Max Payne Kung Fu – A Martial Arts Gem

I know what you’re all thinking. Max Payne is not a martial arts game. Oh, but it is if you know where to look. There is a Kung Fu patch that turns it into a completely different game. When I first played Max Payne I played it through, gathering my weapons, enjoying the story, finished it and enjoyed the game. Then not long after I read about a Kung Fu patch so gave it a go.

It was so much fun I played the game all over again, didn’t even use any of my weapons, didn’t need them. I was on full ammo near enough the entire time. You can still use them but cooler. You know in Hard Target where Van Damme pumps a couple of rounds into an enemy then runs up and performs some kick combos, well now Max Payne can do that.

You can run up walls, do backflips, front flips, barrel rolls, B-twists, perform multiple kicks and punch combos. Even use a staff.

The collision detection has been slightly changed to. Can’t quite explain it but it works for the mod especially with the slow-motion kills. Even if the guy is dead, if he’s still on his feet you can keep hitting him. Because enemies are never truly dead until they fall over, you can basically juggle enemies with your kicks and punches keeping them alive until they fall over. I had one slow-motion kill guy against the wall and I must have been beating him against that wall for about 10 minutes as it played his slow-motion death animation over and over then you see my next kick heading towards his head to start the animation again.

Nothing else has changed, Max Mayne looks exactly the same and so do all the enemies. It even pays homage to the dojo scene from The Matrix as a training level. You can basically practice in a Dojo against immortal enemies to learn the controls. What’s funny is this 3rd party patch turns Max Payne into a game that’s better than most 3D beat ’em ups that are really trying to be, beat ’em ups. It was so good I was going to include it on my top 12 retro martial arts games but not really retro enough.

If you loved the original Max Payne then it’s worth going back to just for this patch. Linked below

Max Payne Kung Fu patch