Max Payne is a man with nothing to lose in the violent, cold urban night. A fugitive undercover cop framed for murder, hunted by cops and the mob, Max is a man with his back against the wall, fighting a battle he cannot hope to win. Max Payne is a relentless story-driven game about a man on the edge, fighting to clear his name while struggling to uncover the truth about his slain family amongst a myriad of plot-twists and twisted thugs in the gritty bowels of New York during the century's worst blizzard.

The groundbreaking original cinematic action-shooter, Max Payne introduced the concept of Bullet Time in videogames. Through its stylish slow-motion gunplay combined with a dark and twisted story, Max Payne redefined the action-shooter genre.

In December 2001, as New York City is enduring the tail end of the worst snow blizzard in the history of the city, Max Payne, a renegade DEA agent and former NYPD detective, is standing at the top of a skyscraper with a sniper rifle in his hands, smiling, as police units arrive on the scene to arrest him. He then experiences flashbacks from three years ago and the last two days he experienced. Three years earlier, on August 22nd 1998, Max was working as a regular NYPD detective, having just finished his day's work. His longtime friend and DEA agent, Alex Balder, invites him to transfer into the DEA, but Max declines the offer, wanting to focus on his full-time life with his wife, Michelle, and their newborn daughter, Rose. As he returns to his house in New Jersey, he finds that a trio of junkies had broken into his house, all addicted on a brand new designer drug, Valkyr. Max receives a call from a mysterious woman who seems pleased at the trouble in the house and refuses to call for help. Max rushes to aid his family and kill the junkies, but is too late as he finds his wife shot dead, and his daughter slaughtered. After his family's funeral, Payne accepts Alex's offer, and transfers to the DEA at his own request to stop the spreading of the drugs.