Although the excellent storytelling and the spot-on gameplay both have returned in this sequel, the true downfall of Max Payne 2 is the horrendously short length and abysmal replay value.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Platform: PC, Playstation 2, Xbox
Developer: Remedy
Publisher: Rockstar Games
First and foremost: Graphics have greatly improved from the original, which glitter and shine with many of the high-end games on the market. Faces are articulated and an updated "ragdoll" physics engine makes for some horribly amusing gunfights. Explosions and particle effects are top-notch, and the famous noir-style cut scenes look better than ever.
The gameplay remains generally unchanged from the previous chapter, which is fine by me. Your missions rarely deviate from running into a room and implanting clip after clip of hot metallic shard into every Jack, Jane, and Joe Evildoer foolish enough to cross your ever-bloodied path. But what the game lacks in variety it makes up in substance - though you won't be doing anything new, you will be doing something enjoyable, and if that thing just happens to involve two clips and a Molotov, so be it.
The latest iteration of Bullettime, The Matrix-inspired slowing of time and a trademark of the series, is a little more interesting as the further you get into a gunfight the slower your surroundings become.
Unlike the last game, playing your cards right means you can get through a whole wave of enemies under a single bullettime session, making for a cinematic showcase of clips and shells. Unfortunately, with this new bullettime in place, the best course of action is usually to run right into adversaries with guns blazing, which detracts from the realism of the game. But you're not playing this game for its realism, are you? You're looking for pretty, shinny, slow-motion chaos and destruction, and on this front Max delivers by the cartridge.
As far as the storyline goes, you love what you are seeing or ignore it. You're far too busy killing to notice there's a plot involved. I personally love the noir-style events of love and betrayal, but I'm a sucker for this stuff. Without giving anything away, I can assure you that Max will go to hell and back to solve the mysteries around him, find his purpose, prove his sanity and so forth. Throwing Mona Sax, Max's love interest, into the mix was a great direction for the writing. Sax really seems like the girl for Payne. She's the deadly assassin type, playing sniper to his pistols and harboring a general dislike for henchmen - everything a man could want.
Unfortunately, Mona is given little time to shine as the game is too short to allow us any knowledge of her past, or present for that matter. She's the love interest, and that's all we get. We never see any motivation or real reason for Max and Mona to be together, and their tension is left unresolved.
Why is there such an underdeveloped plot? Frankly, because there's no time to tell the story.
If one were to take in all the cutscenes, watch all the little extras (like TVs in the background showing a bevy of programs for your entertainment, and inside-joke laden posters), beat the game on the three varying difficulty levels, and then go back and played around with the survival mode (where the game hurls unlimited grunts at you until you cower and cry), you may be able to get 10 hours of gaming in. At a $50 price tag for the currently released PC version, is Max really worth $5 an hour? If you like your revenge cold and your action hot, consider giving Max Payne 2 a rental on your Playstation2 or X-Box when it comes out for consoles in December.
