Beat Max Payne 1 for the first time. Holy fuck this game has aged phenomenally. I knew Max Payne was famous for the slow-mo, but the graphic novel’s writing and voice acting blew me away.

This game was fun as hell. It felt suprisingly long for me. Maybe it's cause of the way I played it. I felt like every single room and enemy encounter was designed to be treated as puzzle with a correct way to solve. The quicksave feature was a blessing in this.

After a while I got into the grove of it and realized how every gun is specialized for a specific type of encounter. Guns for close range, guns for mid range, guns to dispose of guys quickly. Combine that with the slow-mo abilities and it's a hell of a good time.

God this was such a cinematic experience. It felt like a gritty, noir early 2000's crime movie with Matrix inspired action scenes. No wonder a couple years after this came out Hollywood jumped on the oppertunity to make a movie.

The writing in this blew me away, Max's monolouge is just chef's kiss. Sooo many fucking noir ass lines dropped out of nowhere. "Cold like a gun". "Snow was falling like pitchforks from hell"

Also, the final stage is iconic af. Raiding a corporate building and suddenly getting chased by a chopper are memorable af.

My only complaint is the game starts to get repetitive after a while. This is another reason it felt long to me. It's just move, dodge and shoot again and again.