I bought all the Max Payne games, full price on the Xbox Store, and then the next week they went on sale. Boo! Here's what I think.
Max Payne (2001)
I avoided the original Max Payne for a long time. I occasionally tried to play it, but the overdone, hammy faux-noir voiceover always turned me off (I really dislike voiceover narration in things in general). But this time, playing Payne in lovely HD backwards compatibility on the Xbox? It was lovely. I still the writing is way overdone and has all the maturity of a high school lit mag, poetry on the level of Fall Out Boy lyrics, but the shooting is excellent and rarely gets old. There's a few parts where the difficulty is all out of whack, where the level design punishes rather than facilitates, but this is a good time of shootin' some dudes and feeling real sad about my dead wife. Max Payne is also the perfect length; long enough to feel worthwhile, but also short enough not to annoy. I shouldn't have ignored the series for so long. I'm not perfect.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003)
I actually appreciate how short Max Payne 2 is. I know some people act like that's a problem, but not for me! I like when games respect my time. Everything is improved in this one from the first: the voice-acting, the writing, the shooting, the level design, etc. It's a true sequel. This one has ragdoll physics in it, of the early-aughts variety, when ragdoll physics were new and in no way resembled the behavior of actual bodies, but instead looked like there were programmed by some kid very fond of tossing his action figures down the stairs and watching them bounce. This is a much better all-around video game. I don't know what happened in it because when Max's flowery voice-over begins, I tend to tune out, but I know some stuff happened and he hooked up with that lady in comic book panel form, which I thought was pretty funny. Max Payne 2 is sweet. I played the PS2 port one time and woof. Get this on modern Xbox consoles and it runs like a dream, even if it isn't a one-to-one match with the vaunted PC version.
Max Payne 3 (2012)
I hated Max Payne 3. Even by the end, when I sort of came around to some parts of it, I still think it is largely one of the the most sluggish, gross, boring, unnecessary, linear, childish, clunky, saccharine, idiotic, and frustrating games I've maybe ever played. Hey, it looks nice. There's hella animations and they blend together well. But playing 3? When the cutscenes occasionally permit you to? No, thanks. Everything about the visual style and presentation annoys me: the garish visual design. the hilariously pointless words flashed on screen, artificial artifacting, the unending, soul-crushingly tedious and unskippable cutscenes with writing a high school sophomore could be proud of only after watching a bunch of "badass" movies. Animation priority is all over the place. Max moves like a tank, delayed as hell, lag all over the place, and you just feel like you're sliding backwards the entire time you play. But as soon as I learned to tune out the cutscenes, and as the game finally got into the mood of letting you play for more than a minute or two at a time, I started to like it a bit more. Some of the gunplay wasn't bad, but that's as far as I will go on this one. It stinks.
Bonus! Movie Review: Max Payne (2008)
It stinks. Mos Def is in it.
