Max Payne

Max Payne is a third-person shooter released in July 2001, developed by the Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment. You play a New York City police detective whose wife and daughter have been murdered, working through the city's underworld to find out why. Rockstar Games published the console versions.

What Is Bullet Time and Why Did It Matter?

It slows the world to a crawl while you keep aiming at normal speed, so a dive through a doorway becomes a few seconds in which you can place every shot. Max Payne was one of the first games to build a whole combat system around the effect, borrowed openly from Hong Kong action cinema and John Woo in particular. Most shooters that use slow motion today trace back to this one.

Why Does the Story Look Like a Comic?

Because it is told in graphic novel panels with voice-over rather than in cutscenes. The style is deliberate neo-noir, drawing on hard-boiled detective fiction, and it let a small studio tell a dense story without the animation budget a cinematic approach would have required.

What Is Rockstar's Role in Max Payne?

Publishing. Remedy developed the game, Gathering of Developers released it on Windows in July 2001, and Rockstar Games published the console versions from December 2001. Rockstar later published Max Payne 2 outright and developed Max Payne 3 in-house at Rockstar Vancouver.

Should You Play Max Payne Before Max Payne 3?

It helps. Max Payne 3 assumes you know who Max was and what he lost, and the 2001 game is where that is established. The three games form one continuous story across eleven years. All three are sold on PC today: see where to buy Max Payne for the current key prices.