Shootdodge

Shootdodge manuever

Shootdodge is Max Payne's signature maneuver, often seen in many of the games screenshots.

Characteristics

Shootdodging allows you to dive into the air in slow motion, and shoot at the same time. Max can continue shooting after he has landed, until his clip runs out of ammunition. You can also do a standard dodge-roll without diving in slow motion by running left, right or back, and then jumping. Shootdodging while in bullet time automatically brings you out of bullet time, unless you use the Bullet Time Combo. Using the player-defined Bullet Time Combo allows the player to shootdodge and activate bullet time at the same time.

You will not dive in slow motion the entire time. You have about 5 seconds to get your shooting done before the game goes back to normal speed. So you can't stay in slow motion if you shootdodge off of a ledge.

Only Max and Mona can do this in slow-motion. Other characters can be seen bullet dodging too, but all these events are pre-scripted and they will never fire whilst bullet-dodging.

In the dream sequences, bullet dodging speeds up time instead of slowing it down.

Differences in games

In Max Payne, Max is forced to jump up after performing a shootdodge no matter what circumstances. In Max Payne 2, Max may continue to fire as he lies on the ground until he needs to reload again.

In Max Payne, performing a shootdodge makes Max immune to death until he lands on the ground. He will still take damage, but he will not die. This can be useful when using the M79 to clear a room quickly and haphazardly. In Max Payne 2, performing a shootdodge will not prevent the player from death.

In both Max Payne games, shootdodging automatically reloads your equipped weapon. This can be exploited to nearly double weapon capacity without having to reload; Max can fire 29 rounds with a Kalashnikov, then perform a bullet-dodge, instantly giving him access to 30 more rounds for a total of 59 rounds. This tactic is not as important in Max Payne 2 due to Bullet-time reloading; however, in Max Payne there was no bullet time reloading and so this tactic is of much more importance there.