And I think it's for this reason that Max Payne’s cliche ridden story works. The story of Max Payne is derivative, filled with cute references and liberally copy and pastes from many other crime films, but is somehow still an enormously enjoyable tale. It stands out all the more so because of how universally terrible game stories tend to be. Max Payne isn’t quite an abridged series, but it is quite clearly a story written by FANS of the genre.

Max Payne isn’t by definition a private eye, but he is forced to act alone. He's a hardboiled detective with a dark past scribbled on his stupid looking face, a meeting point between Watchmen’s The Comedian and Rorschach. This character is revealed to us through his narration of the story, using the style established in the classic noir of Sunset Boulevard or Double Indemnity. Metaphor and simile are used every second sentence, relayed in a sarcastic drawl, his cynicism on display for all to see.

“The cops arrived, sirens singing in the off-key harmony of a manic depressive choir”.

It's laughable at first blush. He can’t even talk about car sirens or the snowstorm outside without dipping into yet another poetic likeness. But it's underwritten with the humanity that shows when his facade begins to crack.

He boasts: “Staggering on the mill roof in ice and snow and wild wind, I was a ninja, my kung fu was strong”. But then immediately admits: “I wasn’t kidding anybody. At best I was Superman on Kryptonite”.

Or take my favourite moment, when he delves through Valkyrie’s files.

‘’Just when you thought you had reached the deepest depths of horror, it suddenly got worse. How to turn off that small voice inside your head that started to whisper that you should be glad that now, if not before, your revenge was justifiable on any conceivable moral scale? That small voice proved, beyond any doubt, that I was damned.’’