Quick Review - Max Payne 2
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Loading... - Alessio Sinatra
- 31 Dec 2020
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When the original Max Payne came out in 2001, it was hailed for its storytelling, visuals, and gritty noir setting. The eponymous hero wreaked bloody vengeance upon the corporation responsible for the murders of his wife and daughter, but Max was painted as a hero thanks to a powerful man named Alfred Woden, the head of an inner circle of Illuminati-type power players. Yet although Max found some closure, the years have not been kind. He is still a haunted man, now living in a hole-in-the-wall, run-down apartment and back to working for the NYPD. He thinks his past is behind him when he responds to a police dispatch regarding shots fired at an old warehouse. Unfortunately, he couldn't be more wrong, and he will end up tumbling through another long rabbit hole into a Wonderland of mayhem and drama at least equal to what he waded through many years before. Along for the ride are our old friends Chief Bravura, Vladimir Lem, Vinnie Gognitti, Mona Sax, and a couple others, but I don't want to give too much away.
You'll notice some immediate improvements over the original as the scene opens at a city hospital. Close-ups of faces are remarkably realistic. A lot of animation has been motion-captured. You can knock things over like chairs, stools, boxes. Puddles of water give accurate reflections of their surroundings. People have funny conversations.
Your first firefight will be different as well, thanks to some adjustments in Bullet Time. You'll still be able to do those slow-motion dives, but you can actually stay on the ground until you've stopped firing. However, there's another button that will put you in the new Bullet Time, and with each kill during this phase, your enemies become slower, until you can easily dodge bullets at medium range. It doesn't last for very long, but it's enough to get you through some tough spots, especially when a van pulls out in front of you and spills out more people than even Rambo could handle. You still get a boost in your hourglass when you take someone down, but the meter also gradually refills while you're not using that mode. Also, the slow-motion dives don't use up the meter.
If this makes things sound too easy, well, let me tell you, these guys are quick on the draw and very rarely travel alone. Plus they will all be wearing body armor eventually, forcing you to aim right at their heads if you want to take out two or three people in one dive. Once you've finished a dive and are getting back to your feet, they better be dead, or you'll get a deadly lead salad before you've gotten all the way back up. Thankfully, the new Bullet Time mode also gifts you with rapid reload, which you will perform with a dramatic whirl and a swooping camera. It's pretty cool.
There are some interesting changes in the arsenal, speaking of which. The grenade launcher is gone, but you now have the MP5, a versatile assault rifle with a short-range scope. There are so many fully automatic weapons, though, that a few get lost in the shuffle. You have the Ingrams, three assault rifles, and two machine guns. You'll forget the Ingram ever existed once you start wielding the Kalashnikov AK-47. Each round does some vicious damage, and you can cut someone down with only a couple bullets if you aim right. But they can also cut you down with it too. Since many of the bad guys camp positions waiting for you to appear, you'll find yourself enabling Bullet Time before bursting through a lot of doors. Save often, folks. Although AI difficulty adjusts somewhat to your skill level, an AK is an AK and it's hard to not put some serious hurt on someone. Another nice tweak is dual Desert Eagles. I didn't use the single style Desert Eagle in the first game much, because of its slow rate of fire and smaller clip. Here, though, they pack a satisfying punch that, in combination with some Bullet Time, will allow you to put some hurt on a much better armed enemy. Plus, with the 2.0 mode, you get those wicked-fast reloads.
You may have noticed that I didn't specify Max when I mentioned all the things you can do in the game. That's because you'll actually get to play Mona Sax, the femme fatale contract killer from the original game who survived a bullet wound to her head and resurfaces early once you start digging around what was going on in that warehouse. Playing her is almost the same experience, except she has a Dragunov sniper rifle she'll be putting to heavy use about midway through the game. I don't want to give too much away, but it was probably the most tense and exciting segment in the game.
