After playing through Max Payne for the original Xbox and thinking about it I finally decided to type out some words on this game that i have not played through in about 10 years. I purchased a copy of it and its sequel for the original Xbox for about $11 at a used game store which gave me an opportunity to revisit these titles from my earlier days of gaming to see if they still held up.
As expected the Dream sequences were annoying but I manage to make it through them (the first one I managed to remember the correct turning sequence through the maze). One thing that was unexpected was the length of the game, it was a lot longer than I remember. There were whole levels that I had completely forgotten about such as the Shipyard and tanker level (especially the platform on rails sequence). The story carried the game all over the place from crappy apartments to secret underground government military bases. Told mostly trough still images from a graphic novel that gets the job done while keeping it interesting. I was surprised how little some major characters were featured in the game given their importance to the series such a Mona Sax, Alfred Warrden, and Vladimir Lemm, though they were much more prominent in Max Payne 2.
Overall the game played pretty much how I remembered it. There is a common misconception that you can not use the bullet time with out the shoot-dodge mechanic. This is not true, but doing so uses that meter much more than shoot-dodge and as such most people avoided using it. I wound up playing it like it was Max Payne 2 by triggering bullet time when entering a room and ending it with a dive to finish off the last guy, at least how I did it ideally. This may have been how I first played it back in the day as well as I usually went against the grain on how I played it by not just shoot-dodging my way through it.
I definitely enjoyed playing through Max Payne again, it has held up well although I do expect to appreciate Max Payne 2 more due to the way I play these games. I will have to write another piece when I finish that game.
