Time Manipulation

Lore & Background

Max Payne (James McCaffrey) is a former NYPD officer-turned-DEA agent whose wife Michelle (Haviland Morris) and newborn daughter Rose were murdered by armed junkies that were high on a new designer drug called Valkyr. In 2001, three years after their deaths, Max works undercover within the Punchinello Crime Family, who control the trafficking of Valkyr. His DEA colleague, B.B. (Adam Grupper), arranges a meeting between Max and his friend and former colleague, Alex Balder (Chris Phillips), in a subway station.

While waiting for Alex, Max accidentally gets in a shootout with mobsters working for Punchinello underboss Jack Lupino (Jeff Gurner), who are staging a bank robbery through an abandoned part of the subway. When Alex arrives, he is killed by an unseen assassin, who frames Max for the murder. Hunted by both the police and his former mob associates, who now know he is a cop, Max searches for Vinnie Gognitti (Joe Dallo), Lupino's right-hand man, in New York City's underworld in the hopes that he will lead him to Lupino.

Along the way, he breaks up a Valkyr drug deal and discovers that Russian mobster Vladimir Lem (Dominic Hawksley) has started a war with the Punchinello family. After catching Gognitti, Max interrogates him and learns Lupino is at his nightclub. Max kills Lupino before running into Mona Sax (Julia Murney), a contract assassin and the sister-in-law of Don Angelo Punchinello (Joe Ragno). Mona, seeking revenge against Punchinello for abusing her sister and not wanting Max to get in her way, gives him a drink laced with Valkyr.

While experiencing a nightmare of the night his family was killed, Max is found by mobsters and taken away to be tortured, but manages to escape. Max strikes a partnership with Lem, who gives him a tip about a cargo ship at the Brooklyn waterfront carrying high-powered firearms, which some of Lem's former henchmen intend to sell to Punchinello. After securing the weapons, Max attempts to lure the Don into a trap at his restaurant, only to be ambushed himself.

After escaping, Max storms Punchinello's manor and confronts the Don, but discovers that he is only a puppet in a bigger conspiracy. The manor is then overrun by mercenaries who kill Punchinello and leave Max for dead after injecting him with a Valkyr overdose.

Reader's Guide

Max Payne is played from a third-person perspective, in which players assume the role of the game's titular character, navigating a variety of levels, in which the goal is mainly to survive, battle against various armed enemies, and reach a level's goal. The game's story is played out across three acts, each with a selection of levels that vary in environments, hazards and enemies and have a linear route that players must follow in from the start point in order to reach the goal.

In some levels, the player must battle and defeat a boss character in order to complete the level. Players initially begin each act in the game's story with one or two weapons on hand, but gain access to a variety of other weapons as they progress through each level, such as handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, and grenades, with Max Payne capable of dual wielding one-handed weapons for increased firepower at the expense of higher ammo consumption.

Max's health is represented by a white figure on the HUD that slowly fills up red as he takes damage, where to replenish it, players must find and make use of painkillers scattered around the level or dropped by enemies. Alongside gun combat, players occasionally have to do some platforming and puzzle-solving in order to make progress in a level, with Max providing internal monologue that hint to players what they should be doing. At times, the game switches to a graphic novel-styled interlude in-between and during levels, in order to delve into the storyline, with the player able to revisit the novel to recall where they are in the story.

The game features two unique aspects of gameplay: bullet time, an ability that when triggered – either when standing or diving to dodge gunfire – slows down time for a brief period, represented by an hourglass next to Max's health bar, which depletes when the ability is being used, and can only be replenished by killing enemies; and the game's AI, which is scripted but modified by the player's performance in a level through each of its areas. The game story features several difficulty levels: 'Hard-Boiled', which increases damage taken while limiting health and ammo supplies; 'Dead on Arrival', which limits the player to only seven saves per chapter; and 'New York Minute', which forces the player to complete each chapter within an allotted time.

Did You Know?

• The game sold 4 million units.
• It won a BAFTA Award for Best PC Game of 2001.
• A Dreamcast version of the game was planned but canceled due to the discontinuation of the console in 2001.
• In 2022, it was announced that Remedy is developing remakes of Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S, with Rockstar publishing.