Is it good? Ehhh not really. The big problem is that enemy AI consists entirely of shooting at you the second you're in sight, which is all well and good when your dodging around corners but there are lots of situations where you're stuck taking cheap hits. The devs seemed aware of this and gave you four lives per level that instantly drop you right where you died. Even with that some levels can be a bit annoying and take a couple tries, the manor and underground base especially.
Is it incredibly ambitious, impressive, and worth playing for fans of Max Payne? Abso-fucking-lutely. An incredible amount of work has been put in to faithfully demake Max Payne for the Game Boy Advance, with locations seemingly recycling textures from the main game and memorable setpieces recreated. When the gameplay works as intended you're shootdodging around familiar environments and it's all tied together with *fully voiced" cutscenes from the original game! A couple levels had to be cut - the boat and parking garage and the nightmare sequences aren't playable - so there are a couple awkward cuts in the story, but the amount of effort into making it all feel like Max Payne is incredible and worth a couple hours of your time if you're a fan.

Reviewed on Dec 23, 2023


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