Max Payne has been the standard by which all subsequent gun based action games have been judged for the past two years. It pioneered the use of “bullet time” action and slow-motion effects successfully. The sequel came out of nowhere, having been announced at E3 and then released a mere five months later. While Max Payne 2 still follows the same intense action formula as its predecessor, it is ultimately missing a lot of the most important things that made the first one so great.

Breakdown

Basically, MP2 is the exact same game as the first one. There are still immeasurable amounts of bad guys to gun down, who attack and react in the same ways as the first game. The arsenal of weaponry has not changed in any considerable ways either. The only thing that has changed from a game play perspective is bullet time, having lost one of its most useful functions and gaining a completely worthless one instead. When turning on bullet time, the entire screen turns into a hazy, black-and-white. Stylish as it may be, it makes it completely impossible to see and dodge incoming bullets as was possible in the first game. The new bullet time feature is some spinning rapid-reload move that is only useful in a few situations in the game. It’s clear from these changes that bullet time has unfortunately evolved into a more cinematic game play tool, instead of a useful one.

From a technical standpoint, however, the game still pleases its players in all the right ways. Cosmetically, MP2 is slightly prettier than the first game, which is saying a lot considering how beautifully detailed all the environments, characters, and effects were. One romp through the jaw-dropping fun house level will show you how much attention Remedy paid to the detail. The sound effects haven’t changed all that much, and the music is still nervy as ever. The well-written script is still played out by an excellent cast of voice-actors. Remedy also found some very clever and twisted new ways to present Max’s nightmare sequences (of which there are now 3), making it all the more easy to identify with the kind of personalized hell that poor Max has gotten himself into.

But aside from all this, the biggest draw of Max Payne 2 is also its most horrendous failure: the love story. Part of what made the first game so successful, besides its revolutionary style of gunplay, was the noir-style storyline, and the comic-paneled way in which it was told. Max becomes infatuated with Mona Sax – equal parts femme fatale and assassin who had a short, unimportant role in the first game – but it’s never really clear why he does. Neither Max nor Mona are very well developed, but unfortunately this “love” relationship between them is the driving force of the story. The rest of the story involves a fairly intricate plot: a group of terrorist/assassins called the “Cleaners” are out to finish off members of a secret society and everyone else involved, including detective Max Payne. Unfortunately, it never goes into great detail about what the bad guys are really up to, until the very end of the story, and by then it seems to be too late to care. The game would have played out better the other way around: using the secret society as the main focus and throwing the twisted love story into the mix later on. A lot of old characters show up from the first game, and although they are supposed to be playing integral roles in the story, they just feel too much like unimportant cameos the whole way through.

This game is very short, and there isn’t really much (besides killing a lot of bad guys) to keep players coming back for more either. Playing through the levels basically involves moving from one kill-zone to the next, and searching for the one door that will open – out of about thirty locked ones – that will take you to the next kill-zone. The “new” characters that serve as the bosses of the game (all two of them) are a joke, and take just as many/few bullets as the regular bad guys to go down. To be honest, out of the 20 or so missions, only about 5 are really intense and fun.

All the evidence is here: Max Payne 2 has the same style of game play and the same arsenal of weapons of the first game, a genuine lack of characterization and plot development, a bullet time play-mechanic that has lost something, rather than gained, and a complete gaming experience that can be beaten in about 3 hours. All of these factors point to an obvious sentencing. Max Payne 2 should have never been a sequel. It should have been an expansion pack to one of the greatest games of all time instead. Hopefully, the PS2 and Xbox iterations releasing on December 3rd will have added a little more character and plot development. But if you cross your fingers on that one, they’re likely to get shot off in slow-mo.

Posted: October 22, 2003