Max Payne Longplay (Game Boy Advance) [4K]

Описание: Game Info
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Developer: Mobius Entertainment
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Year of Release: 2003

Game Review & Impressions
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The original Max Payne released for PC in 2001 was a technically ground-breaking third person shooter, iconic for it's use of "Bullet Time" slow-motion mechanics and balletic gunplay, letting players live out their John Woo fantasises within the confines of an ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek neo noir detective story. Max is the titular hard-boiled cop whose wife and infant child become unwitting victims as Aesir Corporation plans to unleash a new designer drug on the streets of New York City. The bereaved Payne transfers to the DEA in an effort to penetrate the mob underworld in a bid to find the source of Valkyr, with his sanity, moral compass, not to mention his reflexes, tested to the very limits.

What I wasn't aware of until many years later is that Rockstar published a version of the game for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. Unlike the PC and other console versions, the GBA edition of the game uses an isometric viewpoint to view the world. I can't be entirely sure as to whether the characters within the game are polygonal or sprites, but they look really good, and the fluidity of the animation is excellent. The slow-motion bullet time mechanic has been preserved and works the same as its PC counterpart, including the ability to dive and unload a storm of hot lead simultaneously.

Because you only have a limited field of view, the game tends to alert to you to the presence of enemies with gunfire, which at least gives you a fighting chance. Even on the standard difficulty level, Max doesn't have a huge amount of health; you'll be chugging down the pain killers pretty regularly to stay in the fight, but it only takes a few hits before Max is toast. Diving actually seems to make Max invulnerable for duration, so you'll want to use it whenever possible. It's possible to shoot in given direction using the D-Pad, although I did find that your bullets sometimes seemed to evaporate into thin air while doing this; enemies right in front of your face occasionally fail to take any damage, which can be quite frustrating.

In addition to the slow-mo gunplay, the comic book narration and voice acting from PC version has been ported over to the Game Boy. However, both the total number of levels in the game and number of cutscenes have been drastically reduced, which not only reduces the overall length of the game, but cuts out much of the character development. For those who've never played the original I don't suppose it matters too much, but interactions between Payne and other characters, such as Vlad or Jim Bravura, the belligerent head of the NYPD, remain on the cutting room floor. These characters are barely mentioned here, and their inclusion makes the general flow of the story feel somewhat disjointed.

A final point about this particular version before I sum up is that some of the levels actually have secret rooms. Shooting parts of the scenery can reveal switches or open doors that lead to rooms containing extra weapons, or even unique guns that you won't find anywhere else. I didn't find all the secret rooms because it wasn't until I found the Jackhammer shotgun I even realised there WERE secrets; the Jackhammer is the main secret of any importance because it's the one weapon you can't acquire elsewhere.

For the most part, the GBA version of Max Payne impressed me. Switching from 3D to 2D isometric mostly works, and the bullet time is implemented well. Many of the objects in the game are destructible or display cosmetic damage when shot, which was a nice touch, and despite the grainy visuals, it's actually quite a good looking game. Although large parts of the story have been hollowed out to fit within the constraints of the GBA, Mobius managed to keep the core essence of the story in tact. I was impressed with end result, and if you're a fan of the franchise, this portable version is definitely worth playing.

Chapters
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00:00 Intro
03:00 Stage 01
15:29 Stage 02
29:06 Stage 03
39:40 Stage 04
47:10 Stage 05
58:53 Stage 06
1:07:23 Stage 07
1:18:50 Stage 08
1:24:57 Stage 09
1:31:52 Stage 10
1:43:54 Ending