This is a game that oozes charm and really nails the postmodern take on neo-noir it’s going for. Tone, atmosphere, and writing are top notch. Gameplay is good but doesn’t shine in the same way. This is a pretty difficult and at times rather unfair game that starts to creep towards a trial and error experience due to enemy placement and the power of their shots. Your pattern of play towards the very difficult endgame will probably be like this: enter room, bullet time shoot the two enemies in the corner, get one-shotted by a barely visible enemy with a shotgun who’s 50 feet behind you, reload your game, make sure to shoot the shotgun enemy as well, keep resetting until you can successfully kill him and the other two. This isn’t a great gameplay loop but Max Payne’s charm and the tension and challenge created by its gameplay allowed me to mostly ignore this issue. Moreover, even when gameplay boils down to trial and error there’s enough creativity and dexterity demanded of the player that Max Payne never feels monotonous and can’t be beaten simply through rote memorization of enemy positions. I would definitely recommend this game to people who like shooters and people who enjoy playing games with a really clear and well defined artistic vision. I would also recommend downloading some community fix mods because the game has some bugs and can be quite difficult to run on modern machines.