Max Payne (series): Difference between revisions

* [[Anti-Frustration Features]]: In the first game, the final part requires an explosive weapon and a sniper rifle. Two mooks will inexplicably have these just in case. In the third, your health will reset to full if you die and need to go back to a checkpoint, even if you were on the verge of death when you trigger it.

* [[Anti-Hero]]: Max is a III or a IV.

** 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.

* [[Arrow Cam]]: Employed whenever Max or Mona use a sniper rifle. The third game includes slo-mo bullet hits for some enemies, usually the last one in a group.

* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: When Max finds Nicole's computer, he says, "Hacking through Horne's computer would have unearthed criminal plans, strategies for world domination, spy helicopter reports, illegal wire tap recordings, Internet porno, all of the above, take your pick."

* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: Cleaners in the second have a tendency to run after their own grenades. Halfway referenced by Max:

{{quote|'''Max''': "Cleaners" was a misnomer. They were making a mess of it.}}

* [[Bad Dreams]]: Boy ''howdy'', does Max have these. Often, these segue into [[Nightmare Fuel]], and the levels in the first game move into [[Scrappy Level]] territory.

* [[Bag of Spilling]]: Max is twice relieved of all or most of his weapons in the first game, and three times in the second. Generally Justified (captured by bad guys, left for dead, in a hospital, etc). The third game constantly justifies it with most missions taking place on different days and Max showing up with the logical equipment for the job, instead of meeting his boss with a grenade launcher strapped to his back.

* [[Bang Bang BANG]]: Averted with the 9mm pistol, which actually sounds fairly like the real thing. Played straight with every other gun, though.

* [[Bank Robbery]]: Max stops one of these near the beginning of the first game, completely unintentionally (he was there for a meet with Alex about something completely unrelated).

* [[Colour-Coded for Your Convenience]]: Near the end of "The Great American Savior of the Poor" in ''3'', {{spoiler|the pillars that Max has to place C4 on}} are red.

* [[Continuity Nod]]: Max guessing that he'll find the third game's final boss ({{spoiler|Victor}}) at an airstrip. "Rich people love to fly away."

* [[Convection, Schmonvection]] / [[Hollywood Fire]]: On both games you have to navigate through burning buildings and the heat isn't a problem at all. If you touch the flames, however, you get damaged. In the sequel, characters at least cover their mouths against the smoke. A section of the third game takes place in a bombed building that's badly damaged enough to be practically ''melting'' under the heat, but Max and the enemies don't seem to mind much even when walking on glowing red beams.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Nicole Horne.

* [[Enemy Mine]]: The [[Escort Mission]] in ''Max Payne 2''.

* [[Enemy Chatter]]: You can listen in on the [[Mooks]] talking about action movies and TV series.

* [[Everybody's Dead, Dave]]: The very first line of the first game: "They were all dead." Also occurs in the third game {{spoiler|during the attack on Branco's building after telling Rodrigo to close up his office...}}

* [[Evil Counterpart]]: Max and Mona for Vlad and {{spoiler|Winterson}}. Even their clothing colors mirror each other, and the {{spoiler|criminal/cop}} genders are reversed. Note also how {{spoiler|Winterson and Vlad apparently can't keep their hands off each other,}} while Max and Mona barely touch the other. Except for that one scene.

* [[Gun Porn]]: The guns have detailed animations, which was uncommon in third person shooters at the time of the first game. They also make pretty sexy sounds while reloading during [[Bullet Time]].

* [[He Knows Too Much]]: The reason Michelle was marked for death in the first game.

** Explicitly explained in the first game. In exchange for killing Nicole Horne, Alfred Woden promises that no charges will ever be filed against Max for any of the murders he's committed in his quest for revenge. Quite justified, because Woden needs something to offer to Max.

** One wonders how Max managed to beat the rap from his antics in the second game, given that he kills hundreds of goons, actively assists a wanted assassin in killing even more goons, and Act III outright has Max being hunted for {{spoiler|shooting his partner. Plus, Woden gets killed near the end of the game leaving Max without any friends in the power elite to bail him out.}} For what it's worth, everyone Max kills is either a mobster or secret society rent-a-commando actively trying to murder him, and {{spoiler|his partner was literally in bed with the [[Big Bad]].}}

* [[Hollywood Silencer]]: Taken to egregious levels in 3, where Max duct tapes a water bottle to the end of his pistol at the beginning of Chapter 12. ''And it works.''

* [[How We Got Here]]: The first game opens immediately after Max kills Nicole Horne, and then flashes back to how he got involved in the whole thing. The second game start right after {{spoiler|Mona dies}}, then flashes back to Max in the hospital after {{spoiler|falling down a hole}} earlier that night, which serves as the first level of the game. At the end of the level, Max finds {{spoiler|Winterson's body}}, which causes him to flash back (that's right, a flashback within a flashback) to the events that led to {{spoiler|Max shooting and killing Winterson and falling down a hole}}, starting with a routine mission the previous night. By the time ''that'' flashback ends, there are only a few levels left of the game, which are spent telling how Max wound up at the scene of {{spoiler|Mona's death}}. The third game shows how Max got from the NYPD Detective he was in the second game to the alcoholic screw-up that he is in the third game. Unlike the first two games that took place over two or three nights, the third game will take place over a few months and the flashback sequences are spread around evenly.

** [[Shown Their Work|The Beretta Model 12 submachine gun has also had its stock and foregrip removed to allow it to be fit in Max's shoulder holsters]] (although both it and the Sawed-Off Shotgun still look ridiculous when they're stowed there).

** There's an element of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] in play in the early games, however, as several frames in the graphic novels in the first game depicts Max carrying a duffel bag full of weapons.

* [[Idiot Ball]]: In ''Max Payne 3'', Max is apparently so drunk during the Panama mission that he {{spoiler|completely overlooks how suspicious Passos is acting, and only starts realizing how hinky the entire thing is in hindsight, when he's sober and talking about it two months later with de Silva. It's possible he reacted to finding the ship's passengers' bodies by crawling even further into a bottle and has been trying not to think about it at all, but it's still a fairly significant plot hole.}}

** Also when Max {{spoiler|sees Fabiana and Marcelo being held at gunpoint by Serrano and his cronies, he carelessly busts through the door, turns his gun on Serrano, yells at everyone to drop their weapons despite the fact that he's outnumbered at least 12 to 1 and he almost immediately gets disarmed and Fabiana gets shot as a result, wouldn't it have made more sense for Max had shot Serrano and his mooks through the window? then maybe he could've saved her.}}

** Some of Max's dialogue hints at a [[In-Universe|desire for]] [[Catharsis Factor|some much needed catharsis]] for which he requires a ([[Asshole Victim|not unjustified]]) bloodbath. This would account for his "path of most resistance" mindset in the latter half of the game.

* [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]]: Lampshaded by Max during Mona's section in the second game:

** Then in the third game, a news report clue shows an artist's rendering of Max, and it's the Sam Lake face in all its squinty, eyebrow-raising glory.

* [[Psycho Serum]]: Valkyr; {{spoiler|originally conceived as a [[Super Serum]], the military abandoned it after the negative side effects (addiction, hallucinations, violent tendencies, declaring yourself to be the Fenris Wolf) became known. Nicole Horne, the project lead, decided to sell it as a street drug. In the process, she had Max's wife killed.}}

* [[Puzzle Boss]]: Both games' final bosses stay well out of your line of fire, requiring you to find an indirect way to kill them. One boss in ''Max Payne 3'' has to be coaxed out of cover by {{spoiler|shooting the weak ceiling above him.}}

* [[Ragdoll Physics]]: Implied in the first game, but actually present in the second. The third game uses the Euphoria software that was present in ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'' and ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', allowing for more realistic bullet damage and physics. Even Max's shootdodging incorporates Euphoria, leading him to painfully slam into whatever objects the player nonchalantly flings him into or tipping him over onto his back or shoulders from his legs hitting a desk on the way over.

* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Both Horne and {{spoiler|Vlad}} undergo these as Max closes in.

* [[Vocal Dissonance]]: Max's voice ''really'' doesn't fit the facial expressions Sam Lake uses in the first game.

** In the third game, Max takes a .50 to the arm and is left stumbling and half-coherent from blood loss and shock, but is back to normal with painkillers and bandages.

** More to the definition of the trope, the third game's multi-player features health regeneration, affected by how much weight the player is carrying.