And so it begins.

Max plays like any number of action games before it - let's not kid ourselves, this is a familiar premise. You, some bad guys, a some guns - lots of guns. What makes it different? Chances are good that you have read about it's unique slowmo feature (more on that in a minute) that lets you deal out maximum carnage with maximum style, but that's not all - this is no one trick pony. This game just ooozes polish, like none before it. The hundreds of little moments of genius design, combined with an edgy "graphic novel" presentation of the hard-edged storyline and graphical finesse lift this game into the realms of legend - if you want a game that you can really impress with or one that you'll find yourself spending hours discussing with your workmates, look no further; it doesn't get better than this.

Technically, this game engine is impressive - it will run on a vast array of equipment, with many options to tweak it even further - from the bottom of the range 400MHz computer of yesterday through to tomorrows multi-gigahertz mega beasts, you can push your PC hard but still play it. The features that this engine implements include many firsts - from the technical (e.g. Radiosity Lighting and Hardware T&L combined) to gameplay elements (adaptive difficulty - this game is as hard as you can handle, but no harder), it's all here.