Max Payne 2 The Fall of Max Payne

To a lot of people, however, Max Payne was a game that was far more than the sum of it's parts. Many people (myself included) fell in love with the gritty, absurdly heavy style of the game. Those that didn't really "get it" complained about Max's constant use of insanely overwrought metaphors, ever-present gloom, and ridiculous storyline, but everyone who was able to see it as the campy homage that it was had a blast.

When part 2 was announced, I was thrilled. Max Payne is a series that lends itself pretty well to a sequel because, really, you don't have to change much about the game mechanics. They're pretty simple, and they work fine. It had already come to light that there were going to be no fundamental changes beyond some minor tweaks to Bullet Time and a completely different plot, so it sounded good to me.

And, upon playing through the game in one sitting, that's exactly what I got.

What this means is, if you liked the first Max Payne, you'll like the second one, if you didn't, you won't. Easy as that. Gameplay is IDENTICAL. There are a few alterations to some of Max's moves and skills (i.e. There are now deeper levels of Bullet Time, attained by winning gunfights while under the effects of slo-mo) and a few new weapons (An AK-47 and a somewhat impossible dual-Desert Eagle approach) but that's it.

The really marked improvements over the first game in the gameplay/technical regard are the graphics, which are gorgeous (and Max no longer looks horribly constipated), and the physics engine, which now means Max can bump into and knock over things.

The biggest change, though, is the level design, which is absolutely outstanding. The Fun House stage gets special mention for sheer brilliance in showing what can be done within the game engine if you're creative enough, and thankfully the more annoying stages from the first game (namely, Max's fever dreams) have been completely redone to be much more playable.

Plot wise, this game has me with some mixed feelings. The story is much tighter this time around, and both it and the rest of the game feel toned down from the slightly insane events of the first game. Depending on what you actually thought of the first game, this can be seen as either a good or bad thing.

For example, while the game has kept the much-beloved "graphic novel" storytelling, Max's own personal narration on things (read: some of the most ridiculous metaphors ever recorded) has been mostly dropped in favor of dialouge. There's no massive snowstorm this time around to act as a parallel to Max's own battle, and neither killer designer drugs, evil corporations, shadowy secret societies, or the occult play a role in the story. Instead we have the less fantastic but more solid plot concerning gangsters, lovers, assassins, and lots and lots (and lots) of bullets.

Again, this garners mixed feelings. If you liked Max Payne 1 but thought it was just a little too warped in the story department, then part 2 will be dead-on for you. Personally, I slightly prefer the story from part 1, but there's no denying that Max Payne 2 is the better game in all other regards, and it's not such a radical departure that it feels weird. This is still Max Payne, and the game developers were well aware of this, make no mistake.

On a final note, someone on the Dev. Team also figured "Hey, since the game is M-rated, why have we been censoring the curse words, anyway?" It's a good question, and one I was asking myself during Max Payne 1. I don't think that games should be loaded with curse words just for the fun of it, but when I have a mob foot soldier calling me a "freakin' cop" repeatedly, I almost feel more insulted than if he'd just let fly with the F-word. I mean, Max Payne (either of them) make no bones about the fact that they're adult games, and they're already violent enough that kids should be nowhere near them, so maybe we could actually let our mafia bullet-sponges let out a blue word or two?

Max Payne 2 does just that, and thank God. In the same way that The Sopranos does, Max Payne 2 lets it all hang without actually drawing attention to it, and the result is dialouge that sounds a lot less, well, video game-y.

So, bottom line, Max Payne 2 is an outstanding game in it's field, which is straight-up, heavily stylized action. It's about as long as the first game, has better graphics, has MUCH better level design, and is really everything fans of the series could have asked for. PC and Xbox versions are near-identical, so go with whichever is more comfortable, and get ready for a Max Payne love story.

A violent, bullet-riddled, hard-boiled love story, but is there really any other kind?


Good game   December 3, 2003
Cedd Dogg (stockton, ca. United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Max payne 2 is a good game but not a great game let me tell you why. There are only three drawbacks in this game that bother me, first off the bullet time is differant and not in a good way. When you go in to bullit time the color of the screen goes to a drab kind of yellow and the slow motion is not very slow unlike the first game where it was very slow and it felt much more matrix like, second the game is much easyer than the first and is also shorter, and third there is a bullet hole glitch in the game that will let you blast holes in some rooms and not in others? All in all it is a good game but I recomend the first game It's much better.


Max Payne playing it ...   December 5, 2003
4 out of 10 found this review helpful

Max Payne 2 is very similar to the first one. Unfortunately, if the first game was an ok game years ago, the new Max Payne just doesn't hold up anymore. In the last years, there were a lot of advancements made in terms of gameplay and graphics. MP2 just doesn't care about those. To call the graphics horrible is an understatement. Everything is blocky and there are only two colors in this game: dark grey and dark brown. The textures look so bad, you'd think this is a Playstation 1 game.
The story is told in cutscenes, but other than that, you're left with mindless shooting. Level design is similar with first game - very linear, follow one path, don't think too much and kill everybody. It's a simplistic approach that worked 10 years ago in all FPS, but now we evolved from that, didn't we?! Bullet time was great in the original, but so many games have done it better meanwhile, while MP2 keeps it the same. And hey, if the graphics would be good, maybe you'd care about it a bit (see Enter the Matrix, another bad game which at least had better graphics).
MP2 is also a pain to play. While the controls are similar to Halo's, the speed of moving the target particle is not. It moves too fast and because of that, the developers had to use an auto-aim feature. The auto-aim is not like in Halo though - you will kill enemies even if you hardly shoot in the right direction. This ruins the game as a shooter as well.
Overall, i would not recommend renting or buying this game. We have to give a clear signal to those developers. Tell them that if we spend money on their product they better make something that it's not stuck in the eighties. And if they don't know how, look at Bioware, Bethesda, Bungie, UbiSoft Montreal and others.


Great Sequel   December 8, 2003
J. Robinson (Spokane, WA United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I was a little nervous about purchasing this game considering some of the complaints I've heard. Fortunately I found none of the complaints to be true and ended up loving this game more than the origional. The main knock that I heard was that the game was too short. Rather I found myself satisfied with the game length. It was neither too short, yet the story wasn't drug out to annoying lengths.

The graphics look great and I was impressed with your ability to interact with the environment. Most objects are movable and after a heavy gun battle, the room looks like you'd expect it. Blood on the walls, bullet holes everywhere, chairs and bottles knocked over. Graphically I noticed very few glitches...maybe 3 throughout the entire game.

The graphic novel style is still here and some people found that a bit annoying. This unique way of storytelling was used in the origional to save money and evidently it worked well enough that they've decided to stick with it. My only problem with it is that sometimes this slows the game down. It's nice to have a little breather after a difficult level and watch as the story advances, but sometimes the break was way too long. The story can get a little cheesy, but this is something I've come to expect from Max Payne.

One thing I noticed is that the weapon selection is exactly the same as the first one. While there are quite a few guns to choose from, there could have been a few additions just to keep things interesting.

Overall this is a great sequel and well worth the money, especially if you enjoyed the first game.