Max Payne Android : Less Payne Less Gayne [Game Review]

Max Payne

Max Payne is obviously one of the most famous games of the past decade. It's completely outdated now though, but it's been out on android for a while, and since I never played the PC game, I thought why not try it? And the experience was pretty much a mixed bag. Even as I started it up I couldn't help but wince at the outdated graphics, even by android standards.

The 3d models were very obviously skinned to disguise the low polygon count, but in my opinion, it just makes it looks odd. Like the following screenshot, Max has a disturbing smirk on his face for someone facing such a grave situation.

Hey there. I just killed a million people. Can I get you a drink?

His head looks like a box with a mask wrapped around it. And even the extremely mediocre graphics were not without bugs. The helicopter blades were somehow missing their textures.

Gameplay-wise, this was probably revolutionary back when it came out. The slow motion bullet time probably wow'd people left, right and center, but as it stands today, I had no reason to actually use it. It was a gimmick more than an actual gameplay feature and an annoyance when accidentally pressed. This may however be because I haven't unlocked the higher difficulties yet. But the gameplay was, for this day and age, extremely shallow. Move to the next room, shoot a bunch of people, rinse and repeat. The puzzles were few and far between and the "platforming" sections were clunky. The story, the only thing that had a chance of holding up, was cliched, but still entertaining.

Despite my rant, in no way is this a terrible game. It's just really interesting to see classic games through modern eyes and this game does not hold up. But it's still entertaining enough if you have time(or hundreds of dumb A.I.) to kill .