Max Payne, the new third-person shooter from Remedy, fits that last need perfectly.

Payne is what I like to think of as the pure essence of shooters. While I love innovative, plot-driven romps like Half-Life or System Shock 2, there’s something to be said for the distillation of the genre into an over-the-top fragfest. You can forget about plot or inventory or scripted events and just worry whether you’ll make it to the next room without catching that one bullet with your name on it.

The game has its flaws, for sure. It’s short, and will leave players wanting much more. Also, the third-person perspective is occasionally a hindrance, especially in tight quarters, where the player gets a great view of Max’s head but not much else.

Okay, even fragfests have to have backstory. Max’s opens (and continues to unfold) in graphic-novel form. Our hero is a young NYPD detective who has friends in the DEA. They want him to join; he just wants to be happy with his wife and child across the river in New Jersey. One day, though, Max returns home to find his family slain, victims of drug addicts. He kills the killers and joins the DEA to track the drug to its source.

To its credit, the folks at Remedy didn’t drop the bit about Max’s family there, as many revenge-plotted films and books do. At no point do we forget that Max is driven by grief and rage. Even a frame-up by corrupt cops only marginally hinders his unswerving desire to inflict great and lasting pain on New York City’s mobsters, who seem to be behind the new drug Valkyr.

Of course, there’s a plot twist or two along the way, but didn’t we just say plot is near irrelevant in this game? Yes, the story is told in graphic-novel form with incredibly over-the-top hard-boiled noir prose. But between interludes, there’s really no other course but to point the gun at anything that moves and let loose. Puzzles are rare, and easily solved — combat is front and center.

One great new feature is Bullet Time, named after the Matrix concept of slowing the action so we can see projectiles ripping through the air. During the game, the player can right-click and either execute a quick Bullet Time move (such as leaping forward or to one side while firing) or go into all-out Bullet Time mode, where all action slows until a little on-screen hourglass is empty (or the player toggles Real Time by right-clicking again). This never, ever gets old. Max can twist and turn and shoot while in slo-mo, and I pulled off some incredibly cool moves using it. In some places, where the enemies are thick, it’s almost required.

Graphics are above-par, though not really evocative of New York City. More on that later. Sound is good, and the voice-acting is surprisingly well done. Unfortunately, the actors themselves — who were photographed and then painted for the cutscenes, a la Kingdom Come — look way too young (and sometimes inappropriate, like one female assassin who always has a cute-girl grin) for their parts. Probably Remedy cast friends and co-workers, but that really detracts from the otherwise grave mood.

Finally, a word about the setting: Story has it that the Remedy folks, based in Finland, visited New York City after much of the game was complete. It shows. One level, on a subway, is pure New York. The rest are generic, and never really match the city’s feel. Trust me, even in blizzard conditions, the city streets are packed. Remedy provides the Big Apple of the movies, devoid of any life except mobsters and junkies.

That aside, Max Payne is a great game, in the purest sense of gaming. I can’t wait to see his return.