It was not just the thrilling action sequences, it was not only the beautifully dark, almost gothic, story, it was not only like unfolding a comic/graphic novel that you craved to see the next page or chapter until its end, it was not only the Matrix-like Bullet-Time combos, it was not only the John Woo references, it was not only the haunting almost chilling music (especially the save-game page music), it was not only the unimaginable conclusion. it was all of this, and much much more...
It was the total immersion of this game, in a noir world, that you actually played, and lived the life of Max Payne, the whole of it, from finding the clues to solve your crime, to the comic strips, to the highly imaginative tv series that you watched in-game (Address Unknown comes to mind),
there was a game that had everything, and so realistic at the time as a whole, which represented much more than the sum of its parts... Testament to that the countless hours many people my age (1977) had been obliged to play at the beginning of the milenium just to get to the end of this beautiful game, and then replayed it just to savour the feeling of that first discovery...
It was beautiful, especially the first instalment (Max Payne 2 was also very good) and would be worth a resurgence of Max Payne 1 +2 at some time in the future...