Set in the chilling backdrop of the North Pole, you play the role of Dinky, a polar bear who returns to find his family mercilessly slaughtered by Eskimos, high on a new designer drug called Valkyr. Enraged and hungry for revenge, Dinky embarks on a crusade for justice against his families murderers.
Released in 2003, Polar Payne is obviously a parody of Max Payne’s film noir story, but instead of a man avenging his family, it’s a polar bear instead. The original campaign for the mod is incredibly short, only being one small map that would take 5 minutes at most to complete, making it able to be finished in a lunch break.
Graphically, Polar Payne is only OK looking, but it’s almost entirely made up of new assets, sans animations. Probably the most fun part of it are the new ways to take out enemies since it incorporates the Kung Fu mod for it’s melee combat, with combat ranging from letting you kick off the heads of enemies or hugging them to death, to a new weapons such as the flame thrower and a “Trout of Death”, which is just a grenade re-skinned as a fish. You don’t get to use half of them before the mod is over because of how short it is.
On the other hand, you are able to play through the entire story of Max Payne as Dinky, using the new weapons. It is pretty amusing watching a Polar Bear going through the same levels and story as Max Payne.
The manual for the first mod (a pdf that comes in the zip file) joking refers to a sequel, a parody of Max Payne 2’s title, which was coming out around the same time. But lo and behold, 5 years later, in 2008, a sequel did materialize, called Polar Paradise. Well, it’s not really a sequel so much as it’s a fleshed out reboot that goes for the more over-the-top comical style.
Polar Paradise is yet again set at the North Pole, with you playing Dinky once more, who has returned home on Christmas Eve to find that his family was kidnapped by Santa Claus and forced to work in his evil Toy Factory. With nothing to lose, Dinky sets out for vengeance.
There is a plethora of new enemies, penguins with bombs on their back that explode on contact, angry Elves with guns, and penguins flying small aircraft shooting you with snowballs. It also features new weapons, ranging from Kung Fu, to throwing snowballs, a flame thrower, a bomb launcher, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle that shoots candy. The guns act close to the actual weapons in Max Payne so much that they have he same icons. You could easily figure out which is which.
This time, instead of having one small level, Polar Paradise has a few larger levels, making it closer to 10-15 minutes long. The mod starts you out in an Elf village before moving on to Santa’s workshop, which used some of the Santa’s Workshop cliches you’d expect you see from a parody of the holidays.
There’s even a bonus level where you snowboard to escape Santa’s Workshop. It’s obviously a bit clunky since Max Payne wasn’t designed for it, but it’s playable (kinda), and the fact that it exists amuses me to no end.
If you’re into the Christmas cheer, and you want something short to play in between hanging out with family for the holidays. Polar Payne and Polar Paradise are worth checking out, taking less than 20 minutes total for both of them combined.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/polar-paradise
Cult Classic Corner - Video Games 
[…] into several other Max Payne mods, mostly Matrix themed mods, along with mods like Katana and Polar Payne. Kung Fu 3.0 is definitely worth checking out if you’re at all interested in the Max Payne […]
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