Max Payne 2
Max is back… several times, actually.
Tags: Max Payne 2 Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Mar 9th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Max Payne 2 (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
At it’s heart, the sequel to Max Payne isn’t much different than the original. The controls are pretty much the same, the graphics have been tweaked a little, etc. But unlike some games (I didn’t say Tomb Raider out loud, did I?), Max Payne 2 is actually even better than its predecessor, even without adding too many new features.
 |
 |
I loved Max Payne, and it was the sole reason I upgraded my PC a few years back. I played it nonstop for a good long while, and the bullet time feature was one of the coolest additions to a game engine that I’d seen in ages. The graphics raised the bar for videogames, and the Xbox version of Max Payne turned out to be a very high quality port itself.
The story is told through an initially confusing series of flashbacks mixed with “present day” areas. The graphic novel style of cutscene is back, along with in-engine cutscenes. There’s a lot of new interactivity here as well that really added to the experience, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
 |
 |
The game starts with Max waking up in a hospital. You have no clue why he’s there, but it’s obvious that he’s pretty badly banged up. The screen tilts and warps to show Max’s disorientation and pain. Max suffers from some hallucinations while trying to get out of the hospital, and before you can actually start to piece together what might be happening, the game goes back several hours, before Max was hospitalized.
Max has decided to investigate reports of shots fired at a warehouse owned by a Russian mobster whom he’s acquainted with. After fighting a bunch of hired goons, he discovers that they were there to kill one of Vlad’s gunsmiths. On his way out, chasing bad guys as he goes, he bumps into Mona Sax, who Max previously had a thing for, but was presumed dead after being shot in the head in the previous game. It gets really interesting from there, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.
 |
 |
The game runs smooth as silk, which is a testament to Remedy’s programming skills. The graphical details haven’t been ramped up that much from Max Payne, but at least Max no longer has a constipated smirk on his face the whole time. The levels are much more imaginative this time, and there’s a nice lack of the horrible jumping mazes that appeared in Max’s dream sequences in the first game. The funhouse levels are a testament to Remedy’s creativity. The funhouse is based on a fictional show within Max Payne 2, called ‘Address Unknown’, which you can watch along with some other shows (Hooray for Captain Baseballbatboy!) on various TVs throughout the game. Think of a funhouse based on the old show, Twin Peaks, and that describes it. It’s extremely cool, twisted, and just flat out fun.
The addition of the Havok physics engine is kind of an iffy point with me. On the one hand, I love how inanimate objects react fairly accurately to being bumped and shot and such, but I really am not a big fan of ragdoll physics on bodies. I think they end up looking fake, because bodies neither fall nor bend that way. Still, it’s as close as we’ll get to that type of realism for a while, and it’s better than just falling down stiffly like before. Models also don’t mesh to well when they’re close together. There’s a brief scene where Mona and Max share a kiss, and they don’t twine together very well, and look like a pair of marionettes.
 |
 |
The audio in the game is of the highest quality. From the music to the voice acting, to the tinny sound of the TV sets as they play some weird show, everything sounds great. Except for one thing. Max’s voice sounds just like he’s speaking into a microphone. A microphone without a sock. You can hear a bit of mic distortion when Max says a word with the letter “P” or “T”. You can hear his breath hitting the microphone. It has a tendency to halt the suspension of disbelief and remind you that you’re playing a game.
The faults are few and completely nitpicky. The game itself is solid, and it’s a blast to play. It’s a game that no actioon gamer should be without. It may not be the most technically advanced game out there, and it’s also nothing we haven’t seen before. But the whole package is tied up in a very neat bundle, that it’s impossible to not enjoy Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Solid gameplay. + It oozes creativity. + The funhouse level. Totally. |
9.1 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Nitpicky stuff. - It's still basically the same Max Payne. Take that as you will. |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Pure and simple, this is a game that should grace your collection, no matter what system you own. Unless all you own is a Gamecube, in which case you need to go get a system that Max Payne 2 is published for. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Max Payne 2
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Mar 9th, 2004 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
