It's August! Twice in the past month, PC Gamer has focused on the classic Max Payne titles in new articles.
Great Moments in PC Gaming: Max Payne's Face
Back in July, they spotlighted the original Max Payne game in the "Great Moments" feature, nominating the original look by Sam Lake (writer on the game and current Creative Director at Remedy) as their Great Moment. Initially they debated whether a look can technically be a moment, but concluded that as it's an iconic expression, it counted.
Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.You can read their full Great Moments piece, HERE.
Can a man's face be a moment? This one can. It's a photograph wrapped around a low-poly head to represent the angst-ridden gunslinger Max Payne. It's a picture of Remedy writer and designer Sam Lake, who chose to represent the character's deep pain at the loss of his family by scrunching up all the parts of his face at the same time.
Should we do another take, maybe more brooding and serious? No, Sam. This is it, the expression Max Payne players will be looking at for 12 hours. Nailed it.
Why I Love Max Payne 2's Twisted Funhouse
Their second article was by Andy Kelly who reminisced about one of his favourite level from Max Payne II: The Fall of Max Payne, the funhouse.
Following Mona Sax's trail, Max enters a funhouse themed around an old in-game television show, Address Unknown. In the original Max Payne title, TV shows such as Lords & Ladies and Address Unknown were interesting breaks in the overall narrative, it added more authenticity to the world but it worked as a standalone piece. In the sequel, the adverts, the shows, the billboards all referred back to Max Payne's story in some way. The Noir York funhouse was a dark humour approach to Max's story.
Address Unknown is the inspiration for A Linear Sequence of Scares, a brief but memorable level from the first act of Max Payne 2. Max visits contract killer Mona Sax, who’s hiding out in an apartment above an abandoned funhouse based on the show. Max comments that the place was shut down after the series was cancelled in the ’90s. But as he makes his way through it, the place is fully operational, complete with corny jump scares and cardboard recreations of scenes from the show.Click HERE to read the full Max Payne 2 funhouse article.
