Hacker News Reader

Comment by iammjm | Hacker News Reader

Max Payne 1 & 2 are some of my favorite games of all time. I love everything about them: their graphical style, the story, the general vibe, the gameplay. They are still very fun to play so I can recommend picking them up and doing a play through. They are easy to pick up, not long, and very rewarding at each moment

View on HN

I remember as a kid playing the Police Quest series (mostly III) and thinking that games had insane graphics at the time. When Max Payne released it was absolutely mind blowing to me. The story is also very well done, something lacking today even in AAA games.

The game also had support for mods. After the first playthrough I've always played the game with the kongfu mod enabling wallrunning, kicks, additional weapons such as Sticks, and various other action orientated changes.

Additionally, I believe Rockstar gave the go-ahead for work on a remake for 1 & 2. Hopefully they have James Perry McCaffrey's voice work in good enough quality. RIP.

I remember playing a matrix mod. It was awesome. There was this famous fight near stairs with so much bullet time and effects. Another was near an elevator with pillars.

It was also a part of 3d mark 2001 back then, I've used it up until mid 2010s to see the evolution of graphic cards.

https://youtu.be/VQql9LqczXI?si=zWNbTaGYOQTLWjZX

Can you even buy Max Payne 1 from any store today? A while back I looked around and couldn't find a single legal source for the game.

Both are available on Steam and GOG. (But you'll need community patches to run it on modern hardware.)

Interesting, I see only Max Payne 2 on Steam, and neither of them on GOG (the first place I always check).

Or run it on Linux under Wine. The support is very nearly flawless.

It was available on Humble Bundle a few months ago as part of Remedy's full lineup, along with the sequel, the Alan Wake games, and Control.

That goddamn baby level though. I could strangle the person who stuffed that messy labyrinthic pile of crap into my John Woo-esque shooter.

I thought that level was great. To me it really sold someone with a jumbled up mind trying to push on through.

Without that level Max Payne wouldn't have been anywhere near as memorable for me.

Oooh that level... I was young when I played that game, and did not see that one coming. I also fell by the side. Memory is a bit blurry thankfully, but I erred for a while trying to climb up. I think it was a bug. Caused a few nightmares...

3 is good too, different environment but similar principle. And graphics look fine even by modern standards

You could try Alan wake. It really gets similar vibes.

Not entirely coincidentally, given that both are Remedy games and share some key creative staff, in particular Sam Lake [1] and Petri Järvilehto.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Lake

"and very rewarding at each moment"

Depends I would say, not the word I would use in the context of dead babies, but they were definitely great, intense games.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com