The Minimum Payne Episode

[fishbang]

What should have been a Wednesday episode is now available here (http://ingamechat.net/audio/IGC20081022.mp3).

The cast is several shades of livid about the theatrical adaptation of Max Payne. How it happened that Max has moved from an unapologetic revenge tale known for stellar gunplay and justifiable homicide to something so ponderous and uptight is well beyond us. This is hardly the first time we’ve seen Hollywood drain the blood from a compelling game world, and you might say our best defense against disappointment is to expect this treatment at every turn; to accept corruption as the default state of affairs. You may well be right, but Max Payne’s tragedy should muster a sense of rage from someone, and if it can’t be from the man in question then we can damn well provide it from the gallery.

We’re also pretty grouchy about...whatever it is we managed to focus on during the second half of our program. Microsoft is toying with technology that will allow real-time censoring of objectionable content over Live’s voice service. We’re not terribly sore about MS censorship, but we expect that something like this, if implemented, wouldn’t work to any useful degree, and would more likely degrade the general experience. The additional point is that, to us, objectionable content is far less about dirty words (of which we’re quite fond) than it is about the people themselves - people responsible for the kind of ingenious douchebaggery that technology cannot selectively repress. We’re unable to segregate ourselves online with the same degree of finesse and reliability as in the world, and sometimes the existing solutions feel woefully inadequate.

[kyrieee]

You should replay Max Payne 2 instead, or maybe both
I played both recently because Steam had them on sale (both for 9,99$!) and the original hasn't aged that well gameplay wise while the second one really has. Bullet time works infinitely better in MP2

[Psykoboy2]

I'll probably go through both again at some point.

By the way, thanks for listening, congrats on the first post, and welcome to CoG.

[diablopath]

This one isn't showing up on iTunes either ; ;

[Psykoboy2]

This one isn't showing up on iTunes either ; ;

Thanks for letting us know. We'll get it back up and running as soon as possible.

[darkbase]

You should replay Max Payne 2 instead, or maybe both
I played both recently because Steam had them on sale (both for 9,99$!) and the original hasn't aged that well gameplay wise while the second one really has. Bullet time works infinitely better in MP2

I have to disagree, I'm loving the first one even more than the second, in fact I'd probably never replay MP2 if it wasn't for the "Dead man Walking" mode. The actors and art panels are a lot cheesier in the first, but I still love it. MP2 did improve a lot, but the first just feels... darker and more hardcore, I guess?

I'm really happy to see someone else angry and rambling about how awful the movie was, though. I felt like a jackass during the movie and on the drive home with my friends, but I feel vindicated :mad:

Man, listening to this, I am wishing I was in the room with you guys. You are hitting the nail on the head about this movie.

[Psykoboy2]

This one isn't showing up on iTunes either ; ;

This should now be fixed, thanks to Strax.

[kyrieee]

The thing with Max Payne 1 is that you are really reliant on the shoot-dodge move. You can't enter bullet time when you're moving without doing a shoot-dodge and it's really limiting. It's too hard for its own good. It turns into a quicksave fest.

In MP2 you can just run into a room, turn on bullet time and kill everyone (not that it's too easy though). It's just more fun (I think!). It doesn't have those terrible sequences when you're walking on (and falling off of) synapses either. I think I like the story in the second one better too. It doesn't have any huge 'save the world' motivation in it, it's just a story about characters which is kind of unique for a videogame.

On an unrelated note everyone should play World of Goo! It's amazing, and it only gets better and better with every chapter. It should have massive buzz but it doesn't for some reason

[darkbase]

The thing with Max Payne 1 is that you are really reliant on the shoot-dodge move. You can't enter bullet time when you're moving without doing a shoot-dodge and it's really limiting. It's too hard for its own good. It turns into a quicksave fest.


Not true, go into the options menu. You have to assign "Bullet time only" to a button (like right mouse, and bullet dodge combo to shift) and you're set. The main difference in bullet time between to two though, is in MP1 you're always in super-slo-mo and you often don't have enough to take everyone out, you have to be quick. In MP2, your time slows down more and more with each person you kill while using it, allowing you to save more of your bullet time for later use.

[danielOut]

I think I like the story in the second one better too. It doesn't have any huge 'save the world' motivation in it, it's just a story about characters which is kind of unique for a videogame.

On an unrelated note everyone should play World of Goo! It's amazing, and it only gets better and better with every chapter. It should have massive buzz but it doesn't for some reason

First, I think everyone on the show will completely argue against MP2 having a better story than MP1. It is a passionate viewpoint we have on the subject, and brings forth a frothy rage that is above and beyond our normal, non-frothy rage. The gameplay in MP2 was better, in my opinion, but the MP2 story couldn't hold a candle, matchstick, or even dinky christmas light to what went on in MP1, both in terms of content and presentation.

World of Goo is full of win. I've been pumped about this game for months, sustaining myself on replay after replay of the early demo that the preorder folks got. Having it in my hands elicits some kind of supernatural joy; the gameplay is absolutely brilliant. 2 guys, a handful of coffee shops, and you get a masterpiece. The difficulty scale is also a blast. Playing it with a friend (we're alternating levels) and it is really fun to see the different solutions that we come up with. I get stumped on a level, and hand it to him and he'll blaze through it. The opposite being true sometimes as well. Watching two different kinds of thinkers solve these puzzles is part of the entertainment for me.
Also, the art is [Unreal Tournament Announcer Voice]GODLIKE[/Unreal Tournament Announcer Voice]

[kyrieee]

Not even a matchstick? That's pretty harsh
They're really different though.

If by story you just mean the events and the order in which they take place then MP1's is pretty straightforward. Alex gets shot, you go after Vinnie, then Lupino, you get caught, go after Punchinello and then silly conspiracy stuff happens.

That's not the interesting part of the game, to me at least. The characters and how they're presented is what's interesting. I didn't care at all about finding out that Horn was behind it all. There was no suspense in the story, it was just a linear set of revelations.

The story in MP2 was much more convoluted, but there were always questions in it. You never fully knew what was going on. Granted, you never really did in MP1 either, but you kind of thought you did. In MP2 all the characters were there from the beginning and you gradually found out stuff about them as opposed to new characters being introduced all the time. I liked that because I really liked the characters and you got to know them much better. I think that game is more about mona than max though. Hismotivations are really vague. There's none of the 'going on a rampage and killing lots of dudes', it all just kind of happens, like he didn't mean to. I guess it doesn't really fit his character, but it's still fittingly tragic

I felt like there was more story in the second one to like, but we all have different taste and there's nothing wrong with that!


World of Goo has its own tetris syndrome. It makes long lines of text look like they're wobbling when you've built too many bridges.

Also, I thought the announcer only said that to me =/ so much for monotheism

[diablopath]

This should now be fixed, thanks to Strax.

Yessir. thanks a bunch.

Really enjoy the show, you guys rawk.

[Spigot]

I almost went to see Max Payne the weekend before last, but thank the lord, a crisis at work kept me from seeing it.

It's a shame, because if any game could have been easily made into a movie, it was Max Payne. Sigh.

As for World Of Goo, I love what I've seen of it (I played the demo on Steam) but I just can't bite for the $20 price tag. I might snag it for $15 on the Wii at some later date or just wait for a price drop. It's hard to justify buying it at that cost when I have a game like Elefunk on the PSN for $5. Of course, World of Goo has a lot more polish and spunk, but not $20 worth. For $10, I'd be all over WoG... At least at this time of year.

[Khrymsyn]

As an odd aside, anyone who wanted Max Payne 3 should go play Strangehold. Sure, the game's not nearly the same story wise, but after I went back to play MP1, I was in complete shock at just how much of Stranglehold's gameplay was directly lifted out of Max Payne 1.

That being said... I'm so freaking sick of video game movies changing the story of the video game. Holy hell. There's tons of talk aobut how there's really not many good Video game movies (although there are some acceptable ones, I think we can agree on that). I still go back to the idea that these movies would be better if things aren't constantly so "re-imagined" and actually taken as serious source material. Movies based on books have this problem at times too, but occasionally you get a FANTASTIC translation and usually those are some of the closest to the book plots. It's not rocket science here.

[Spigot]

I actually quite enjoyed the Silent Hill movie because it stuck to the core story enough and didn't completely alter it to make it into something it wasn't. Even the Resident Evil movies (the first moreso than the others) did a good job of sticking to the story as much as possible.

And as has been said so many times, Max Payne was essentially storyboarded out for them. It would have been so easy to lift the story and script from the game and make it into a crazy fun movie a la Shoot Em Up. Sigh.

[Deadend]

Best live action videogame movie is hands down Mortal Kombat.

[Spigot]

Best live action videogame movie is hands down Mortal Kombat.As much as it pains me, I'd probably have to agree with this. The sequel, not so much, but the original was great... in a cheesy kind of way.

I still liked Silent Hill though.

[danielOut]

wow, it is really sad how true that is.

[Spigot]

Daniel, is your avatar a pixel? :)

[danielOut]

back on the cog launch day, the avatar size limit was changed a couple times. there was a joke made that it should be 4x4. imagine the possibilities! picking 16 pixels to represent yourself. and so i made this. and haven't changed it. i like it, though eventually i'll find something better