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I understand that the first game was very limited, but it's a pity they never made any of Payne's enemies shoot-dodge in the sequels. A real pity.

This is why bullet-time is generally a shit mechanic, it's a literal cheat mode, so they can't give it to enemies. In Cyberpunk 2077, occasional enemies have that cyber-implant that gives them time dilation, and it is the opposite of fun to fight them, you have to lob grenades or some shit, cause otherwise they dodge your bullets like Neo.

 

[Ezekiel]

I understand that the first game was very limited, but it's a pity they never made any of Payne's enemies shoot-dodge in the sequels. A real pity.

This is why bullet-time is generally a shit mechanic, it's a literal cheat mode, so they can't give it to enemies. In Cyberpunk 2077, occasional enemies have that cyber-implant that gives them time dilation, and it is the opposite of fun to fight them, you have to lob grenades or some shit, cause otherwise they dodge your bullets like Neo.

Who said anything about bullet-time? If an opponent is shoot-dodging, then from Payne or the player's point of view they are throwing their self through the air in normal time. Enemies should have been more mobile, sliding and rolling as well. Agree that slow motion is always overpowered and wouldn't feature it in my own shooter.

 

[Morenatsu.]

so like how many third person shooters were there anyway. seems like they exist solely because of consoletards. all i can think of on PC aside from MP is... MDK, FAKK 2... Alice?? notice, they're all pretty much platformer-shooters, more or less. makes you think

 

[don_tomaso]

I always thought that scrunched up PS2 Max face looked awful, even back in the day. Max looks like he's perpetually trying to shit his pants but his butthole can't loosen enough.

Shit. Early Parkinsons? That's a shaky dude

 

[Great Deceiver]

so like how many third person shooters were there anyway. seems like they exist solely because of consoletards. all i can think of on PC aside from MP is... MDK, FAKK 2... Alice?? notice, they're all pretty much platformer-shooters, more or less. makes you think

Rare on PC but I can think of a few more pc exclusives: The Devil Inside, Heretic 2, Messiah, X-COM Enforcer...

 

[Ezekiel]

Not hard to figure out, Morenatsu. Third person shooters are uncommon because it's easier for developers to do first person view. Why would they bother fully animating the player character's every action and building that camera system when they can do another walking tripod game that will be purchased anyway? Most third person shooters we do have are variants of other genres because first person view gets the job done for just the shooting. But it's typically crappy for platforming and unarmed fighting. The best first person platformers and unarmed combat games are not mechanically better than the best third person ones, due to how limiting first person view is for judging distances and perceiving surroundings.

 

[Morenatsu.]

real-life is the worst melee platformer

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Wait wait wait, I initially read that post as claiming MP to be the "best third person shooter of all time", which is dumb but at least understandable on some level. But no, the claim was actually best third person action game of all time, which suddenly opens it up to thousands of competing games. Max Payne is like a 7.5, 8/10 at absolute maximum generosity. This place is absurd.

And now another inane Roguey post too:

[The Punisher] Max Payne clone that gets really bad with the final levels.

Firstly, the punisher is supposedly a Max Payne "clone" when it has three times the gameplay complexity? I mean yeah, the storytelling and the gunplay might just be inspired by it, maybe, but calling a game which is vastly more complex than the game it supposedly is inspired by a "clone" of it is absurd.
Secondly, late game levels are "really bad" why? I enjoyed them. Got too hard for you did they, Mr. Codex Casual?

What is "more complex" supposed to mean? I liked the Punisher game for what it is, but the game is as simple as it gets. Most of the time you can take cover at a corner or some object and do pigeon shooting of enemies. Grabbing them is a funny gimmick, the same goes for the interrogation mechanic but nothing about these "mechanics" is complex. Its also slower due to the lower mobility and slower pacing. Its one of the better licensed games in the sense that it is not shit but its not particularly good either. But I agree that calling it a clone of Max Payne 1 is wrong, the thought never occurred to me while playing it. The game stands well on its own.

 

[Tweed]

Anglos in general and Americans in particular have a hard time understanding Max Payne 1, which isn't really their fault. If an American would write a social-drama that happened on a summer day in Helsinki, I'm certain it wouldn't make much sense to the Scandos and Finns either.

Max Payne 1 isn't talking to Americans. That's a barrier some Anglos can never really pass. Some can, but most can't. Still a good game, fond of it and replay it once in a while. Infinitron's comments on Max Payne 2 are very on point, and Max Payne 3 is just lol cover shooter garbage fuck that game.

It was a warm spring afternoon, the kind you see in a Rockwell painting. Birds singing, kids playing, and the distance sound of easy moving traffic up and down the street. The kind of day meant for nice, well-adjusted people. Me? I was on the internet, like always, browsing the codex; that's when I saw it. A thread on the Max Payne series, calling to me like a hot pocket fresh from the microwave. I took a long pull from my diet Mountain Dew can...and clicked. Right away I could see this was an old thread with a lot of history, ghosts long past and long gone spoke to me from the glow of my LCD of happier times, bullet times. Yet the shadows of ages past didn't interest me, I knew something was pulling me deeper into the thread as the beads of sweat formed on my pimply brow. My hands twitched, the keys felt cold and clammy despite the warm weather. I scrolled a little further and that's when I found it. Some guy calling himself Atlantico had spouted off some weird nonsense about Max Payne not being for the American audience, guy probably though he was being clever, a real big shot, but I could see right through his guise like the wisp of second hand smoke from a cheap cigar. He had nothing and in the end so did I, a whole lot nothing like an empty can of Mountain Dew.

 

[Tavar]

This thread made me reinstall Max Payne and it is still as great as I remember.

 

[Atlantico]

Anglos in general and Americans in particular have a hard time understanding Max Payne 1, which isn't really their fault. If an American would write a social-drama that happened on a summer day in Helsinki, I'm certain it wouldn't make much sense to the Scandos and Finns either.

Max Payne 1 isn't talking to Americans. That's a barrier some Anglos can never really pass. Some can, but most can't. Still a good game, fond of it and replay it once in a while. Infinitron's comments on Max Payne 2 are very on point, and Max Payne 3 is just lol cover shooter garbage fuck that game.

It was a warm spring afternoon, the kind you see in a Rockwell painting. Birds singing, kids playing, and the distance sound of easy moving traffic up and down the street. The kind of day meant for nice, well-adjusted people. Me? I was on the internet, like always, browsing the codex; that's when I saw it. A thread on the Max Payne series, calling to me like a hot pocket fresh from the microwave. I took a long pull from my diet Mountain Dew can...and clicked. Right away I could see this was an old thread with a lot of history, ghosts long past and long gone spoke to me from the glow of my LCD of happier times, bullet times. Yet the shadows of ages past didn't interest me, I knew something was pulling me deeper into the thread as the beads of sweat formed on my pimply brow. My hands twitched, the keys felt cold and clammy despite the warm weather. I scrolled a little further and that's when I found it. Some guy calling himself Atlantico had spouted off some weird nonsense about Max Payne not being for the American audience, guy probably though he was being clever, a real big shot, but I could see right through his guise like the wisp of second hand smoke from a cheap cigar. He had nothing and in the end so did I, a whole lot nothing like an empty can of Mountain Dew.

Americans can not understand European mythology. Maybe this guy can, which only makes him an anomaly — but he's not Americans. At most he's an American with curious interests. Even so he cannot understand this mythology or perspective.

Americans are the people who watch the NFL and think the coolest thing ever is talking to their iPhone. Their mythology reaches from Mr. Rogers through Ronald Reagan to Steve Jobs. Americans think of the UK when they say "Europe".

Another lonely voice in a world that doesn't care.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

so like how many third person shooters were there anyway. seems like they exist solely because of consoletards. all i can think of on PC aside from MP is... MDK, FAKK 2... Alice?? notice, they're all pretty much platformer-shooters, more or less. makes you think

On PC there was also Outwars, Messiah, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Heretic 2, and Mafia during the first five years third person shooters being a thing. Those all play like what a person would expect a third person shooter to play like. Could probably throw the first Crimson Skies on PC in there too.

The first true third person shooter I remember was 1998’s Outwars on PC. That’s the first game I remember playing that actually controlled like what would later get called third person shooters. There was Outwars in ‘98, and the next year WinBack would come out on the N64. Actually, thinking about it a bit more, the first one was probably Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and its optional third person view. Like some first person shooters of that time would let you switch to a third person view, but unlike something like Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Forces 2 had more modern free aiming, so in third person it functioned more like a third person shooter than something like MDK. But Outwars is the first one I remember specifically being made as a third person shooter.

When I think of the early days of third person shooters I mostly think PC. Console stuff, which was more Japanese developers in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the third person shooters was new, was still more lock-on targeting and set camera angles. It wasn’t all that, I mean I did already bring up WinBack, but like Metal Gear Solid doesn’t go third person until the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence release (in Japan) in 2005. There were a lot of games with a third person view on consoles with the move to 3D, but I’m not sure how many of them you’d think of as a third person shooter if you had your hands on them and played them; and they weren’t called third person shooters at the time anyways.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Favela dwelling monkey says American don't understand European mythology how curious

 

[Ash]

What is "more complex" supposed to mean? I liked the Punisher game for what it is, but the game is as simple as it gets. Most of the time you can take cover at a corner or some object and do pigeon shooting of enemies. Grabbing them is a funny gimmick, the same goes for the interrogation mechanic but nothing about these "mechanics" is complex. Its also slower due to the lower mobility and slower pacing. Its one of the better licensed games in the sense that it is not shit but its not particularly good either. But I agree that calling it a clone of Max Payne 1 is wrong, the thought never occurred to me while playing it. The game stands well on its own.

Glad you asked. More complex; more variables, more content. We can argue whether Punisher's complexity has any depth or meaning over Max Payne's relative simplicity, but the fact of the matter is Punisher has a whole lot more going on.

Second, it seems suspect when you say interrogation and grabbing is a funny "gimmick" when much of the game revolves around that - to unlock new weapons, story content etc you must get gold medals. You can play the game run n gun Max Payne style without a care in the world, yet the intended way to play, or at least the true 100% completion end game goal is as a score-style game, to unlock gold medals (and thus new weapons, story content etc) via a score system, and through this the interrogation and grabbing is integral to the gameplay, to rack up a score chain. If you ignored this fact I can see why you might think the game is simple.

So how is it more complex?

Score system: medals and unlocks
Unlockable challenge mode once you beat the game.
Can select your loadout pre-mission.
There's boss fights.
Hostage situations, and points for rescuing them, as well as point loss for killing them.
Level design is a little bit more interesting than one coridoor after another of MP, with hidden stashes, various interactive elements such as explosive barrels, switches and breakable glass, and the occasional branching path.
Enemy variety - armored enemies, flying enemies, turrets, snipers. It's not a huge deal more, but still better than MP's piss-poor variety.
Many, many more melee weapons, roughly the same amount of guns. Maybe a small handful more.
Dual wielding of almost any two guns you want, ammo limitations not-withstanding.
Interrogations
Meat shields
Door Kicking
accuracy system - hipfire is a little inaccurate, fine aim for absolute precision.
throwing dudes
wide variety of environmental kills, and sometimes bonus score for doing so.
dedicated grenade mechanic
"Punisher mode" you can unleash when your bar is filled.

This game has much more going on in terms gameplay complexity, there's only one way in which MP wins here and that's being able to carry all weapons at once.
Now you could argue that regardless of all this, MP's moment-to-moment combat is still better/more fun, and I may certainly be open to that (there is not all this stuff above getting in the way of pure dude shooting and matrix-dodging), but the game is extremely simple to play, one of the most simplest action games there is, and if you can't see that then you must be dumb. I am all for pure focused shooting, but for me Doom is like the baseline complexity, which isn't actually that simple at all. Max Payne and its non-existent level design & enemy variety (as the biggest examples) is just too simple for me to fully appreciate.

Anyway, Punisher >>> Max Payne. As are many other TPS.

When I think of the early days of third person shooters I mostly think PC.

Think again. For the sake of addressing revisionist history, the number of TPS on console vs PC was always like 5 to 1. TPS early days were indeed primarily a "consoletard" venture, and remained that way consistently ever since. And it was far from all of them being lock-on in the early days too.

Now lastly, Ezekiel saying RE4 is not a TPS is just straight retarded. Shooting shit in third person is like 90% of the gameplay time.