RIP James McCaffrey, the voice of Max Payne

News has sadly broken that actor James McCaffrey has passed away at the age of 65, following a battle with cancer.

Born in Albany, New York, McCaffrey began acting on-screen in the late 1980s and by the mid-1990s had started being cast in leading roles. He starred in TV shows including New York Undercover, Viper, Swift Justice and As the World Turns.

In 2001 he was cast as the voice of video game character Max Payne, in the video game of the same name from Remedy Entertainment. Payne was the narrator as well as the star, and had more dialogue than everyone else in the game put together. McCaffrey's world-weary delivery, influenced by every hard-bitten detective noir story ever written, was pitch-perfect and won him an immediate legion of fans.

McCaffrey returned to the role for Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003) and Max Payne 3 (2013), and also had a cameo in the disappointing Max Payne movie (2008).

James McCaffrey (left) with Sam Lake (lead writer at Remedy and the face of Max Payne in the original game) and Matthew Porretta (the voice of Alan Wake) in November 2022.

McCaffrey later starred in Rescue Me as Jimmy Keefe and became a perennial guest star on American television and a reliable supporting player in films.

Remedy Entertainment continued their association with McCaffrey by casting him as Alex Casey, a fictional detective clearly based on Payne (whom they couldn't use for copyright reasons) in Alan Wake (2010). He returned to Remedy to play Zachariah Trench in Control (2019). He returned as two distinct versions of Casey in Alan Wake II just this year, winning acclaim for his performance. It was assumed he would resume the world of Max Payne in Max Payne Remake, an upcoming remake of the first two games from Remedy.

McCaffrey's gravelly vocal performances across two franchises will go down as some of the all-time great video game performances, and he will be missed.

Alan Wake II

2023, Bright Falls, Washington State. A spate of unexplained murders bring FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey to the remote, sleepy town. They find a town still uneasy over the memories of thirteen years before, when there was another spate of murders and the disappearance and presumed death of infamous author Alan Wake. Anderson and Casey's investigations confirm that the supernatural forces that Wake had to deal with have indeed returned, possibly thanks to a mysterious cult. Meanwhile, Wake himself remains trapped in the Dark Place, a dimension beyond our own, where he strives to find a way back to reality.

Alan Wake, originally released in 2010 and remastered in 2021, was an interesting but flawed game. It had a great story, characters and premise, but struggled to find the gameplay thread in its morass of noir and horror influences. The game degenerated into being a repetitive action-shooter, Wake throwing flashbang grenades and fending off enemies with shotguns and handguns. This wasn't awful, but it was something of a tonal mismatch. Alan Wake also ended on a cliffhanger (and, after two more DLCs, another cliffhanger) which people have been left pondering ever since.

Thanks to the surprise success of their 2019 supernatural action game, Control, Remedy have had the resources to finally deliver a sequel to Alan Wake. Even more remarkable is how they've accomplished this: a game with AAA production values delivered on a modest budget (reportedly only $50 million) in just three years. Much more remarkable than that is how incredibly good the game is. I'm not sure I've seen such a gulf in quality between one game in a series and its direct sequel, even given such a large gap in release dates.

Alan Wake II, on the surface, resembles its forebear. You're still trudging through the forests of the Pacific North-West, defending yourself with various guns and a flashlight. You're still fighting off "Taken," effectively zombies, dead humans motivated by the evil Dark Presence. You're still mixing combat, puzzle-solving and narrative beats. Your adventure is still being narrated over-earnestly by Alan Wake himself. But the sequel simply nails every single one of these facets far better than its forebear.

The first big change is the addition of a new viewpoint character, Saga Anderson. Saga stands in for new players, who've perhaps heard of Alan Wake but haven't played it ahead of this sequel. Saga's story takes her to the town of Bright Falls and the nearby Cauldron Lake, both key locations from the original game, as well as further afield to new areas, such as the town of Watery and a nearby amusement park (Coffee World!) and lighthouse. Saga's story is anchored in the "real world" and it's interesting to see her gradually bump into characters and locations that tie in with Wake's story from the original game. Saga has two major assets: her friend and FBI partner Alex Casey, who shares the same name as Wake's signature detective hero; and her "Mind Place," a mental technique which allows her to analyse clues and keep abreast of the game's sprawling narrative. At almost any point in the game, Saga can slip into her Mind Place and digest her latest discoveries.

The second big change is in structure. Alan Wake was a very linear game where Wake travelled from the start of one level to the next, occasionally facing larger arena areas which were more open (usually for combat or even a boss fight). Famously, the game was developed as an open-world title but that was changed late in the day to improve pacing. The sequel isn't a full open-world game but instead is more similar to a Metroidvania, being divided into several areas, with each being explorable at will but having various areas sealed off by environmental elements or by literal gates. As the game progresses you gain access to tools to allow you to access these areas later on.

There's also a change here in terms of collectibles. Alan Wake had thermoses lying around which you could collect and then do absolutely nothing with. Alan Wake II has three types of collectible: lunchboxes tying in with Wake's books; mysterious nursery rhymes attached to puzzles; and sealed containers belonging to the mysterious Cult of the Tree. These collectibles are each attached to their own storyline chain and unlock additional weapons, abilities and equipment for Saga. They are not essential, but they make her journey easier, and fill in additional backstory and worldbuilding details. Tracking down these things also allows you to explore more of each map, sometimes finding other equipment caches along the way.

Another big change is combat. It's now been under-emphasised compared to the first game. Combat is somewhat rarer, more lethal and more of a resource-managing challenge, more in line with the recent Resident Evil remakes. This is better than the original Alan Wake, where Wake was only somewhat less of a competent death-dealing gunsmith than Max Payne, with much more tension. Unfortunately, this makes the decision to base one key setpiece moment near the game's conclusion around waves of combat fairly inexplicable, resulting in the game's steepest difficulty spike.

All of this applies to Saga. It's not a major spoiler to say at a key moment in the game, we rejoin Alan in the Dark Place and have to help him try to escape. The Dark Place in this game resembles a twisted, shadowy version of New York City, complete with subways, theatres, a creepy hotel and Alan's apartment. Traversing the Dark Place is more complex than the real world. Alan doesn't have Saga's Mind Place, but he does have his Writer's Room. At any point Alan can switch to this room and use it to analyse the plot, like Saga, but unlike her he can also change the plot. In a mechanic that recalls the superb Dishonored 2 mission "A Crack in the Slab," Alan can flash back to earlier points in the story and thus in time, when an area may look completely different. Alan can take advantage of this to get past sealed-off areas or discover fresh clues about what's going on and how he can escape.

You can soon choose to switch between the two characters at will, choosing whether to mainline all of Saga's story first and then all of Alan's, or maybe alternate at the end of every chapter. Despite being trapped in different universes, Alan and Saga develop a link that allows them to work together to help defeat the Dark Presence. This works all rather splendidly. Alan and Saga's stories have different feels and tones, so the ability to switch between them whenever Alan's over-earnest monologues or Saga's family concerns get a bit too much is appreciated.

Alan Wake II is also surprisingly funny. The first game had some laughs, but the sequel takes things up a notch with comedic zero-budget adverts from a pair of Finnish brothers and, as is now well-known, a full-blown musical number that makes up an entire chapter of the game. Quite a few characters are also now pretty over the whole "shocked by supernatural stuff" thing and whose only reaction to some fresh eruption of inexplicable weirdness is a world-weary sigh. This is especially noticeable when characters from the Federal Bureau of Control show up and are utterly unphased by the Dark Presence doing its thing; they've seen this stuff before in Control.

Ah yes, the Remedy Connected Universe. As is well-know now, Alan Wake and its sequel both take place in the same universe as Control, which the game is quite upfront about (you'll meet an FBC agent probably around an hour into the game, maybe less). Some Control characters show up, and Saga gets to read a bunch of reports from the FBC on the Cauldron Lake phenomenon. Alan Wake II could have maybe been a bit more low-key on this, as a few times I felt almost penalised for not having finished Control (I started it when it came out, but got sidetracked by other games), but it's not too bad. More amusing are the very deep cuts to Remedy's other games, Quantum Break and the first two Max Payne titles; Remedy doesn't own those IPs any more, so they have to rename characters (Martin Hatch becomes Warlin Door; Max Payne becomes the fictional Alex Casey) but the general ideas come across well. Players less well-versed in Remedy lore might miss out on the meaning of some Easter Eggs, but the game mostly tells you what you need to know within the game itself.

Alan Wake II also looks utterly stupendous, easily the best-looking video game in the world right now. Character animations are impressive (though some characters - like Casey - seem a lot stiffer than others), but it's the lighting effects and environmental graphics in the forests or on the not-New York subway which are completely mindblowing. This does come at the cost of hefty systems requirements on PC, with even my new 4090 graphics card occasionally chugging unless DLSS was switched on. Consoles are broadly fine, but it's going to be a good few years before most PC players will be able to experience this game at maximum settings.

Alan Wake II (****½) comes very close to being an outright masterpiece. It is very well-paced, it has a ton of content - Wake and Saga's stories are each individually as long as Alan Wake in its entirety, meaning this game is twice the size and length of its forebear - the horror elements are far more effective, the atmosphere is superb and the writing is easily Remedy's best to date. There are very nice links to all of Remedy's previous games (bar possibly Death Rally), but playing those titles is not strictly necessary to enjoy this game (the Control references do push the limit on that, though), and for a horror game, it has a brilliant sense of humour. It has some fantastic gameplay mechanics and several setpiece events which are clear challengers for the best gaming moments of the year (especially the horrific murder investigation in the hotel, the ludicrous rock opera and a 15-minute Finnish arthouse film completely contained within the game). It is a fantastic-looking game, and the soundtrack is outrageously good. It has earned its Game of the Year nominations, being a worth competitor to the likes of Baldur's Gate III and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.

Complaints are few. The game is let down a little by its combat, especially the decision to base an entire key moment around an absolute ton of combat despite it not being the game's forte. The story and lore is pretty dense at times, requiring you to pay close attention or miss out on key plot points. The game's ending is great, with some excellent twists, but also somewhat ambiguous, left afloat for the two forthcoming DLC episodes which will continue the storyline. The game's steep system requirements and Epic-exclusive status (to be fair, Epic also paid for the game's development and are its publishers, so the game wouldn't even exist without them) will also put off many PC gamers.

Overall these complaints are slight. Alan Wake II is Remedy's best game to date, a rich horror narrative with compelling gameplay which improves over its predecessor on every single front.

Alan Wake II is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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Alan Wake Remastered

Alan Wake is a successful novelist suffering from writer's block. He and his wife, Alice, take a holiday to Bright Falls, Washington, and rent a cabin on an island in the middle of a volcanic lake. When Alice surprises Alan with a typewriter, hoping he'll feel inspired to start writing again, Alan becomes angry and storms out. He hears his wife screaming, only to find the cabin and the island have disappeared. Apparently the island was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 1970. Wake discovers he has somehow lost a week, and keeps finding pages from a new novel he's been writing called Departure in which he himself is the protagonist. As shadowy creatures attack him and TV shows seem to reflect his state of mind, Wake must discover whether he has gone insane and attempt to track down his missing wife.

Alan Wake was originally released in 2010 by Finnish developers Remedy. At the time they were best-known for their Max Payne series of shooters with interesting time-slowing capabilities. Since Alan Wake's release they have worked on Quantum Break and Control, and more recently Alan Wake II. Alan Wake Remastered was released in 2021 as a way of improving the original game and also releasing it on PlayStation consoles (the original was only available on Xbox 360 and, after a significant delay, PC), and getting people into the story ahead of the release of the sequel.

Alan Wake Remastered is a surprisingly restrained revision of the original game. The main focus is on the graphics, with revised and updated textures, a new and more impressive lighting system and it now being possible to boost the resolution up to 4K. This is all splendid and results in very impressive visuals, although unfortunately the process has not been optimised well; the game occasionally chugged even with an nVidia 4090 under the hood. More annoying were visual glitches and problems, which could be briefly fixed with a reload but soon returned. Oddly, these problems are mostly focused in the fourth and fifth episodes of the game and were not present before or after. However, the problem is widespread (going by the game's forums and subreddit) and has not been fixed after two years, which is disconcerting.

Otherwise the game runs exactly the same as it did back in 2010, complete with somewhat clunky movement and occasionally iffy dodging mechanics. This is an action thriller where you control the titular Alan Wake, a novelist suffering from writers' block after killing off his most iconic character. He takes a holiday with his wife, but gets angry when he realises that she has tricked him into a retreat to focus on his writing, with a hospital nearby specialising in the mental health problems of artists. When Alan storms out, his wife abruptly vanishes. Alan loses a week of his life, waking up to experience strange visions. However, when he receives at telephone call from a man claiming to have his wife hostage, it appears that the situation is understandable, if frightening. But Alan then encounters the "Taken," possessed individuals clad in shadows who seem to be obsessed with destroying him, and it becomes clear something much more supernatural is at work.

The game is divided into daytime sequences where Alan wanders around and interacts with characters, maybe solves the odd puzzle, and uncovers more about the story, and night sequences where Alan has to achieve some objective whilst fighting off the Taken. The Taken have to be illuminated with a flashlight and, once their "darkness" has been burned off, can be dispatched with conventional weapons. As the game unfolds across its relatively well-paced 12-13 hours or so, both the types and tactics of Taken evolve, as does Alan's arsenal and his skills for dealing with them in combat.

The sheer volume of combat remains quite surprising: those who've heard that Alan Wake is the closest thing to Twin Peaks in videogame form may be taken aback by the amount of time Wake spends blowing people away with shotguns.  The game also feels like it sometimes doesn't like doing this (combat within a section of the game can get quite repetitive), but has to fall back on shooting things as the default game style rather than run the risk of the dialogue and cutscenes putting off too many people. The game does have missed opportunities though: as is well-known, the game was originally an open world game, which can still be discerned in some areas (areas from one mission are clearly visible bordering another later on, with some artificial barrier preventing you from free-travelling over there) but was taken out due to pacing issues. The game allows you to drive vehicles in some limited sequences, and there's some interesting puzzles to solve, which could have been expanded on to make for more interesting and varied gameplay outside of combat. It's notable that the two bonus DLC episodes (included here, weirdly, as optional extras buried in the level select screen, but definitely don't miss them) have better pacing, puzzle-solving, traversal mechanics and combat than the main game itself, suggesting that Remedy only figured out how to get the best out of the game quite late in the day.

The story is interesting and well-thought out, with writer Sam Lake's trademark humour, enjoyably overwrought (and sometimes deliberately purple) prose and an internal logic that hangs together even as things get quite surreal and out there. Dividing the game into six TV-like episodes (complete with a recap and their own credit sequence and theme song), each about an hour and a half to two hours long, is also a masterstroke of pacing, ensuring the game's combat and story beats don't get too repetitive and it never feels like you're too far from a natural break point in the flow of events. The game also does do a good job of changing things up whenever it feels like you're maybe spending a bit too much time in the woods aiming flashlights at trees, with some mid and late-game setpieces being genuinely impressive. Again, some of the best stuff is actually in the two DLC episodes.

In the thirteen years since release, gaming has moved on a fair bit and Alan Wake can't help but feel clunky, with sometimes-sluggish controls and occasionally iffy animations, with an overreliance on combat. This remaster also feels like it may not be entirely necessary, given that the gameplay has not been overhauled to the same standards as the graphics. But there's a very solid story at work here, the mixture of CG and live-action cut scenes is a nice foreshadowing of Remedy's subsequent work, and the game is well-paced and doesn't outstay its welcome. The game's biggest weakness it is technical issues which make the middle third or so of the game a bit of a game of Russian Roulette as you wait for it to work out if it's going to crash or not. This should really have been fixed years ago. Also, and a fairly big annoyance on PC, is that it's only available on the Epic Game Store. As the PC version is actually published by Epic, there's little likelihood of it appearing on Steam in the future.

Another minor complaint: the stand-alone expansion Alan Wake's American Nightmare is not included in this package. American Nightmare is a bit of a weird game (being almost entirely combat-focused) and tonally didn't entirely gel with the original game, so I can understand why Remedy decided to ignore it this time around, but completionists may feel short-changed at its absence.

Alan Wake Remastered (***½) is an enjoyably solid game, especially at the very reasonable price it can be had for these days. It hasn't aged entirely well and some might be surprised at its overreliance on combat, which is a little at odds with its supernatural mystery genre. It's also very much The Hobbit to Alan Wake II's considerably bigger, more ambitious Lord of the Rings, and like that isn't strictly necessary to understand the sequel, but it certainly helps. The game is available now on PC (via the Epic Game Store), Xbox and PlayStation.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

AMC picks up the rights for ALAN WAKE TV series

American cable network AMC have picked up the TV rights to the cult video game Alan Wake, created by Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment.

Originally released in 2010, Alan Wake told the story of the titular protagonist, a novelist who travels to Bright Falls, Washington for a break to try to break his writer's block. However, his wife goes missing, apparently kidnapped by a supernatural force, and Alan discovers a strange dimension known as "the Dark Place" impinging on the real world. Aided by various allies, Alan tries to defeat this force and locate his missing wife. The story continued in a standalone expansion, Alan Wake's American Nightmare (2012).

In 2019 Remedy released Control, a new game about a team investigating "Altered World Events" from their headquarters in New York City. The game and its expansions eventually confirm that they take place in the same universe as Alan Wake, and events from the game play a major role in Control's second expansion, AWE. Last year, Remedy released a remastered version of Alan Wake and formally announced that Alan Wake 2 was in development, hopefully for release in 2023.

Work on an Alan Wake TV show began in 2018, with Legion's Peter Calloway set to serve as showrunner and Remedy's Sam Lake (the writer of Alan Wake) serving as producer and consultant.

AMC's previous shows include The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and Preacher.

Rockstar and Remedy to collaborate on MAX PAYNE remakes

Remedy Entertainment are remaking the two games that brought them to widespread public attention in the early 2000s. They are rebuilding Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne in the Northlight Engine which powered their previous two games, Quantum Break and Control. The remakes will be published by Rockstar Games, who have owned the Max Payne IP since the mid-2000s.

Max Payne was originally released in 2001 and was highly praised for its stylish action and its use of "bullet time" to slow time down and allow the player to precisely control where their shots went. It was also applauded for its ridiculously over-the-top narration, dialogue and storytelling, which mixed graphic novel and video game tropes with meta-humour. Max Payne 2 was released in 2003 and was an impressive technical achievement as one of the first video games to implement a full physics engine. The game was also praised for its even tighter storytelling, better action, stronger writing and being one of the very few good examples of a video game romance story. I have a full retrospective on the games here.

Max Payne 3, released in 2012, was developed internally by Rockstar and was considered something of a letdown, with strong action but poor storytelling and, in particular, endless cutscenes that got in the way of the gameplay. The franchise has been on hold since then, with Rockstar working on their Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption franchises instead.

Remedy have only just started work on the remakes, but the current plan is to combine the two games into a single title. They note they presented Rockstar with the proposal for the remakes and Rockstar agreed to fund and publish the title, assigning a budget in line with their top-tier games. Fans will no doubt hope this also increases the chances of a Remedy-developed Max Payne 4 should the remake be successful.

Remedy are also currently developing Alan Wake 2 and Control 2.

A Bit Closer to Heaven: A Max Payne Retrospective

A Binary Choice
"They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the trigger. And then it was over."

In 2001 an obscure Finnish developer with exactly one video game to their name (a combat racer named Death Rally) released what many consider to be the finest action game ever made. Max Payne was a game that mashed together so many genre influences that it could have collapsed under its own weight. Instead it combined all of them into something artful and masterful, to the point where a full eighteen years after release there still hasn’t been anything really like it, save only the first of its sequels.

Rewinding a little, Remedy Entertainment was founded in Espoo, the second city of Finland, in 1995. It arose out of the demoscene, a movement dedicated to creating self-contained audio/visual demos which also served as testbeds for new software and technology. One demoscene group, Future Crew, decided to use their skills to form a company and create their first game. Death Rally, made in a team-member’s basement, was published by Apogee in 1996 and was a minor hit, enough for the company to expand and go big for its next game.

The company considered three ideas for their next title: a third-person shooter, another racing game and a space combat sim. Apogee were keen to continue their partnership and founder Scott Miller looked over the ideas. He thought the space combat idea was a bit niche and had a lot of successful series already underway (the X-Wing and Wing Commander series in particular, soon to be joined by Freespace), but that the action game idea was promising. First-person shooters were all the rage but arguably no-one had created a successful third-person shooter as yet, a Tomb Raider with less puzzle solving and more gunplay. There was also a nice synergy going on: Apogee Software had just rebranded itself as 3D Realms and released one of the most acclaimed first-person shooters of all time, Duke Nukem 3D.

Miller agreed to fund the game on the grounds that Remedy produced a graphically stunning game, that it didn’t cost too much and that they changed the working title of Dark Justice. He wanted a memorable, punchy title, preferably with the main character’s name in it. The team at Remedy were stumped until Miller suggested "Max” (possibly inspired either by Max Headroom or Homer Simpson’s "Max Power" alter-ego, or both) and the team suggested "Heat". A pleased 3D Realms spent $20,000 securing trademarks on the name until Remedy came back suggesting that "Max Heat" sounded like a porn title and what about "Max Payne". A few more thousand dollars later and the game had a name.

What it didn’t have was a story, engine or central mechanic. Remedy were not cowed, using their considerably technical prowess to quickly start building a 3D engine they called MAX-FX, putting a considerable amount of effort into particle effects and muzzle flares. An early tech demo, released to the public in 1998, made jaws collectively drop and started building hype for the game. Remedy had also decided to hire a professional writer, Sam Lake (who’d already provided some writing help on Death Rally), who started building up a significant amount of backstory for the central character of Max Payne. A massive fan of American TV crime dramas and pulp noir thriller novels, Lake wanted to make the game a psychological thriller as well as a violent action game, one that deconstructed the protagonist as it went along. Both he and the design team wanted the game to feel like an authentic noir thriller in New York, necessitating some of the team flying out to NYC and – accompanied by ex-NYPD officers as bodyguards – taking thousands of photographs of dingy back alleys to use as textures in the game.

The game had also gotten its gimmick. The developers were fans of Hong Kong action cinema, particularly the works of John Woo, and had noted that one of his signature styles was slowing the camera right down so individual bullets could be seen flying through the air. This wasn’t necessarily a new technique – Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch had experimented with such imagery in 1969 – but Woo had stylised it tremendously. Whilst the game was in development, the 1998 movie Blade also used some similar techniques. “Bullet time” became the central mechanic of Max Payne, with the player able to slow down time to the point where individual bullets could be seen flying through the air and allowing the player to shoot with incredible precision in the middle of the fiercest firefights.

To save money, the team decided to eschew in-engine cutscenes in favour of comic book panels, with single frames of imagery and a Raymond Chandler-esque monologue presenting the action. Northern Irish-American actor James McCaffrey was brought in to provide Payne’s voice and was an absolute find, his beyond-world-weary delivery becoming instantly iconic. Even the cost of a relatively unknown voice actor proved problematic for the budget, however, and left the team having to use themselves, friends and family as actors to portray and voice other characters. Writer Sam Lake himself was asked to model as Max Payne, giving the character his trademark signature, slightly constipated grimace.

Max Payne’s ambitions were expanding and in 1999 the game encountered an unexpected issue when the film The Matrix was released. The Matrix took bullet time to the next level, using it as a storytelling device as well as an aesthetic choice. On the one hand, this was great marketing for Max Payne but it also risked Payne looking like it was a rip-off. That was not helped by Payne’s 1999 release date being indefinitely delayed as the team encountered technical and storytelling issues that caused a full revamp of the game to take place. The game would not be released until 23 July 2001.

When it was released, it was an instant and immediate hit.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

ALAN WAKE TV show in development

Contradiction Films has teamed up with Remedy Entertainment to make a TV drama series based on the latter's 2010 video game Alan Wake.

The story is set in the town of Bright Falls, Washington, and sees horror novelist Alan Wake trying to track down his missing wife. As the story unfolds, he gets involved in increasingly weird events. Strongly influenced by The X-Files, Twin Peaks and Stephen King novels, Alan Wake was a commercial and critical success for Remedy, selling over 4.5 million copies.

Peter Calloway (Cloak & Dagger, Legion) has written a pilot script for the show which is being shopped around various studios by Contradiction. The TV show will partially adapt the game's storyline, but will have the freedom to move beyond the constraints of the game (which remains focused on Alan at all times). In particular, the TV series will explore some of the secondary characters in the world.

Remedy Entertainment have long harboured plans to make Alan Wake 2, but despite the first game's success they have been unable to do so: their then-publishing partners Microsoft instead convinced them to work on an original game for the X-Box One's launch, the splendid (but under-performing) Quantum Break, and have not had an interest in publishing a sequel to the older game.

Remedy's next game, Control, will be released in 2019.

Quantum Break

Jack Joyce is called home to Riverport by his best friend Paul Serene. His brother William has created time travel technology, but in the process has apparently become unhinged. Paul wants Jack to help him complete William's experiments and calm his brother down. However, the experiment goes horrendously wrong, causing a fracture in the space/time continuum. As the fracture grows worse, Jack gains powers over time and space...but so does Paul, who has been flung seventeen years into the past. When he catches up with Jack he is now a different man, with enigmatic motivations...and the same powers Jack has.

Quantum Break is the latest game from Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment. Way back in 2001 Remedy released the iconic action game Max Payne, an epoch-marking title which transformed the action game into a balletic display of violence, bullet time and gritty, noir storytelling. Its sequel, Max Payne 2, remains one of the vanishingly few decent examples of a video game romance ever attempted (and pretty much the only one in an action game). Their 2010 title Alan Wake fused action with survival horror, again set against the backdrop of rich storytelling and a wry sense of humour. Remedy aren't quite like any other developer out there, which is why their games are Day One purchases for me (on PC, anyway).

Quantum Break is very definitely a Remedy game. It's action focused, combat-heavy and uses state-of-the-art graphics technology. The game's propriety Northlight Engine is a technological marvel, offering up both astonishing visuals, (mostly) fluid action and impressive optimisation. I particularly appreciated the fact that the game didn't make my PC run as hot as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided recently did, despite offering superior visuals.

Quantum Break is also a storyline-heavy game, telling its twisting narrative of time loops through both gameplay, in-engine cut scenes and, remarkably, over an hour of live-action video. These videos take the form of TV mini-episodes, filling in the backstory and narrative of what's going on with the antagonists at the same time that Jack is going through his adventures in the gameplay. To maintain continuity, the game features the same actors playing the roles in the live-action pieces as well as lending their appearances and voices for the in-game sequences. These aren't unknowns either, with Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, The Wire), Lance Reddick (Fringe, The Wire), Dominic Monaghan (Lost, Lord of the Rings), Amelia Blaire (True Blood) and Brooke Nevin (The 4400) all playing major roles.

The game unfolds through gameplay sequences where you investigate a scene or solve puzzles, which often segues into a combat sequence. Fighting consists of standard cover-based shooting (with a rather elegant cover system which simply sees you automatically take cover if you're standing behind something that can be used as such) and also the use of your temporal powers. Interestingly, given Remedy's pioneering use of bullet time, you can't use bullet time as such but you can create temporal shield to freeze bullets in mid-air, trap enemies in stasis bubbles (which you can fire into, so they're instantly hit by hundreds of bullets when time resumes) and set off temporal blasts to throw people through the air. Later in the game enemies appear who can generate their own temporal fields and gain some immunity to your attacks, forcing you to adapt new, more complex strategies. Combat is, mostly, tactical, satisfying and fun.

The game is very narrative-heavy, so if you're after fact action game with limited story, you may want to steer clear. The story is well-told, with a reasonable engagement with the complexities of time travel and temporal paradoxes. There are some plot holes if you think about things too much, but overall the story is an entertaining slice of pulp SF fun with characters you do end up caring about.

It's not a perfect game. There's some jankiness to the controls and occasionally dubious collision detection. The game also severely restricts where you can climb up walls and over obstacles but doesn't give you any way of differentiating these from the areas where you cannot, occasionally leaving you frustratingly bouncing up and down in front of a ledge you really should be able to grab hold of. The game also triggers your frequently-used "time surge" power (which sees you jump forward a dozen feet or so in one go) in the direction your character is facing, not that the camera is facing, occasionally resulting you in hurtling off in unexpected directions. Once you learn to leave a few moments for your character to turn around, it's not really a problem. The live-action TV sequences are also pretty decent - easily the best such things ever created for a video game - but whilst the main cast are excellent (especially Aidan Gillen, who turns in a better performance in the game than he's done in six seasons of Game of Thrones) some of the supporting actors are more enthusiastic than skilled. Oddly, it all fits in with the pulp B-movie feel of the piece.

The game also suffers a little from having a generally smooth difficulty curve, but then featuring several quite ridiculous spikes, with no information context or information being given on how to defeat boss enemies. The final battle with its insta-death enemy attacks, which is easily ten times harder than any other fight in the game, is particularly guilty of this. It's certainly survivable, but it does interrupt the flow of the game.

More impressively, the game has four different "junction" points. At each one of these junctions you have an important decision to make which will change the course of how the story unfolds. Using a temporal vision, you can see some (but not all) of the impacts your choice will make. The game signposts these moments quite clearly, allowing you to note which choice you've made so you can choose differently on a replay. For a linear action game with no multiplayer, such a system is vital to maintain interest and replayability to the game.

Quantum Break (****) is a visually impressive game with dynamic, fun combat and a reasonably good story delivered through sympathetic characters (even the villains are quite well fleshed-out). There's some iffy performances and occasional insane difficulty spikes, but overall this is a very impressive, atmospheric and well-made game. It is available now on PC and X-Box One (UK, USA).

QUANTUM BREAK breaking free of shackles of Windows 10

Remedy's time-bending action game/TV show hybrid Quantum Break was released back in April as an exclusive for X-Box One and Windows 10 PCs. Five months later, perhaps aware that this was reducing their audience for no really good reason, Microsoft are re-releasing the game so it works on PCs with operating systems that people actually want to use.

A new edition of the game will launch on 10 September, with the game being available through Steam for Windows 7 and 8 PCs and a boxed copy shipping with lots of funky extras. This is excellent news, as I've been a massive fan of Remedy since the release of their second game, the mighty Max Payne, in 2001. Max Payne, Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake have all been excellent, original and slightly offbeat action games and Quantum Break looks very much like it's in a similar vein. The accompany TV episodes, starring genre favourites Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings, Lost), Lance Reddick (Fringe, Lost, The Wire) and Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), also look entertainingly cheesy.

QUANTUM BREAK announced for PC

Remedy Entertainment have announced that their new game, Quantum Break, will be released on PC as well as its previously-announced X-Box One edition. The game will launch simultaneously on PC and XB1 on 5 April.

Quantum Break is unusual in that it consists of both a video game component and a live-action TV component, starring actors such as Sean Ashmore (X-Men), Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings), Lance Reddick (The Wire, Fringe) and Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones). Actions in the game determine what "episode" of the TV component you see next.

Remedy are famed as the creators of the Max Payne and Alan Wake franchises. The XB1 editions of both Alan Wake games (also announced today) will ship with copies of Quantum Break.

One fly in the ointment is that Quantum Break will only work with Windows 10. It has not been made clear whether this is down to technical reasons (Quantum Break using the DirectX 12 graphics technology, which is not compatible with Windows 8 or earlier) or for propriety/money reasons. Quantum Break will also apparently only be available from the Windows Store, with no Steam version apparently planned.

QUANTUM BREAK blurs the lines between gaming and TV

Microsoft and Remedy have announced the release date of their new video game collaboration: Quantum Break, an action SF-thriller set in a world where time and space have become fluid concepts in the wake of a temporal accident. However, the game will also be part of a multimedia concept incorporating a digital TV series.

 

The game itself is a fairly standard action title incorporating gunplay and cover-based shooting, with the addition of Remedy's trademark polish and new mechanics revolving around the manipulation of time. This is a natural development for the developers who gave us the first two (and best) Max Payne games, with their development of bullet time in gaming. Like their previous title, Alan Wake, Quantum Break will be broken up into episodes. Each episode of the game will be followed by a 22-minute TV episode expanding on the story. There will be four episodes as part of the game, although if the game is a big hit presumably more could be made.

The live-action port of the game will incorporate some pretty well-known genre hitters, with Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings, Lost), Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, The Following) and Lance Riddick (The Wire, Fringe) being the most notable.

Quantum Break will be released on X-Box One on 5 April 2016. A later release on PC is likely, given Remedy's track record.

New X-Box announcement hijacked by dog

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled their new home video game console, the confusingly-named X-Box One. There was lots of interesting details about how the machine would interface with the TV and serve as a media hub and other things, although major game news was limited to the revelation that the always-splendid Remedy Studios were working on a new game called Quantum Break (and would be returning to the Alan Wake universe at some point as well). The point when the presentation took off, however, was when the video for Call of Duty: Ghosts (henceforth referred to as COD Goats) was shown, confirming that there was a dog in the game.

The biggest thing on the planet right now.

Within moments the Internet had exploded. The dog got a meme going, instantly. Within the hour the dog had its own Twitter account (named @CollarDuty, naturally), which is just about to hit 15,000 followers. Many humourous dogs-in-military-situation photos followed, such as:

"There he is, the guy with the mail bag. Three rounds rapid!"

The games console you just spent five years and hundreds of millions of dollars working on? Nobody gives a toss, because a game has a dog in it. And it's not even the first game to do so (and in ARMA 2 you can even play as the dog, if you fiddle around with settings).

Ladies and gentlemen, the internet in action.

Alan Wake's American Nightmare

Two years after the nightmarish events at Bright Falls and Cauldron Lake, Alan Wake finds himself in Night Springs, a town from a fictional television show he once worked on. Wake is still trapped in the Dark Place, an otherworld where the fabric of reality is malleable and can be changed by acts of creation. Wake is on the trail of his evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, who was created by the forces at Cauldron Lake and now means to destroy Alan's life in the real world. Wake must end Scratch's plans and find a way to escape the Dark Place.

Alan Wake was Remedy Entertainment's highly ambitious, mostly-successful follow-up their iconic Max Payne action games. A mixture of thriller and action elements, combined with a light frosting of horror, it was high on atmosphere and story but the actual gameplay elements were stretched by a limited number of options. American Nightmare is a stand-alone follow-up, not a true sequel (Alan Wake 2 will likely follow in a few years), but also rather larger than the normal type of DLC expansion.

The game takes place in three locations: a diner and garage on the outskirts of Night Springs, a nearby observatory and a drive-in movie theatre. Unlike the strict linearity of Alan Wake itself, these three areas are fairly large and open. Alan can explore each area at leisure, searching for weapons and collectible manuscript pages (which also flesh out the world and storyline) whilst fending off random encounters with the Taken. American Nightmare expands both Alan's arsenal (adding automatic weapons to his standard pistol/shotgun combo) and also the range of his enemies. The Taken now include 'splitters', single enemies who split into two enemies when hit with the flashlight beam, and guys who can transform into flocks of birds before reforming to attack. Also, scary killer spiders have also been added to the mix, but given they die the second you shine a light on them they are completely pointless.

American Nightmare is heavily combat-focused. Taken attack in larger numbers and with more variety to their attacks than in the original game. However, this greater threat is negated by Alan's access to combat rifles and machine pistols, which can scythe through Taken ranks rapidly and with ease. Despite the more dangerous enemies, combat is much easier than in the original game (I didn't come close to letting a Taken touch me in the whole game). Unfortunately, the combat focus is necessary because of the lack of other elements. There are only three major characters for Wake to interact with, each of them a fairly typical spin on the 'damsel in distress' motif, and the puzzle elements are fairly basic. Alan has to find a few pieces of equipment in each area and combine them to defeat Scratch.

A potentially interesting spin is introduced when Scratch is able to defeat Alan's plan and put him in a time loop, restarting the whole game. Characters retain their memories from the prior cycle, so, amusingly, are able to negate some of the more time-consuming tasks from before and carry out tasks in a more efficient manner. Whilst it's amusingly lampshaded, this repetition (the cycle goes round three times in total before the game ends) shows that Remedy are painfully trying to eke out as much length as possible from a very small number of assets. This is furthered by TV sets which Alan can switch on to receive threatening messages from Scratch, which go on for way too long in an attempt to push the gameplay time up to something respectable. Remedy have a good stab at making maximum use of limited resources, but by the end of American Nightmare's five-hour playing time the game feels exhausted.

On the plus side, the writing is okay (though not as strong as in the main game itself), there's some knowing humour and some genuinely hilarious moments of bizarreness (playing a Kasabian track in a CD player causes a satellite to fall out of the sky and collide with an oil derrick...somehow). Combat may be easy, but it's also satisfying. Graphically the game remains impressive and it's good to see the engine handling the transition to an Arizona, desert-like location well. Those invested in the story and world will also find plenty of clues and easter eggs as to what direction the full sequel might take.

Ultimately, Alan Wake's American Nightmare (***) is a stopgap until the full sequel appears. It's short, easy and repetitive, lacking the atmosphere and more varied cast of characters of the first game, but whiles away a few hours entertainingly enough. It is available now on Steam and GoG (for PC) and on X-Box Marketplace (for X-Box 360).

Alan Wake

Alan Wake is a successful novelist suffering from writer's block. He and his wife, Alice, take a holiday to Bright Falls, Washington, and rent a cabin on an island in the middle of a volcanic lake. When Alice 'surprises' Alan with a typewriter, hoping he'll feel inspired to start writing again, Alan becomes angry and storms out. He hears his wife screaming, only to find the cabin and the island have disappeared. Apparently the island was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 1970. Wake discovers he has somehow lost a week, and keeps finding pages from a new novel he's been writing called Departure in which he himself is the protagonist. As shadowy creatures attack him and TV shows seem to reflect his state of mind, Wake must discover whether he has gone insane and attempt to track down his missing wife.

 
Alan Wake is the creation of Finnish developers Remedy, best-known for their superlative work on the first two Max Payne games. Like the Max Payne games, Alan Wake is strongly based around a central protagonist and emphasises his character development throughout the game, giving the player more of a connection to their character and his fate. Unlike Max Payne, Alan Wake is not purely an action game. It also employs elements of survival-horror, adventure games and exploration to create something that is hard to classify. This gives the game a unique mood and feel to it, but also makes it hard to market and resulted in initially disappointing sales (although, thanks to the highly successful PC version, the game has now sold more than 2 million copies and a sequel is likely).

The game is divided into six distinct episodes (with two more included with the PC version and available to optionally download for the X-Box 360) and structured like a TV mini-series. Each episode opens with Alan recapping the story so far and ends with a different song, usually on a cliffhanger. Each episode is usually divided into two sections, a daytime one where Alan investigates what's going on by talking to people and exploring the backstory, and a night section when Alan has to achieve some goal whilst under attack by the 'dark presence', a shadowy force which can animate objects and possess people using clouds of darkness.

The daytime sections are, disappointingly, free of choice. You can't choose Alan's dialogue and are on rails for most of these sections as people talk to you and explain what's going on (or not, in most cases). You can move around and sometimes find bonus items for use later, but there's a limit to your freedom in these sections. For those who become hooked by the game's intriguing, Twin Peaks-lite storyline, this will be fine. For those itching to get to the actual gameplay sections, these parts of the game may feel tedious (although they're usually pretty short, and we get to the action relatively quickly).

The bulk of each episode is the section set at night, during which time Alan has to fight off enemies. He can use a torch to burn away the dark presence from opponents and then destroy them with conventional firearms (oddly, the idea of finding some way of freeing people from the presence rather than killing them outright is never discussed, even when major characters are possessed). His torch can also be used to destroy possessed flocks of bird and animated everyday objects outright. Oddly, the torches in Bright Falls all have an 'intense light' mode that burns out the batteries, but will recharge if left alone (and the standard light setting doesn't use batteries at all, in contravention of the laws of physics). These mechanics result in a lot of scenes where Alan is running through the wood at night alone and having to intelligently combine his resources (lights, weapons, special weapons like flare guns which can take out entire groups of enemies) to fight off opponents. This could risk becoming repetitive, but new weapons, enemies and ideas are introduced steadily to vary things up so it never becomes boring. For example, Alan is joined by allies late in the game who fight alongside him and can provide light and weapons support from a search-and-rescue helicopter.

The game is reasonably well-written (a few clunking lines aside) and has some knowing nods at the genre, with Wake starting off by warning us that good stories don't always have fully comprehensible endings. This seems to be Remedy covering their backsides in advance, but in fact the storyline and ideas behind what's going on seem pretty straightforward. Their impact in the world is often weird, sure, but it all hangs together quite well. The characters are well-realised, ranging from Alan's agent and primary ally Barry (who is occasionally annoying, but also has some amusing ideas) to the ageing ex-rock stars whose farmhouse, studio and pyrotechnic equipment can be combined into one of the game's most impressive set pieces. Alan himself can be a bit whiny at times, but given what a bad couple of weeks he's having, this is understandable. More amusing is that Alan (and his more OTT fans) has an opinion of his popular crime fiction (that it's Serious Literature) which seems to be somewhat at odds with what we see of it (which is Average Cheese). The voice acting is overall very decent as well, with Alan's internal monologuing (which occasionally threatens to go all Max Payne on us, but just about holds off) summing up what's going on quite well.

The game is overall engrossing and enjoyable, with a good pace to events. It also has a great amount of content. After Max Payne 2's borderline-embarrassing 5 hour length, Alan Wake by itself clocks in at around 12 hours with another 3 hours on top for the optional extra episodes. It missteps a few times, however. Alan has a number of character animations which cannot be skipped, sometimes leading to unnecessary deaths where you're hammering the controls to fight off a horde of the possessed (or 'Taken' in the game's parlance) and all Alan is doing is ducking his head and waving his arms uselessly. The concluding section of the main game (Episode 6) and the second of the 'special' episodes also go on for way too long, with combat sequence after combat sequence that ultimately becomes tedious. The fact that the ending is sequel-baiting is to be expected (what isn't, these days?), but there is also a lack of closure to several other character arcs outside of Alan's experiences, which is disappointing. In addition, the optional episodes taking place entirely within the 'dark place', meaning that the laws of reality can be dropped altogether, may results in some excellent and inventive set pieces but this also results in the situation where you may find yourself not caring too much, if none of it is 'real' on the game's own terms.

Still, Alan Wake (****) is overall a very strong title. It's richly atmospheric, with excellent graphics and music. The story is interesting and, for a computer game, rather different and original. The combat is satisfying, if occasionally frustrating, and despite the weird and offbeat storyline most things are explained and make sense. The PC version features vastly superior graphics and control options and, as it also includes the two extra episodes for free, gets an extra half-star from me. The game is available now via Steam and in the UK (PC and X-Box 360) and USA (PC and X-Box 360).

Wertzone Classics: Max Payne

New York cop Max Payne is devastated to lose his wife and baby daughter in an attempted burglary. The attackers were high on a new designer drug, called Valkyr. Payne transfers to the DEA and dedicates himself to exposing the origins of the drug, going undercover in the Punchinello crime family to learn more. After three years he is called to an emergency meeting with his handler, Alex, who is promptly murdered in front of him. Max's cover is blown, he's been framed for the murder of his partner and both the police and most of the city's underworld is gunning for him. But with nothing to lose he also has an opportunity to uncover the secret his family died for, and find those responsible.

In 2001 an obscure Finnish developer, Remedy, released one of the most defining action games of all time. Max Payne had been in development for four years, an unheard-of amount of time for the period, as Remedy attempted to get the game's tricky mix of film noir storyline, John Woo-inspired action and a new gameplay mechanic called 'bullet time' (in which time slows down to a point where individual bullets can be seen in motion) to gel together. Other events outpaced the game's gestation: development was effected by the release of The Matrix in 1999, which popularised bullet time on a huge scale and led to the introduction of several homages to the film in the game. The game's lengthy development was likened to that of Daikatana (the most colossal disappointment in the history of gaming), which did not bode well, especially as Max Payne's development was actually longer. Fortunately, upon release Max Payne was critically-acclaimed and commercially hugely successful.


Max Payne's success can be put down to a 'perfect storm' of factors. Most important, and something that is not immediately apparent until you've gotten further into the game, is its knowing sense of black humour and self-referential metacommentary. The game knows it's a somewhat daft shooter and has a lot of fun with the concept. At one point, in a drug-induced hallucination, Payne convinces himself he is in a computer game and is horrified at the idea that his life has been reduced to the repetitive action of shooting whilst flying through the air in slow motion. At another point, two bad guys engage in a debate over the merits of bullet time as a cinematic device (which is usually - fully ironically - followed up by you killing them in bullet time). The game even channels Austin Powers in a sequence where a goon muses to his friend how he hates being dismissed as a faceless minion when he has two children and a loving wife and has been reduced to taking money in return for performing violence acts as a result of an uncaring society (Payne's reaction is to blow him away regardless, naturally).

However, the game then has to walk the tightrope of tonal dissonance. Whilst maintaining its black sense of humour and self-awareness, it also has a very dark and serious storyline at its heart. The game opens with a flashback to the murder of Max's wife and child, in a sobering and depressing level. Then we flash forwards to the present day, but Max's mind remains locked in that house and in that time. On one occasion Max is captured and beaten, and he returns to that house in a dark nightmare sequence. Far worse is a drug-induced fever later on, when the walls stretch out to infinity and he has to find his way through an endless dark chasm, following trails of blood and the screams of his wife and child. It's one of the more disturbing things I've seen in a game (still) but it works by showing us that the game's central protagonist is seriously psychologically damaged and obsessed by an event that he urgently requires closure on. Hence the increasingly insane lengths Payne goes to as the game progresses as he seeks an explanation and then revenge. There's also Payne's rejection of the notion that he is a hero and that he is acting from altruistic motives: at one point he destroys evidence that could have helped clear his name, simply because he has no interest in anything outside of his desire for revenge. Thus the game's storyline and characterisation (often tacked-on excuses for violence) are key in propelling the whole thing forwards and involving the player in the action.

The game's approach to action is almost sublime. Many games require you shoot people, but few do it was much elan as Max Payne. Bullet time allows you to place your shots with more precision than any game before (and almost any since, bar its own sequels), whilst the selection of weapons available is impressive. The game has no truck with stealth or cover systems. If you don't enter a new room by flying forwards in slow motion through the door with two machine pistols extended in front of you read to fire at all times, you're doing it wrong. You need to be on your toes as enemy AI is strong (they're pretty good shots), although a fair few of their combat actions (such as throwing grenades) are scripted, and thus can be avoided easily if you reload a failed mission. There's a variety of enemies, including several 'bosses' (although they are only mildly tougher than standard enemies), but in a mildly genre-subverting move, the end-game boss is a fifty-year-old woman who has no particular special skills or abilities (though you do have to be smart in how you bring her down).

Graphically, the game is a mix of two halves. Environmental graphics remain very solid and there's some great moments as bullets crash into masonry and chunks of it are blown out in clouds of white powder. Muzzle flares and explosions are vivid and the fact that you can see individual bullets (or clouds of bullets from shotguns) flying through the air in bullet time remains impressive. However, the character models are blocky and look mildly ridiculous close-up. Animation is also stodgy, with the lack of moving mouths on talking characters (something already pretty common by 2001) being surprising. Overall, the game looks perfectly acceptable for such an old title and remains fully playable today.

In terms of writing and dialogue the game is almost beyond description. Payne has a constantly-running monologue about what's going on in comic book-like cut scenes which interrupt the action at frequent (sometimes too frequent) intervals. The problem is that Payne has clearly severely overdosed on Bogart movies and Chandler novels and his narration is extremely cheesy:

"The sun went down with practiced bravado. Twilight crawled across the sky, laden with foreboding. I didn't like the way the show started, but they had given me the best seat in the house, front row center."

Sometimes it's just plain clunky:

"Collecting evidence had gotten old a few hundred bullets back. I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I had passed it."

And sometimes, gloriously, the writing goes on an extended trip around Planet Strange and explodes through cheese and corn into something that defies rational explanation:

"The Brooklyn riverfront was a maze of rusty containers, sharp-boned cranes looking up from the snowstorm. On a night like this you couldn't help but think of the dark army of dead men, sleeping with the fishes, cement shoes in line. No minotaur lurked in this labyrinth, but somewhere out there, on the clanking deck of his cargo freighter, the skipper of the Charon was waiting, like the ferryman of the river Styx."

However, even the worst dialogue in the game seems to work through the delivery of voice actor James McCaffrey, whose beyond-world-weary, cynical tones perfectly fit the character and help sell his attitude to the player. Slighly less successful are the character models for the cut scenes, which (due to a budget tightening towards the end of development) are basically the developers and their friends and families rather than professional actors. Max Payne himself is based on the game's writer. Oddly, the amateurishness of these scenes is more endearing than disastrous, and adds to the totally barmy nature of the game.


Ultimately, Max Payne works because it's a perfectly-executed action game with a thoroughly-developed central character and a knowing black humour about its own nature (without ever disappearing up its own posterior). Where the game falters is towards its end, when the thematic and character arcs are not brought to as satisfying a resolution as the revenge plot. Payne achieves some of his objectives, but is still left as a battered, traumatised person. It falls to Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne to provide the resolution for Payne's character that is required.

Max Payne (*****) remains, eleven years on, an engrossing and impressive game, mixing together a variety of ideas and different tones into an entertaining whole. The game can be purchased from Steam for PC now, and is also available on PlayStation 3 (USA) and on iOS devices. Max Payne 2 is also available now. Max Payne 3 will be released imminently on PC, X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3.