Max Payne (series): Difference between revisions

* [[Anticlimax Boss]]: Several. Jack Lupino is as tough as a boss should be, since he takes more bullets than most ''groups'' of enemies you meet to kill, but most bosses are either relatively easy to take down, or suffer from a crippling weakness to being shot a dozen times. In the second game, Kaufman is made out to be a really tough guy, to the point that when you meet him, you know it's going to be tough, but he still goes down to a third of a magazine (ten bullets) from an AK-47.

** Even Lupino is laughably simple, since you fight him in an absolutely huge cathedral and his only weapon is a teeny little sawn-off shotgun with no range at all. It's his cadre of [[Elite Mooks]] that makes him dangerous.

** Played straight and averted in the third game; {{spoiler|Becker and his cohort}} aren't too tough themselves, the former being more of a mere survival gauntlet and the latter being that and a [[Puzzle Boss]], but a couple of times throughout the game, Max encounters armored foes with heavy weapons who are nigh impossible to kill quickly without taking insane amounts of risks. This is especially the worst at the {{spoiler|Imperial Palace}}, where [[Timed Mission|you have about twenty seconds to kill a single one of these guys]] or [[Nintendo Hard|die and get sent to the last checkpoint of the whole section]]; many players get stuck here.

* [[Art Evolution]]: In the first game, all the characters in the graphic novel sequences were played by random dudes from the programmers' offices, and it definitely shows (the goofy grins that everyone sports in the supposedly "serious" scenes is a pretty big giveaway). In the second game the character models were based on actual professional models, giving the cast a more polished, if less unintentionally amusing, appearance.

* [[Awesome Yet Practical]]: You'll find yourself leaping through the air firing your handguns akimbo a lot.

* [[World of Symbolism]]:

** The original game is all an allegory for Ragnarok. The story is set during the worst blizzard in the history of New York, which parallels the Fimbulwinter that starts off Ragnarok. It begins with the murder of Alex Balder, who represents Baldr. Jack Lupino explicitly identifies himself as the Fenris Wolf at one point, and runs a club ''called'' Ragna Rock. Alfred Woden (Odin), a one-eyed and secretive man who apparently knows all the secrets in the world, dispatches the lone mortal hero against the forces of the duplicitous Nicole Horne, who has already ensured the deaths of everyone in Woden's circle except himself. The drug Valkyr is also a reference to Valkyries, who transport the dead to the afterlife.

** The second game includes a number of references to ''Paradise Lost'' and ''Genesis,'' with Vlad representing the serpent/Satan, Woden representing God and Max & Mona representing Adam & Eve. The final level includes wall art depicting the Garden of Eden.