From here, he can spray bullets in any direction, angling his gun around or over the obstacle. Although the Rockstar spokesperson showing me the game stresses that this is not a cover shooter, there is an 'intelligent' cover mechanic – on the Xbox 360, hitting X makes Max stick to any nearby wall or object suitable for protection. Running around shooting people is essentially what you do in this game – but it had to be the most fun you've ever had running around shooting people.'Īs Payne bolts through the rotten corridors of his decomposing building, bullets smash through windows and heavies can be heard clambering upstairs, shouting insults. 'We wanted it to be the most fully-realised third-person shooter ever made it needed to have the craziest physics, the most accurate and responsive controls. 'This game is all about the mechanics,' explains Rockstar's VP of development, Jeronimo Barrera. Back at the wretched flat, Passos is selling the job to Payne, when DeMarco and his mob turn up for a shoot-out.Īnd we're into the action. 'Where do I sign up?'īut Payne needs an escape route – he's just killed the psychotic son of a notorious mob boss, Anthony DeMarco, and pa is out for revenge. 'What, you can get me work sitting in a bar all day feeling sorry for myself?' Max growls in that distinctive monotone.

Raul tells him there is lucrative security work available in South America he says there's a job Max is perfect for. Then on a snowy night in New York, Payne bumps into an old colleague, Raul Passos. With a pitiless eye for detail, the art team at Rockstar Vancouver has crafted a nightmarish bachelor hovel for the character, all empty takeaway packets, peeling wallpaper, busted furniture and god-knows-what staining the carpets and mattresses. He's washed up, washed out, addicted to painkillers and propping up bars like some reject from a Bukowski poem. Max is unemployed and living in a dingy apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Even for a tough New York cop, that's got to hurt.įast-forward eight years and things aren't getting any rosier. In the game's sequel, sadistically subtitled The Fall of Max Payne, he forms a spiky relationship with assassin Mona Sax, only to see her gunned to death by a Russian mobster at the downbeat finale.

We were, after all, introduced to this archetypical tough New York cop just as drug addicts slaughtered his wife and baby. Never has a video game character been stuck with such an autobiographical name.

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