Here’s the video, which is a slick couple of minutes of nostalgia as Sam puts on the old leather coat and I-just-smelled-a-fart expression: Alice wrote her own birthday message to Max yesterday, celebrating its overwrought dialogue and slow-mo shotgun blasts. Personally I always preferred Max Payne 2. It jettisoned the awful dreamscape platforming, cut the running time down to a taut six hours, and wrung a lot more intentional comedy from its hard-boiled purple prose. Also, it was one of the first games to have physics! Before Half-Life 2’s gravity gun, Max Payne 2 paired its slow-motion dives with shelves covered in boxes that would spin and fall as you shot them. Wonderful. Of course, celebrating a sequel is never as fun as celebrating the original, and Max Payne remains a landmark game. Also, props to Sam Lake, who clearly has a sense of humour, and seems to still fit inside a jacket he wore twenty years ago. No mean feat.
