"I had a dream. In it I killed my wife for my lover." Max Payne is back, and he’s still a jumble of metaphorical lamentations. This time instead of a dead wife and baby to keep Max and players motivated to get to the end, Max just has his mixed feeling for Mona Sax. Is a beautiful woman with a gun enough to keep players going as well? Not really. Max Payne 2 is a good game. Polished in ways that other big name titles only wished they were, but polish is not enough. Bet this is the first time you’ll read this... "Sometimes a good game can be bad."

First things first, I must admit that I wasn’t sure Max Payne 2 was a good idea. Given that no one really does the "morning after" story that follows up a major action film. I wasn’t expecting the same level of intensity as the first game, but to me Max Payne 2 felt more like the epilogue to the first than a brand new tale. A wrapping up of the proverbial loose ends. The first time we met Max he was a man with a cause and a sense of clear direction. Getting from point A to B was worth the blood and the bullets just to see Max get his revenge. In Max Payne 2 he seems to be just drifting from shoot out to shoot out. When the big twist hit I was snoring. They seemed to be really digging for anyone left for Max to kill. The nicest thing I can say about the story is that the ending made me feel like Max was going to be all right. Throughout the whole game I kept wondering why he kept going... his life is in ruins, he’s miserable... why not just end the pain? But the last line really makes you feel that he’s going to be ok.

Given that this is a PC game and everyone always asks me: "how does it run?" Let me start by saying: Better than Halo does! The game sports updated graphics, new bullet time special effects, Havok physics, and pixel shaders... and it runs pretty much as just as smooth as the first one did. With all effects turned on high I was able to achieve very slick results. Players with older PCs should see good performance as well, assuming you’re willing to sacrifice a wee bit of eye candy.

One thing that can’t be sacrificed however is the load times. Lengthy. Just as long, if not longer than the first game. What will drive you crazy is the load screen you see before the main menu even appears! Halo on the PC loaded it’s menu faster! And it displays a 3D model of the ring world in the background. Thankfully reload times are pretty quick, and saving is even quicker. The F5/F9 keys will become your best friends.

Managing the save/load keys is the key to your success in Max Payne 2. The game is noticeably tougher than the first one. The enemies may not be much smarter, but they’re packing bigger guns. For players new to the series this is bad, add in that there is now no tutorial mode and things just got hairy for newbies. There is no choice of difficulty level when starting out. Instead the game self adjusts difficulty for you. This is done by dolling out Aspirin health packs at the right pace for your performance. Though the game seemed rather darn stingy with health packs in my run through it.

When Max Payne 2 is doing it’s thing it’s an amazing "ballet of death" to quote the box. Though I don’t think any of Max’s foes will be hanging out with Shirley Temple in the afterlife. Instead they’ll be watching their bodies twist and spin with brand new Havok powered physics. Shoot someone in the knees and they’ll find their feet swept out from under them. It’s the most compelling technical upgrade to the game over the first. Watching shotgun filled thugs fly back into shelves, boxes and other objects is what makes the game worth the price of admission. Unlike games such as UT2003, which uses rag-doll physics to produce dolls that go limp once dead, Max Payne 2 enemies continue, moving in the direction last shot. It’s an amazing effect.

Sadly while physics are used to make the bad men fly around like drunken ballerinas, they’re not really used to do much else. Many objects in the game have physics applied to them, but it seems to be for nothing more than making things fly off shelves when shot or fly through the air when blown up. The ability to push or pull certain objects would have opened up the possibility of setting up traps or such. One can only assume that this would go against Max Payne 2’s quest to be a forward motion only action game.

The physics are much more compelling upgrade than the "new" bullet time. Still activated with the Shift key, bullet time enables you to react to things at a faster pace than normal. Think "Matrix" and you’ll be there. The new bullet time effects allow you to pump up your bullet time meter by dispatching sobs left and right. Once enough unlucky white guys have been killed while you’re in bullet time, the meter will glow bright yellow. This signifies that you’re now moving faster than ever. Where Bullet Time 1.0 let you slow things down, the new bullet time lets you do your best imitation of the Flash. It’s crazy, its fun... it’s not something that happens often enough in single player to make it worth getting excited about.

Speaking of single player... Max Payne 2 recycles levels more than Halo did. Way more. You’ll see one level three times before the game comes to an end. Not from the same point of view, but still you can only run around a funhouse so many times before it becomes the un-funhouse. Beyond repeated levels the structure of room-hall-room was so familiar that I had to remind myself that I was playing Max Payne 2 and not the first game. This is where Max Payne 2 starts to falter in my eyes. So little of the core game play has been changed or added to. There are a brief few levels that take you into situations beyond "dive into room, shoot everyone, get up and repeat." These levels end up being some of the best in the game if only for making you feel like you’re playing something new. I’m not sure why they’re in the minority, as the engine seems quite capable of rendering things bigger than an office.

Remedy told interviewers that the script was three times longer than the first, but apparently the only added length to the game was dialogue. Because the game, level repeating aside, actually seems SHORTER than the first game. Now everyone will have his or her own experiences when playing through Max Payne 2, but for this reviewer it felt shorter. Maybe it’s because the levels are so similar to the ones from the first game, maybe it’s because the story doesn’t feel as epic, maybe it’s because the game has fewer bosses to fight.

You see unlike the first game, that had several "boss" fights, Max Payne 2 seems to only really have two. If you thought George Lucas introduced and killed off Darth Maul quickly you haven’t nothing’ yet. Max Payne 2 introduces a boss that you kill just after meeting. Why they felt the need to highlight the guy at all is a mystery. One bullet time swan dive into the room dropped both him and his posse. Finally, do you remember the end of Max Payne? Remember shooting out those pins? Well, in the final battle of Max Payne 2 you get to do that twice over! Yea! Who wanted new and exciting experiences anyway? Just give us the first game with twice the redundancy.

The copy/pasting doesn’t stop at levels, Max Payne 2 is the first shooter I can remember that doesn’t really add any new weapons. In fact there are fewer guns because the grenade launcher is MIA now. With the brand new physics engine it’s a puzzle why the grenade launcher is absent. Sending boxes and bodies flying left and right would have been a blast. Yes, there is a new sniper rifle and an AK-47, and you can hold two desert eagles now. However, the "new" guns are so similar in power and function to existing guns that I don’t think it’s fair to call them new. The only gun that’s truly new is the MP5, a light machine gun with a scope. The ability to wield two desert eagle was one of the first user created mods to surface for Max Payne. Come to think of it, so was the MP5... hmm.

Max Payne 2 is a short game, but there is probably enough variation to gun fights to warrant at least one extra trip through. Like the first game there’s a smattering of hidden secrets and Easter eggs for the dedicated to find. Also, not running into a room full of thugs will allow you to over hear extra plot items and funny conversations. But playing single player over and over isn’t how Remedy truly intends its fans to get replay value out of Max Payne 2. For that there is Dead Man Walking.

Dead Man Walking finds it’s roots in the survival mode of any modern fighting game. In it you’ll take on endless waves of gun toting killers. The object is to stay alive as long as possible. It’s probably the best way to do deathmatch in a game that wouldn’t work online. Remedy has seen fit to ship the game with a handful of maps for DMW that are cut out from the single player experience. Future maps created by the community could potentially let gamers relive their favorite Hollywood action movie moments. It all depends on the support the game receives from the community.

I feel sad that I have to give Max Payne 2 a C+. The game screams polish, right down to the nifty DVD styled packaging, but in the end I can’t recommend the game to someone who’s new to the series because its much harder than the first one. I also can’t recommend the game to someone who merely liked the first one because the game is so damn similar that unless you’re really wondering what became of Max Payne you’re not going to get any kind of "new" game play experience out of it. So Max Payne 2 is thus a highly polished game that is good, but really isn’t all that good... strange isn’t it?

· · · Zondaro

Second Opinion

Hyperactive screaming bullet intensity with bouts of reality-warping hallucinations is probably the best way to describe Max Payne 2. As a stand-alone game it adheres very much to the ideas and mechanics of the original, thus doing absolutely nothing to sway its detractors. However, it improves on the bullet time execution, incorporating elements from various fan mods and adding a few very small (yet very useful) new additions like the quick reload/weapon switch. It now does more then just help aiming with style, coupled with the insane physics engine it takes the idea another step closer to transforming every battle into a beautiful gun ballet. Directly continuing and beautifully finishing the story from the original, the writing certainly doesn’t suffer while making the first game wholly complete.

But that’s not to say it’s flawless. The level design has a large portion of obviously forced direction layouts that don’t work very well, such as running along building ledges and a few too many buildings with every door except one locked. Bullet time also sticks a bit too rigidly to diving and having some way to get up and continue the shooting spree would allow better flexibility among many gunfights. Though in light of the entire game these almost seem as minor quibbles thanks to how polished and well executed everything else is. The only major detraction is that it’s too similar to the original in terms of gameplay, but as a huge fan of the first that stills play it I can’t say that ever bugged me.

Rating: A-

· · · MechDeus