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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a shooter (third person) par excellence, March 26, 2003
By A Customer
normally, shooters dont do much for me unless combined with some other quality such as stealth, role playing, or puzzles, specifically nolf, deus ex, and tomb raiders. i dont have the reflexes or hand eye coordination of a teenager, and i cant do unreal tournament etc, even the training. max pain, though is a real winner with excellent visuals and a convincing, though improbable story (one man wipes out the entire illegal drug industry, from street junkies all the way to the head of the corporation that makes the drugs) of revenge for the murder of his family. the script is hilariously overwritten and BAAAD, obviously a parody on tv and movies. the story and exposition are presented in comic book form. as with most pure shooters, there are no puzzles and very few secrets.gameplay. max's moves are limited to kicking open doors. he cant climb ladders, move boxes, etc. however, there is bullet time, a great slow motion effect, which can allow him to get the bad guys more easily. on "fugitive", the default and easiest level of difficulty, this was pretty useless, allowing me to watch max's demise in gory detail, but on "hard boiled", the next level up, it is more useful, though not frequently. since its hard to take on 3-4 thugs at once and live, my favorite and effective technique was to run and wait around corners and blast the bad guys when they followed. seldom does one have to attack directly. "safe spots" are non existant, because ai is as good as they come; you cant hide; theyll get you. all the weapons are useful at one point or another, my favorites being the shotgun in the early phases and the colt automatic rifle in the later ones. this is because there was tons of ammo for each. there are also tons of medkits, referred to as payne killers. there are a couple of boring surrealistic mazes ..., but these do not detract from the overall game. visually striking, conveying all the seedy side of new york. it surprises me to see that most of the names in the credits look like Finnish. max tends to run duck footed, and, as typical of third person games, he gets in his own view, especially when crouched. this does not hamper the action much, though, which is so intense that you really dont notice this is a short game, at least not until the second time through. many windows users have complained of poor running, even with their "high end" machines. this ran perfectly at 1024x768 on my slow emac. in summary, this is a classic, even for those who dont like shooters. buy it now, and in great quantities so mac users will continue to get great games.
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