Price: £29.99 Players: 1 After playing the PC incarnation of this game in 2002, and then the Xbox sequel last Christmas, the style was so lush and cool as you jumped about in slow-motion that surely there was no hope of it being translated to the Gameboy Advance? The storyline finds you, as the eponymous Max Payne, whose family was murdered three years ago by a gang of drug-crazed junkies. You're now out for revenge and have to trawl the streets of New York, amongst the pimps, prostitutes and all-round weirdo scum basically blasting almost everyone who gets in your way. To make matters worse, your boss - the only man who knows your true identity - has just been murdered, and you're in the frame for it. So, you're stuffed basically. Does it convert acceptably to the GBA? In a word, and surprisingly, yes.

Fans of the series will know what to expect - make Max run from room to room across 12 levels, shooting the bad guys and just don't suspect that any of them might be a friend to you. They'd kill you and everyone you ever cared about if they got the chance - and even if they are friendly then they can't be killed by you so don't worry about that. Along the way you'll collect keys to open locked doors (surprisingly!), plenty of ammo and power-ups in the form of painkillers. However, not all of these are perfectly obvious at first as they don't always just lie around, so check every recepticle in the room before you leave as you never know what it'll contain, although toilets only flush and showers only dispense water. Also, you can shoot plenty of breakable things from mirrors to Aquacool water dispensers (that'll teach 'em not to restock it in time at work!) At certain points in the game your forced to cover old ground, such as when you find a baddie and have to tail him, but don't worry as it doesn't mean endless backtracking across familiar territory because some heavies will have been respawned.

Despite the GBA's limited graphics, the fluidity is surprisingly good. Given its dark look - and also its dark nature - it's impossible to play this on a standard unit so really needs one of the more recent "SP" models complete with a backlight. The sound isn't a great deal to shout about though. Not much goes into the FX as you shoot a Desert Eagle or use your pump-action shotgun - although my weapon of choice is the sawed-off!, and the voices are rather scratchy during the intro movies, but these comic-book moments are a nice touch and are all brought across to the handheld from the PC/console version. However, it does pick up the pace when you enter a room and the music speeds up to indicate heavy action about to take place. Gameplay and enjoyment-wise is where it scores highly, as described below when my nephew was playing it. Sure, it's far from the kind of experience you'd expect from an Xbox, but on the GBA it's well worth a look.

Although it's not meant for anyone under the age of 16, given the recommended age rating, my nephew is really getting into the GBA now and a game like this, as you jump with the 'bullet-time' feature and swing round to cap more than one baddie at once, such a title provides great eye-to-hand co-ordination and a kid of five knows that it's cartoon violence and isn't going to understand the concert of mafia types, pimps and prostitutes, or the vibrating beds in a room where next door is a secret room, accessed via a wardrobe, which contains a camera filming the goings-on that you'd expect on said bed, which at the time of viewing in the game was, at least, empty. In fact, when it came to the violence, as the men 'jumped' backwards onto their backs, riddled with holes from the shotgun wounds, he shouted "They're showing their bottoms!" At the time of writing this review, I had just met up with Mona Sax, Max's sort-of love interest. Alas, after lending it to my nephew, he clicked on "new game" and when I play it next I'll have to start again...

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2004.