Maximum Action enters Early Access looking like a mashup of Half-Life and Max Payne

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Slowly does it.

Maximum Action, an old-school shooter that just hit Early Access, reminds me of lots of different games. Visually, it looks like it's from the same era as Half-Life, but the slow-motion shooting and gun-throwing is giving me hints of Max Payne, FEAR, Superhot, and the Action Half Life mod. Whether it'll live up to any of them remains to be seen, but the early reviews are at least promising. 

The Early Access version sounds pretty thin on the ground, and the number of levels are limited, but it should give you a good look at the actual shooting, which sounds solid. It has over-the-top physics-based sliding, diving, kicking and drop-kicking, which means you can leap into the air, slide, then land into a kick that propels you in the opposite direction. Enemies ragdoll satisfyingly when you blast them, and you'll see plenty of gore and dismemberment.

The slow motion is what appeals to me most: by ducking and diving you build up 'Action Time', which you trigger when you want. You can dive around a corner, slow time to crawl, and waste a group of enemies with an AK in one hand and an SMG in the other (you can dual wield any weapon, naturally).

Developer George Mandell reckons it could be in Early Access for up to two years to gather as much feedback as possible. He'll add more levels, weapons and enemies as it carries on, and fix bugs that arise.

It's 14.99/£11.39 on Steam. Here's another gameplay video if you want to see more:

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.