[Review] #5 Remedy Games - Developer profile

The Finnish developer, Remedy Games are best known for bringing the noir thriller, Max Payne to the market, and also enjoyed considerable success with Alan Wake. In this post, we'll look at their resume. It's an impressive one!

Death Rally

In 1996, Death Rally was released. I was unaware of this title's existence until I started research for this article. Using a top down viewpoint, and a mad max style cars with guns combat mechanic. (Please excuse the trunk load of puns there!)

The title was re-release on iOS, and at the same time got a remaster. Since then, the title has re-released to the PC via Steam, and looks to be a direct port of the remastered iOS version.

Both the original and the remake look like Ignition: Racing, just with a slightly more serious (and explosive) mood.

Max Payne

Everyone's favourite New York City cop. Max Payne is a veritable masterpiece, following the journey of the titular character through a tale of vengeance, killing drug dealers, and dealing with personal catastrophe after catastrophe.

The game popularised the "bullet time" formula to video games, following the success of the film The Matrix, although wasn't the first to use it, with the Half-Life mod The Specialists doing this to excellent effect.

Max Payne remains playable to this day, and featured verbose writing, comic-book styled story telling, and a dark sense of atmosphere.

Most famous on the PC, Max Payne has also made its way to consoles far and wide, even managing to kick down the battery compartment of the Game Boy Advance.

It released on XBOX, PlayStation 2, and in 2012, on iOS and Android.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

More story. More bullet time, more action, more femme fatale; and romance thrown into the mix as well. Max is back as a detective, following his rampage in the first game, and eventually, everything turns to shit again.

The game's story is told through the same, verbose, internal chit-chat that Max has, with the game breaking the fourth wall - like all good Max Payne titles.

That wasn't the only good part of the game - the combat was wonderful, the selection of weapons was great, and the visuals were well advanced for their day.

Remedy went on to release the game on Xbox and PlayStation 2, with the PC version the most polished.

Alan Wake

Stories about writers often make the best sort of stories. Alan Wake is exactly just that - an atmospheric story about a writer with writers block, who then also suffers from amnesia, memory loss, and what appear to be visions of shadowy figures.

Unfortunately, due to expiring musical licences, the game can no longer be purchased on PC, but copies of the title can still be obtained on the second hand market, in particular for the XBOX 360.

The PC version, was only released after the developers, Remedy, convinced Microsoft that they would make a healthy return on investment, amid Microsoft's fear of pirates (despite the recent release of Sea of Thieves.)

This prophecy (as written by Remedy) came true 48 hours after release on the PC - with the game becoming a commercial, and critical success across both platforms.

Quantum Break

Time is broken. So are the traditional lines of game design, with Quantum Break taking itself very seriously, as a mixed media form of art - the game tells us, often when its unable to stream its live action sequences from Microsoft's servers that:

"... is both a game and show, combined into one seamless experience. The show has been optimised for streaming."

Quantum Break tells a story of a fracture in time, where strange things happen to continuity. Events stutter, a evil mega-corp is trying to make good their whoopsie moment of breaking the space-time continuum; and there's a fast paced third person shooter, with a compelling, complicated story involved.

What comes next for Remedy?

The website of the developer states that they are working on two projects currently - one is an all new intellectual property, with "Codename P7" the only information, other than a red line, and some smoke, against a black background. It is described as "a cinemetic third person action game", and promises "an intriguing story, with a cast of memorable characters." Story driven, multi platform, and deep mechanics, without a release date.

There's also the "Story Mode" for Crossfire 2 which is a popular shooter in Korea, China, Vietnam, and other regions - it has something like 8 million concurrent players, and 650 million registered accounts. This should bring the "big in asia" title to Western audiences.