If so, what are your thoughts on it? How does it run on your rig?
I apparantly meet the 3Dmark 2001 score suggested on the box, but I don’t want to risk it being a slideshow for that much money.
If you have some time, and that game, tell me what your rig is (700 MHz and below only please) and what sort of framerate you get.
Thanks.
Ive got it. I run it on a 500 and there is no problem at all. This is a tough game to review. When I first got it and ran the tutorial, I was in total awe. The designer’s pulled off the Matrix-style “bullet dodge” and “bullet time” nearly perfectly. The cinematic used for a successful sniper rifle hit is just amazing. The graphics are stunning and some of the effects are the best Ive seen. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. The story is completely impenetrable but it’s pulp style dialogue adds considerably to the mood. The game is completely linear and doesnt change much throughout the game. I found myself more interested in repeating particular battle scenes like a movie take, in an attempt to pull off the shooting with a little more style. I was a big fan of Rogue Spear and am now generally intolerant of games that allow a reticle to be off target but score a hit anyway and games where you can shoot a guy with a shotgun in the head at a two foot range and still have him live. . This is the case with Max Payne and it’s all the more frustrating because you feel the finessese of bullet dodging and bullet time are wasted when your aim can be so bad and still hit, or your aim can be so good and not kill. Personally, the most fun I had in the game was playing with the tutorial. If there is a demo, I would download and play with it for a few hours. If you decide you’d like to do basically the same thing but with different scenery then buy it.
I’ve got it, running on a 500 with an ATI Rage Pro.
I think it’s a pretty fun game. It basically combines Sin City with the Matrix. It’s got a few good ideas, like having the main character addicted to painkillers (you collect them instead of health packs), but the bullet time is what really makes it interesting for more than ten minutes. You’d be lost without bullet time, and they make it interesting because instead of piling goons on you or making goons harder and harder to kill, they reduce the space around you so you can’t do any bullet time rolls or jumps completely unimpeded.
The hardest part so far was escaping from a basement. I’m tied to a chair, weaponless except for a baseball bat (which was just used on me, so I’m near death) and have to sneak up on a goon, kill him, get his gun, and run away before being discovered. Almost impossible. I had to replay it for over an hour before I got it to work for me.
If you have the net and a fast connection, I’d just download a pirated copy. I bought mine, but I’m really not a gamer so I’m probably not as excited by it as a gamer would be. It’s an expensive game.
(Actually, I just got Unreal Tournament and am enjoying it more than Max Payne. Both are fun, though. Usually I’m bored silly by single-player games.)
It’s a fun little shoot-em-up. It is very short, but really, the gameplay is so shallow that anything beyond its 10 or so hours would just be dull. I’d agree with the issues with the aiming, and the way they handled “boss” characters was to make them able to soak up absurd amounts of firepower (the typical boss-battle involves emptying usually 100-200 rounds of SMG ammo into their head).
Like all third-person perspective games, the camera is sometimes more a hindrance than a help, leading to situations where you simply cannot aim at what you need to because the back of Max’s head takes up half the screen. There are one or two profoundly irritating sequences to get through, but luckily quicksaves and 'loads are about as instantaneous as I’ve ever seen. Also, whoever did the level design for the two dream-sequence levels (you will know them when you see them) should be beaten soundly by Captain Baseball-bat Boy.
The writing is the most excruciatingly bad portion of the whole package, and I can only boggle at anyone who enjoyed it. The way I see it, “pulp” doesn’t have to automatically equal “painful to read.” The voice-acting is run-of-the-mill bad (far too typical in games), of the “couldn’t emote ‘falling’ if you shoved them off a cliff” variety.
However, all that’s made up for with the beauty of the general killing that the game’s all about. Also, the way you finally end up defeating the head evil woozle at the very endgame was a thing of beauty.
Thanks guys.
I think I will let it come down in price a bit, and then check it out…
I had concerns about running it on an Athlon 600 with A Geforce 2 GTS and 256 ram. SOme “optimum” specs I’ve sen ran up to the 1GHz range…
So far I haven’t been able to find a demo… Pity, because I won’t usually buy it without a demo first… Movies are fine, but we need a demo, for sure.
This is more of a poll than a General Question I’m moving it to IMHO.
Off we go. . .
DrMatrix — General Questions Moderator
I’m running it on an Athlon 900 with a GEForce2 Ultra and 512 ram. I run the game at 1024x768x16, with most of the video options turned up to high. Everything I deemed irrelevant (such as how many bullet shells appear per level) I have down at medium. The game looks great, and runs smooth enough so that I don’t notice a thing. If I turn all the options up to high, the game gets too choppy to make bullet-time worth a damn. Well, maybe not choppy, but the framerate drops dramatically. But hell, unless you have a much better eye than me, you’re not going to notice the difference playing it on medium.
By the way, anybody played it with anti-aliasing? My card won’t let me.
As for the game, it is very pretty and fun to play, but unless you’re a serious action game junky, I’d wait for the price drop.