Max Payne - A Rare Union of Bliss

"The feeling hit me like a point-blank shot straight in the face... Something was not right about this."

Max Payne, a suitably grizzled New York drugs detective, with an even more grizzled name, has just returned home and is only a few comic panels away from finding his beautiful wife and kid with the contents of their heads emptied out on to the lino.

The opening line is brutal, simple and direct, but it's all too easy to undervalue the importance of good old-fashioned storytelling in a game. Consider UT3: great game, but just look at the tosh holding it together.