It looks like a fairly average shooter, but after a few hours of play you realize this game is brilliant and awesome.
The game plays like some film noir, action flick. Max Payne was one of the first games to use bullet-time so I'll forgive it the fact that the bullet-time feature has been used many times before. The nice thing about this one is that it doesn't last very long, and every time you use it you feel awesomely badass. The problem that arises from this is that you're bullet-time ability can be used so often that the game plays extremely easily and you often find you will do things like load your game because your last kill wasn't as f***ing awesome as you had hoped it would.
The games other problems simply arise from a lack of differentiation in gameplay elements. For one thing you basically fight the same fight every time: Hide behind cover, bullet-time dive out of cover, shoot everything with a gun, take some pills, save. While this is more of a realism game I forgive that, but on that note, I am constantly reminded of the Norse apocalypse and mystical viking sh*t that makes the game just on the wrong side of ridiculous. The only other gameplay problem is similar in nature and is equally easily forgiven by the same reason, and that is that there is not a helluva lot of scenery to look at. Once you've seen one building's grimy core and snowy outside you've seen every level.
Luckily this game breaks up all of that with great cut-scenes, fun gameplay (even if it is very repetitive) and crazy, drug-fueled dream sequences. Hey, the game even managed to poke fun at itself, something a lot of games can't seem to do.