Was it Good? - Max Payne 

Without watching I can confidently say yes. Max Payne was very good.

It is impossible to describe how mind blowing this game was at the time

Rest in peace James McCaffrey one of the most iconic voices in gaming.

The constant focus on making interactables have a purpose i genuinely have to disagree on- having a purpose is cool and by no means bad but having them just be a pleasant surprise to the player is just as good because there was no reason to add the detail. It just adds to the experience.

I gotta say the voice actor for Max is perfect for this kind of cop story. And those one-liners are often damn good. "He was trying to buy sand for his hourglass. I wasn't selling any" goes pretty hard.

Just a quick PSA for those looking to play this game: You may have noticed from Josh's footage that Max tends to slide along and clip through the floor in his shoot-dodge animation-this is a bug resulting from running the game at anything above 60FPS. So after installing the required compatibility patches, don't forget to cap your frame-rate if you want Max to dodge through the air like he was designed to.

I played this in 2012, 11 years after release and I was blown away. Could only imagine what it must have been like in 2001.

Quick note on the “pills on the pallets.” I used to work construction, and multiple times, when someone would pull something or get hit by something or even cut, they wouldn’t just pack it in and go to the hospital, but pop a couple of painkillers and keep working. We had one guy specifically leave his pills on pallets when his shift was over, in case anyone needed them. So yeah, it’s actually not as outlandish as you’d think. Enjoying the video otherwise, interesting perspective!

What they lacked in budget they made up for with style and they nailed it... There's just nothing else like this game.

The part where the baby is crying and you've gotta follow the red trail stays with me to this day

Dear god Josh; the coding alone for the cigarette to be able to do that would MELT a PS2

"i was in a video game. funny as hell it was the most horrible thing i could think of" always loved that line.

The Max Payne series is a testament to Sam Lake's talent as a writer. This game's story simultaneously takes itself very seriously and not seriously at all, and usually that would be like trying to mix water and oil. However, Max Payne 1 manages to do that impossible task. The story starts off with us, the player, experiencing a father's worst nightmare and it plays it straight up until we get to Roscoe Street Station. It begins to ease us into the dark comedy with Max's ridiculous metaphors that you'd see in film noir parody, and then we get the goofy dialogue between the goons which also borders on parody - the part where Max starts up the maintenance train to smash through the tunnel barricade, and he says "so much for being subtle" after breaking through, like did he expect to quietly smash through xD. Sam Lake knows that the entire story is ridiculous but he has fun with it whilst reminding the player why we continue with Max's warpath - "nothing is a cliche when it's happening to you".

Max's drug induced nightmare had me shook as a child. Running along that blood trial with his daughter crying was stuck in my head for weeks.

While some of the complaints are valid, some are a fundamental misunderstanding of how game engines, optimization and basic technical limitations work, especially at the time this game was being made. This wasn't 2015, this was at a time where game physics were largely dedicated to move player characters and NPCs. Having a case full of bank notes explode and spread like a cloud just for a two second quip does not justify the weeks of development, disk space and processing power it would require, when so much else in the game was probably already such a big demand from the developing team. It brings me to a point where I'm standing here just waiting for the criticism about how none of the characters' mouths move...

Besides the nightmare scene and the crying baby, the line that stuck with me all these years occurs when Max loses all his equipment and is being tortured. Freeing himself, he growls: “All I had was Niagara’s bat, sticky with my own blood.” Holy crap, what a great noir line and perfect delivery!

As a games developer I started to collapse into myself when you suggested that the player should be able to shoot a cigarette out of an ash tray to set someone on fire

This game is a masterpiece. Its hard to explain how innovative the game was. Bullet time, dual analog aiming, the mature story. Game is incredible.

bro you really have some wild critics for a 2001 game

It drives me absolutely nuts how everyone I’ve seen make videos on this game points out that the name Woden is “close to Odin” when Woden is the Anglo-Saxon name for Odin just as Wotan is the south Germanic name for him. Great video btw I just had to get that out

That nightmare level was pure agony and pain.....I will never forget it. The platforming the constant baby cries......my god!

i was 17. my old computer desk was falling apart. we went to the store to get a new one and picked up max payne too. i got home and decided i wanted to play the game a bit before worrying about my new desk. my computer was set up at the living room couch with my giant 19" CRT monitor sitting on a wobbly cardboard box, the keyboard on my lap, and my mouse on the included max payne mouse pad (which i still have of course) sitting on the couch next to me. i sat there and played through the entire game that night.

I just love hearing Max's dialogue, his voice actor did so well and I love the music and atmosphere. Replayed Max payne 3 several times and might have to play it again here soon lol

It was not just good, it was one of the best things ever happened to gaming industry! The series deserves to be remastered!

The vibe of this game is unsurpassed

Josh: Why isn't this Hitman? Me: Because it's Max Payne. Josh: I want Hitman!

"Imagine if you could shoot the cigarette out of the ash trey and set someone on fire" That would be so unbelievably stupid. Why would you think of that?!

This game is still an absolute gem.

I still occasionally narrate certain situations in my head like I'm existing in the hard-boiled noir of Max Payne. Like when I have a hanghover I might say something like "I wanted to dig inside my skull and scrape out the pain." or "I had a bomb ticking in my head. No amount of painkillers would disable it." Thank you for giving this game exposure in this modern era. It certainly deserves it.

52:25 | You _can_ use that trap door to kill an enemy. You're even treated to a bespoke cinematic camera angle. You just didn't do it.

On Fugitive difficulty the game uses certain metrics like number of recent deaths to dynamically alter the difficulty. This changes stuff like player & enemy health, number of painkillers found, how much bullet time gained per kill and more. The game increases in difficulty as long as you don't die and can actually become harder than Dead on Arrival difficulty. The adaptive difficulty can be disabled using a mod.

"Nothing is a cliche when is happening to you" What a quote 🤯

I have to totally disagree with you on all of the little interaction points you made. Sure some of your suggestions might have been fun, but extremely hard for them to implement and wouldn't have made it in at all. I think we are lucky they put all these fun simple interactions in, even if there is no gameplay purpose. I miss the era of games that did stuff like this.

I've been watching this video for 2 days now and knowing today that the Legend James McCaffrey has passed away, it gives me that motivation to finish it for the nostalgia and in his honor too. RIP LEGEND!

Somebody didn't cap the frame rate to 60 and as a result dives directly into the floor every single time instead of through the air

The hard thing about set dressing in media is that half the critics are annoyed if every little thing is used for some function and half are annoyed if not.

The feeling I got from Max shooting the monitor wasn't that he was trying to destroy data, but rather that he didn't care about collecting any evidence and was venting his frustration and anger by shooting Horn's property.

Rest in Peace, James McCaffrey 😔

52:18 That trapdoor is actually used for that enemy you killed at that moment. You just killed him too fast before he had the chance to reach the trapdoor lol

“He was trying to buy sand for his hour glass, but I wasnt selling any” hha so good

A lot of the gameplay issues are because of the framerate. All the footage you used it seemed you didn't install the win10/11 fixes. I'd say that if you played it in the early 2000s or if you apply all the fixes so it runs normal on modern hardware, most of the "clunkiness" you describe is gone. Obviously not all since it's like a 20 years old game, but it's not as bad as you said at the start. I replayed it around Christmas (with all the fixes) and had tons of fun. There's a "allinone" fix in the steam guides for the game that works perfectly if anyone's wondering. Also, also if you decide to play it, don't go all out with the shoot dodge. Actually slowing down the time and moving and shooting is surprisingly effective. As a kid when I played it I used to just gun people down with the shoot-dodge, but with just the regular bullet time you can wipe out whole rooms with little effort (bullet time restores as you kill people so you won't run out until a room is cleared).

This was my first ever game that made me fell in love with narratively driven games. And it still holds up to this day.

On your comments regarding set building around 25:00 I was a gamer for at least 10 years when this came out and we collectively didn't care about all that, this was the beginning of PC Power with console aesthetics/gameplay (along with Hitman). Just the execution was huge; all what you're talking about came later when we started to get spoiled.

That nightmare scene with the crying baby still haunts me.

Not sure of the specific name of the genre, but Max Payne's noir-like monologues have got to be my favorite part of this series, even beyond the bullet-time ability in my opinion.

it was incredible, at the time that it came out there was nothing like it at all, the dark grittiness of it really helped set the mood too

It's driving me crazy how you're almost never doing head shots, especially while in slowmo. I think that's why you found the game so hard. Most of the enemies you're shooting when you dive into a room are meant to die in one shot each.

He's struggling so much because he doesn't have his fps capped. The shootdodge is broken without a fix. You just kinda drag your body across the ground for 4 feet.

The stick to the wall glitch is related to launching it on modern harware, it definitely wasn't an issue back in 2001

Josh when he finds an unlocked cabinet full of painkillers in a hotel hallway: this is totally normal Josh when he finds a stray bottle of pills dropped in a warehouse: WHAT THE FUCK???

The writing and voice acting in every one of these graphic novel sections was an absolute treat, really nailed the film noir vibe on the one liners

I feel like a lot of players have a bad experience with Max Payne 1 because they want to be constantly using the bullet time dive, like that's the game's only gimmick, but its not. The regular bullet time plays a huge role in making the combat doable, because as long as you can freeze time and click on heads you can take down most enemies. The bullet dive is a reaction to get away from an enemy or into cover, and the spray n pray guns work great for regular gunplay against most enemies well into the late game.

I think whoever came up with the Flamingo TV idea was inspired by scenes from Twin Peaks. Specifically the "Red room" or "Black Lodge" where a surreal, unsettling feeling is everywhere. The red curtains depicted in two of the images on the TV are almost identical to scenes from Twin Peaks where the main Protagonist is navigating the space.

One of the greatest examples of limitation breeding creativity

The texture work was so great in this game.

When you bump into things in Max Payne 2, the stuff on the table fell off. That absolutely blew my mind at the time. The rag doll was phenomenal.

Max Payne is a pillar in gaming history. This game proved that gaming was a great medium to tell a great story. It blended gaming with comic books and movies.

Just want to point out that Woden isn't just "close to Odin", its literally one of the various names Odin has had in history. It's also what we get "Wednesday" from, originally it was "Wodens Day".

If you’ve got blown up by igniting a gas cylinder and not moving to a safe distance, that’s your fault it’s basic health and safety.

R.I.P. James McCaffrey. Thank you for everything.

One of those games where I can't force myself to be objective. Too many memories, too much nostalgia and an unstoppable yearning for another experience like this.

Since Josh is the KING of forgetting historical context I want you to do a thing. EVERY TIME he utters the words "Wouldn't It Be" I want you to remember the minimum system requirements Processor: 450MHz AMD / Intel Processor [single core because multi core didn't exist yet] Memory: 96 MB RAM (128 MB RAM or greater recommended) Graphics: 16MB Direct3D Compatible Graphics Card DirectX Version: DirectX 8.0 Hard Drive: 830 MB Hard Drive Space for full install, 530 MB for minimum install Sound Card: DirectSound compatible sound card and understand THAT is why it wasn't. P.S. as a graphics design student at the time this was made I can guarantee that filter on the photos probably took like 3 minutes to render each picture, old computers were SLOOOOOOOOOW.

This game blew my mind as a kid. Just recently played through it on my OG Xbox and its still great to this day. A God Damn masterpiece if you ask me.

I play this every year during the first snow fall. Absolutely amazing game in every way.

Referring to the pyros at 53:50, they actually have gameplay significance. As you open up a passage forward, the enemies come running in, and by activating the pyros you can set them on fire 🙂 Also, the trap door at 52:20 has a purpose of staging a cinematic shot with a killed enemy flying through it, but this happens only if you use weapons that have knockback, such as shotgun, desert eagle, etc.

Fun fact, Vladimir Lem was modelled by Marko Saaresto. He would later become the lead singer of Poets of the Fall, who performed Late Goodbye from Max Payne 2.

Haven't even pressed the play button yet, but I can confidently say it's a masterpiece

Come now Josh, the painkillers found on top of a stack of palettes is too much of a video-game mechanic and unrealistic, but you want to be able to SHOOT A CIGARETTE to set a gangster on fire? Bro... come on.

It's a freaking masterpiece, it has such a unique atmosphere to it, i played it through probably at least 6 or 7 times.

Max Payne was PHENOMENAL!!!! After all these years, I still have goosebumps when I hear the theme music! The noir atmosphere, the cool monologues, the amazing story and, above all, the cutting edge gameplay that introduced Bullet-time for the first time.

32:27 - This is a good example of bullet time. If you go into 'bullet time' using just the slo-mo, you can walk up to Candy easily and repeatedly shoot her without taking much damage - each time you shoot her, she recoils a bit, so doesn't have 'time' (pun intended) to shoot you back. If you start by the bar entrance, you can easily kill her with just the Buretta.

The flamingo in the TV is probably a David Lynch Twin Peaks homage.

"The killer's mad laughter was a riddle filled with wicked innuendo" Damn. I thought this was gonna be a mindless action game. That's some quality writing right there.

The flamingo scene is a very nice reference to the legendary show TWIN PEAKS. With the weird backwards speech and all. I'd recommend giving this absolute classic a watch.

I seriously love max payne 1 and 2, both have such memorable levels. The vibe brings me back almost every year

Hello. "The GAME PLAY falls short." What have you been drinking? The game play is amazing and at the time it was nothing short of a revolution.

I first played Max Payne in 2002 or 2003 when I was 13 years old. I didn't understand English well, so it was just a shooting game for me at that point, and still loved it. Over the next 10 years I'd been replaying MP 1 and 2 every year, at least once. The older I got and the better my English got, the more awesome things I started noticing in it and appreciated it greatly. I could quote literally every line of dialogue and still remember quite a bit of them. May be it's about time I do 10-years-later replay again.

Max payne’s voice will forever be burnt into my mind it’s so soothing the way he speaks the monotone type voice. It’s perfect to me. Like Sam Fisher, Snake/Big Boss, John 117.

I was too young to have been playing Max Payne when it came out but I remember the beginning tearing my heart out and the creepy dark blood paths parts disturbing me especially when you fall off and hear his scream of pain. This game was legendary and i still pick it up and beat it every once in a while. *Edit - The dialogue is still unmatched to this day in my opinion.

The mechanics are good, I have absolutely no idea where this guy gets his info from.

This game was beyond good - it is right up there with the greatest games of all time. Hard to believe that it's been over 20 years since it was released.

I first played this when I was 9. The baby scene and Max's reaction to it terrified me.

One of the greatest games I ever played. Calling it medicore is downright criminal. When you judge a game 2 decades later since when it was released, think of the gaming standards in the year when it was released. By today's yardstick games such as Halflife or Doom will be called medicore due to their simple and repetitive gameplay. Hell COD to this day has that issue.

Honestly not being able to skip cutscenes and autosaves are both quality of life features that slowly trickled in over the existence over video games. Not being able to skip the intro to a game is another and while they're all common now you cant really discredit older games for not having them. Heck I remember leaving my old NES on overnight cause some games didnt even have save features lol.

The Flamingo TV show is one of the many nods to David Lynch that the developers would included in later games as well as Alan Wake. The backwards talking played forward to sound like strange spoken words is inspired from the "red room" sequences in Twin Peaks, they even included the same curtains.

The guy on the toilet in a home with his gun outside on the counter is straight out of pulp fiction, the scene where butch kills vincent vega. Its iconic. Not sure how you missed that reference josh.

Rest well, James.

the very opening level was so impressive and dramatic back in the day, still holds up today if it’s a persons first time playing. the whole game felt edgy and dark, sad, suspenseful.

The flamingo show looks like a Twin Peaks reference. And since the red curtains and backward speech are hallmarks of the dark lodge, it ties into Max sort of... becoming his own enemy, embracing his dark side and being consumed by it, kind of concept. Interesting how Control fixes basically all of the concerns around mechanics and environmental storytelling. Down to using combat music in very specific sequence, with a real in-game reason.

This was the first video game that evoked emotion from me while playing

I love your videos and revisiting these retro games! subscribed!

I always liked the radio and tv updates, always reminded me of The Warriors.

One of the greatest action games ever made.

Orson Welles used to say that low budget was a blessing. That when he had all the money he could ask for, his movies were awful. That budget restriction that didn't allow for special effects, forced him to use metaphors, twists and complex writing and it was then when good cinema appeared. I remember this game fondly from my early teenage days and I thought it was a complex, adult story masterpiece. Thank you for this Josh! I love your "quality over quantity" style for videos.

"The cops arrived, sirens singing in the off-key harmony of a manic-depressive choir." I had this game for the ps2, and at the time, though I had games like FFX, Jak and Daxter, and Soul Calibur 2, had a special place in my heart, even hough it wasn't graphically amazing. The combination of Max Payne's voice actor (and imo, both at the time and now, all the voice actors really did a great job!), the writing, the music, and the plot was really appealing to me, and kept me rivited. Sure, it's cliche and harkens to noir-type films and novels, but I honestly thought the execution was well done at the time. Enter the Matrix's gameplay was similar I think, and I enjoyed that game a lot as well. I remember wanting to play more games like this after beating it. It's also surprising to me that Josh struggled as much as he did playing this. The only memory I had of difficulty was that nightmare-hell-level where you're high and you're reliving the death of your family, walking in the darkness and following the trail of blood. Because my TV was shitty and there was always glare in that room, I caught hell to see where I was supposed to walk, and died a lot there, not to mention that the constantly crying baby was unnerving. I remember muting the TV on that level. Josh says that it becomes unscary after a while, but not for me. I muted that shit, and was scared the entire time.

One of the best games ever made. Old games are just breathtaking

The scene with the guy coming out of the bathroom and Max shooting him at 39:45 is a homage to Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta's character is killed in this same way. They even placed the uzi on the counter just like in the film. Right when you were talking about John Woo homages and showed Travolta being in Face Off :)

I've liked pretty much every video i've watched of yours, but I do have quite a bit of criticism here. It looks like you're running the game with the framerate uncapped, which completely breaks the shootdodge mechanic. A lot of sections you seemed to have a lot of trouble with stemmed from your shootdodge not working properly. Also, the game has adaptive difficulty. If you reload the game without letting the death animation play out each time, the game actively gets much harder. At its hardest, Max's health is less than half of its maximum, and enemies have deadly precision. Loading via quick load can easily lead to the game feeling much more difficult than it should be. Definitely not a perfect solution to difficulty, but I feel like that might explain a lot of the 1 hit deaths. As for the environmental interactivity, I really don't think you're considering the budget and time constraints this game had, and playing the game gimped definitely added to your feeling that the gameplay was missing something that you looked for in interactivity. I know it might be a bit much to ask, but I'd like to see a second playthrough with these things in mind. I definitely disagree with the notion that Max Payne has mediocre gameplay, as ive finished it myself 20+ times (and while some are to experience the story, a lot of the playthroughs are just because the game is so damn fun), and I really think taking those things into consideration would really enhance your experience.

I absolutely loved this game and story man what a classic.

I like it when video titles ask rhetorical questions.