7. Max Payne The Graphic Novel Nightmare
At the end of the first act of Max Payne, Max steps into the heart of darkness to take down occult gangster Jack Lupino. Its a rather dramatic change of pace for the hard-bitten detective, who was originally fighting in urban squalor yet was now found himself in an altogether more macabre and disturbing environment. But then you shot him and you were confident things were over. But they werent Mona Sax comes along and drugs you with Valkyr, continuing the nightmare by having you walk through Maxs personal hell. If you werent slightly disturbed by the baby-crying-path-of-blood sequence, I dont think you had a pulse. It was graphic, grim and a little upsetting, and something you were happy to finish. Yet in happens to you again, but this drug-addled creep-a-thon was far weirder, as Max begins to notice that hes in a videogame. Yes, this sort of thing has been done to death but I think its intriguing the way its done here, especially if you consider Maxs own wacked-out state at this moment in time. He firstly wanders into a room and finds a note telling him hes living his life through comic panels, and appropriately enough he begins to see it. Then it weirds you out again by having you go through the exact same room with the note now telling you that youre part of a computer game. Whats fun is that Max completely runs with this, telling us that hed always seen the weapon statistics drop down in front of him but hadnt been able to quantify them, and thought his diving-gun-showmanship was a little to flamboyant. Ive got to admit that among all the drug-fuelled macabre, I found it pretty darn funny. Granted, its not the most spectacular fourth-wall-breaking moment on this list, but its clever, wry and so trippy that I think it deserved a mention. The fact Max never mentions it again is something I like even more its just there to be silly, no more, no less.