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One of the finest desktop gaming experiences ever...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Max Payne 2 is one tight little package. From the gritty, voilent, and absorbing plot and story to the amazing graphics and gameplay, Max Payne 2 will have you stuck to your office chair from intall to final credits.

Max Payne 2 is a 3rd person shooter. You won't find puzzles, spells, or menus here. Your job is to essentailly exterminate everything that moves within the game environments. But that is the thing, it is much more than that. The game is so well crafted you will forget you are at your computer. The settings are rustic, as in they have an authentic, "lived-in" feel that adds to the atmosphere. When Max encounters an enemy, he can shift into what is called "Bullet Time." Think the Matrix. Max slows down time in order to make it easier to pick off enemies. Yes, I know it sounds cheesy right now, but as soon as you see Max shootdodge with twin Desert Eagles in slow motion, sparking an explosion that not only takes care of the bad guys but knocks over crates and barrels it will seem like second nature. This game sports the new Havok physics engine, which means objects and people in the game react realisticly as they would in real life. It really adds another dimension to the game.

Yes, this game is short, and yes, it does have some hefty system requirements, but if you have got the gear, this game is a blast, regardless of how long it is. I think the length is an acceptable trade off for quality, and this game oozes with it. One thing... in order to fully experience this game, listen to what everybody has to say. There is some pretty funny stuff along the way, especially in the police station. Max Payne 2 has some extremely good sounds and effects, so make sure you have a 5.1 speaker system so you know where to look for the people that are shooting you.

Don't pay attention to the gripes other reviewers have... this game is well worth the price of admission. After you have finished it, the mod community will have added some nifty new levels/ideas that will add hours onto the experience if that is what you are worried about. Max Payne 2 is a great game.

Charles Bronson's return

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Max Payne is all about story, told in three parts, each split into several chapters. You might keep this game away from your children. This game is rated M and for good cause.

With the murder of his wife and child avenged at the end of the first game, Max is back at his work as a police man. The greatest addition this game has made to the gaming world is the bullet time. Okay, it was taken from the Matrix movie... This time, there are bullet time combos. You dive sideways, forward or backwards while firing. It looks like a John Woo movie.

Hitting the bullet time key turns the slo-mo world into a sepia-tinted arena for a death dance. Vibrant colors in the environment are dulled, putting all the focus on you and your enemies. All around you in the environment, objects react to the swarm of bullets. Thanks to the Havok physics engine and its ragdoll effects, enemies react to shots based on velocity and distance.

Despite the staggering level of detail and the number of objects that move when you bump into them, you can't use anything, besides phones, TV, desk drawers and faucets.

While I found Part 1 to be a little too reminiscent of the original game, part 2 ups the tension and part 3 is a thrill-ride that you should start only when you've got three uninterrupted hours to spare so you can really get the full extent of the story.

Max Payne 2 is a definite must-have for action fans.

Max Payne II: The Revenge

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sequelitis has been a computer game marketing strategy since I was knee-high to a Commodore 64. While sequelitis in film means increasingly cheesy screenwriting and direction-such as with the *Alien* series-it means "rehash" with games.

I don't mind a rehashed title if I liked it enough the first time around. My high school friends complained that Id Software's *Doom II* was more of the same, plus more demons and weapons. Good enough for me: *Doom* wasn't broke and it didn't need to be fixed. Others disagreed.

People don't agree when it comes to current titles either. But as I watched the end credits of the second *Max Payne* roll before my sleepless eyes, I recognized a rare sequel. No mere rehash, *Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne* improves upon its predecessor in most respects.

*MP2* resumes the titular character's torment sometime after the events of his first rampage. Vengeance hasn't healed Max. He drifts through the days while nightmares consume his infrequent sleep. He lives for his job as a re-instated NYPD detective, explaining, "With no way to deal with the past, I kept my eyes on the road and off the road-kill in the rear view mirror. I chased lesser mysteries, other people's crimes". Standing for so little, it is little wonder how easily someone pushes Max back into action.

A routine call turns deadly when Max encounters a mysterious organization of "cleaners". Simultaneously he runs into Mona Sax, an assassin ally whom Payne believed dead from his first campaign. Payne's pursuit of both puts him once again across the paths of rival mobsters Vladimir Lem and Vinnie Gognitti. Everybody dismisses their conflict as another ill-Gognitti-inspired venture-Payne suspects something more.

Max plunges headfirst into mystery, madness-and yes, infatuation. True to character, he suppresses his burgeoning feelings for Mona in the name of the job: to meet interesting people and blow them away.

Everybody gushes about the series' benchmark graphics and engine stability. And yeah, they are more impressive the second time around. What keeps my boat afloat are the control tweaks.

Payne veterans shudder with memories of winding up a firebomb when an enemy suddenly pops around a corner, the player frantically backing up while scrolling through their inventory to a gun. Now players can lay grenades, club people, and break stuff with a "Secondary Attack" key. All guns can be used as clubs, replacing the pipe and bat of the first title. Additional tweaks:

--Payne remains on the ground after completing a shoot-dodge maneuver--until the player releases the "Shoot" key or runs out of ammunition.
--Shoot-dodging no longer expends bullet-time resource.
--Explosives area effect have been reduced
--Characters no longer suffer guaranteed death from Molotov Cocktails.
--Slightly improved enemy AI.
--NPC's fight alongside Max.
--Players play Mona for several scenes.
--And in a mod nod, developer Remedy lets players wield dual Desert Eagles and a wider variety of scoped weapons.

Remedy isn't all sniper rifles and no story. *Max Payne* was a traditional vengeance game, whereby characters were merely layers to be peeled in an onion of evil. *MP2* is a more detailed and involved transition story. Remedy retains the occasional cardboard villain, such as a "Kaufman" character frequently named but hardly described; he utters two lines and dies in his only appearance. Lem and Gognitti display more character traits and figure prominently in Max's quest. Jim Bravura also assumes a greater role, being humanized beyond his pit-bull portrayal in the first game. Enigmatic as ever, Mona Sax reveals little such as her choice of shower songs, her outfits, and her love-hate opinions for Max. As in the first game, Max has a treacherous partner, but this one carries a back-story and she appears regularly.

Richer characters populate a like world. Some *MP1* levels felt empty and tired. I found the hotel and apartment segments particularly bland and over-used. *MP2* levels are constructed in significantly greater detail and subtly. Level boundaries, for example, are more logical than the hackneyed truck-blocking-the-road device used in the first game. Plenty of friendly NPCs populate some levels, such as a police station and Payne's apartment. While Payne repeatedly returns to a funhouse level, it is increasingly damaged and opened to exploration. Players won't encounter much on the creative par of the *Half-Life* or *NOLF* series, but the levels are still memorable and more diverse.

Telekinesys Research provides its Havok.com physics engine to complement the world detail. It's not exploited, but Remedy made sure bodies would tumble off scaffolding and fold over rails. Payne can sometimes ram enemies. I have shot flammable barrels and watched them fall off balconies and burst among enemies. The explosions almost shake my monitor with Creative Lab's integrated EAX 2.0 sound support, even on low channels--though gunshots sound weak regardless.

The engine functions fine on my antiquated system: 900 MHz Athlon, 512 MB stick, Geforce 4 Ti card, and Windows XP. *MP2* requires 2 discs to load and play, taking up 1.6 gigs of harddisk space.

It also took just ten straight hours for me to beat, from Saturday night to Sunday morning. Part three needed to be developed a bit more, while the climatic level lacked the satisfaction and suspense I felt when I shot up the evil office building at the end of the last game. As with *MP1*, I missed having crawl and climb functions. I'm also tired of inventory conventions; I'd rather carry three or four weapons and a bunch of magazines than a bunch of weapons with arbitrarily limited ammo pools.

Considering the overall plot and play of the game, I wasn't bothered. *Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne* is a fine sequel from Finnish developers who appreciate stable game engines. Veterans and greenhorns alike should recognize the details elevating this gun-fu drama beyond mere rehash.

Max Payne at his best !

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It consists of three parts, 8 chapters in each (24 levels) you get "slow bullet time" matrix-like slow motion and you can also dodge bullets. Max spends most of his time inside of buildings than out on the streets. Sometimes you meet other strangers that help you defeat the bad guys (one of them is a prostitute). There are over a dozen weapons to choose from, inclding grenades, dual weapons and sniper rifles.
This game is extremely thrilling and realistic, the physics are excellent, (when you touch things, they actually move) you can knock over chairs tables boxes etc...
You get to explore anything you want. You can listen to answering machine messages, flush toilets, turn on pipes, even watch T.V. (yes, WATCH T.V.)
There is even a time when you have to escape from a burning building!
If you liked the first Max Payne, or even if you didn't play it, I recomend this game to everyone. If you liked the matrix movies, or if you just like violent video games and love stories, you should buy this game.
I can't wait for the third one to come out !!

P.S. I played Max Payne 2 before I played the first one.

Oh No! I blinked and completed it.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: October 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Well, I guess I'm the odd one out on this game, because I thought it was a major, major disappointment. Max Payne 2 describes itself as a "Film Noir Love Story", which is pretty hilarious considering that Max Payne 2 is to love stories what Battlefield Earth is to sci-fi films. Max Payne 2 must surely have the most cliched, superficial, and trite storyline ever seen in a 'story-driven' game. The story trickles slowly as the game progresses, and is at best weak, and at worst a disaster which just plain doesn't work. It's unfortunate because there were opportunities to really make something cool in the story and to give the storyline an intriguing edge to it (I did really like the TV Interludes, and some of the dream sequences). The problem is that theres gaping holes in the backstory, things happen for no reason, and you are left without any connection to the characters whatsoever. And above all else, it would have been nice if they could have gone for an original ending, rather than one that makes you say "oh purlease". It's a real shame.

Everything else about the game is what you'd expect. The graphics are really nice, and there are some cool bullet-time effects - if you're into that sort of thing. The sound is as you'd expect - lots of realistic gun sounds, and bullet-time whoosh noises. The music is quite atmospheric, and does it's job well. The gameplay is okay - very similar to the original Max Payne - and so there is some major use of the quick-save and quick-load. The AI is somewhat cheesy, and some of the bad guys seem to enjoy blowing themselves up with their own grenades. The other big thing, is that the game is really short. No, I mean *really* short. I finished it in less than ten hours (and I'm pretty slow at these types of game). Less than ten hours for a $50 game is pushing it in my opinion.

I dunno - maybe it's just me, but this game did absolutely nothing for me. I finished it in less than a day, and came away thinking that it was a total waste of time. I really wanted them to do a different ending - and not just because Mona Sax is hot. I wanted an ending that I couldn't see coming ten miles away, but they didn't do it, and the ending that is there is lacklustre, and not exactly a happy one. Oh well.

TEDIOUS EXPLORATION

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: October 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This was the one I was waiting for. All the hype was there, All the expectations were there. It's a dud. Graphics are fantastic, although the Max face is unwelcome, and disturbing (as has been reported by others....where did they get this guy?). The problem is that it the game is 60% searching for an open door, following which, something can happen. You spend most of this game time looking for open doors. That was "ok" and state of the art in the late 90's, but it's simply tedium for no purpose now. What is the benefit of me checking 18 doors to see if they're openable? There is no gameplay added...it's simply an annoying stall until gameplay progresses. The most adventurous level is visually amazing, the "Fun House", yet you go through it without a shot. What's going on here with game design? Maybe there's something comming at level 3 but right now I'm saying "big snooze". Unworthy. Not well planned....a programming failure with a graphics magesty. Overall....no fun....just frustrating tedium. Remember this has been 4 years since the originasl appeared....shouldn't we expect something more than better graphics in this time of PC game evolvment? A shame.

The best game of 2003, 2004 and likely 2005! Period.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Holy smoke, this game is simply awesome! Without a doubt the best game ever made so far!!! (running you of exclamation marks)

Seriously, MP2 expands on everything that I loved in MP1. The graphics blow your mind away, the story is top-notch, the game play is the most polished ever and Bullet Time 2.0 rocks your socks off.

Games don't get better than this! Stop reading now and buy your copy you dummy!

Almost perfect

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A great game, awesome graphics, great storyline, but too short. Replay value on this game is almost nil after the first time through. The bullet time is great, shootdodge rocks, the weapon variety is killer, but I can't give five starts to a $50 game that provides aonly a few days of entertainment.

In the top 5 best games I've ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing computer games for over twenty years, and let me tell you, this game is one of the best I've ever seen. The production value alone is stellar. The humor is hysterical, the suspense is gripping, the horror is terrifying, the dialogue is top-notch, and the storyline is superb. Graphically, brilliant. Sound is awesome. The in-game physics is so very cool (bodies employ rag-doll physics, falling and flying like real bodies), many destructible surfaces, items that move and react as they should (ie. boxes, lamps, explosives). Good AI, and beautiful renderings. Stellar cut-scenes (both the in-game scenes, and the graphic-novel cuts).

I played it on the PC -- not certain about the console adaptations, but if you have a PC, get this. It's a great ride.

Stylishly Honorable to the Action Platform

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was foreign to the world of Max Payne. Because I was not exposed to the frenzy of the detective's game back in 2001, I felt nonchalant towards the coming sequel. Now that I have experienced the sequel, I must profess that I have been stunned, then mesmerized, and all the more thrilled to have this game land on my laptop. Max Payne 2: The fall of Max Payne is a barrage of devilish quality saturating all through the game and then some. From the gutsy gameplay to the direction of the story, this game falls into a certain pizzazz of stylish coolness.

I can crack the code as to why the first game ignited a stir. An action game has never felt so empowered to be reckoned as the high octave blast that is Max Payne 2. Playing as a pessimistic detective, you must blaze through he dark, gritty streets of New York city. The story alone is topnotch suspense bundled with extraordinary twists and turns that'll have you gasping throughout your day. Driven by the story, the game's focal highlight is the gameplay's Bullet Time implementation. Heck, Max Payne is one of those games that is truly augmented by the graphics and sheer physics of the environment. With eye-candy in every so direction, it's a joy to shoot baddies with a multitude of weapons. Further adding to the bountiful fun, is the Havok engine which has the environment fully interactive. There's also rag-doll effects where spectacular combat scenes are distilled in slow-motion scenes and the best part is your in control. The gist of Max Payne 2 is the more baddies you gun down, the faster Payne is in a slow-motioned surrounding. With the environment flinging all over the screen and the slow motion of the game setting in, it's a delight to control this gem again and again.

Payne romps through New York City at its absolute darkest. As you go guns-a-blazing, you'll notice the graphical powerhouse. Each nook and cranny in the game is a stellar high point. What hit's the stride even more is the detailed photo realistic textures and the maw-gaping lighting effects. Like the story, the graphics stand on its own. A spectacular soundtrack kicks in to add to the already fascinating atmosphere. There are plenty of compulsive tracks, but the best part of the audio derives from the firefights where the signature sound of Payne's heart gallops as enemy gunfire sounds distorted. Plus, the voiceovers are good and suit the personality of Payne. The gritty comic book scenes heavily attribute to the overall atmosphere of the astounding game. You can easily tell that the makers of the game, have put sweat and effort into this wet-dream-come-true production.

The first game has been known to be very short, and the second one follows suit. Under the circumstances, its honest to say that fans of this game will not go out aching. This game is really something, but does leave the gamer wanting much more. Aside from that quibble, the stunning action warrants a purchase. Max Payne 2: the Fall of Max Payne is stylishly honorable to the action gaming platform.

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