Max Payne 2 Gone Gold

Natoi writes "Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has gone gold and will be shipping to stores on the 15th of October in the States and on the 24th in Europe. Max Payne 2 is developed by Finnish Remedy Entertainment, which sold the rights to the Max Payne name to Rockstar Games after the first game in the series a little over two years ago." Playstation 2 and XBox versions are slated for an early December release as well.

Comments

Max Paine 2? Haven't finished the first one

[bluedream]

Guess I should get on the ball and finish the first one. -- Home on the Strange

More Bullet Time

[ike6116]

Hopefully this time there will be more bullet time, ooh ooh, and cell shading.... that would be K-RAD.

Re:More Bullet Time

[psyco484]

I'm not sure about more bullet time in general, but you are now able to move much faster during bullet time. If you watch the in-game movies, you can see an example of this, but to explain it in words, think of it in terms of the matrix. They're just slowing down time for themselves, so they can move in "real time" but everything else is going incredibly slow around them. Looking at the in-game movies, it looks like you can move just as fast in bullettime, so while you might not get more bullet time, you'll be able to get more out of it. You also gain more speed when you kill multiple enemies, so clearing out a room during bullettime will speed your actions up, why still slowing your enemies down. Having seen these movies, I can say the effect is incredibly impressive and they've done an excellent job with it overall.

This game is such a Matrix Rip off.. But its good!

[Praedon]

I enjoy playing it, even though they have "Bullet Time"... Its fun though! Can't wait to play MP2...

Whatever happened to the Maxx Payne lawsuit?

[lightspawn]

For the goldfish-memoried among you, here is the original slashdot article.

Was the lawsuit dismissed? Was it settled? Did Rockstar arrange for the candle truck to pay Mr. Payne a visit?

Re:Whatever happened to the Maxx Payne lawsuit?

[bigman2003]

The lawsuit was not dismissed- it was settled. I believe there was a payment of 1/1 speaker bracelets.

Ass-kicking women

[Henry V .009]

Great. Another use of that ludicrous invention of Hollywood: The Ass-Kicking Chick. Screenshot Notice how the lady obviously does not have the upper body strength required to even hold up the weapon. These aren't women, they are nothing like women, and it's only sexy if you have never held a conversation with a real woman. Of course, I suppose that the Chip makes American women unattractive enough as is. Maybe some guys find these girls to be an improvement. Anyway, the silliest aspect of the whole mess is that it makes our culture inclined towards idiocy like women in combat.

Re:Ass-kicking women

[bigman2003]

Umm..looks like Courtney Cox to me.

Just the thought of her opening her mouth, bitching and whining, would send me running. She don't need no stinking gun...

Re:Ass-kicking women

[WTFmonkey]

Dude, chicks in games like this are no less ludicrous than the male stars. I mean, when was the last time you met someone like Max Payne, Sam Archer, Sam Spade; namely incredibly ass-kicking alcoholic detective-types.

That's why these people are called heroes, because they are out-of-the-ordinary people who do things that real people can't do. It's fiction. Fiction, fiction, fiction.

And, makes our culture inclined towards women in combat? Whether or not it's idiocy is a different argument, but saying that women enter the military because they want to be Lara Croft or Ripley from Aliens is just silly. None of my male friends joined the military to become superheros either. Most of the time, they did it because they didn't want to look for a job or thought it would be cool to have college paid for. That's an intellectual leap the likes of which were heretofore unknown to /. And that's an accomplishment.

I'd never heard of this Fred Reed guy, but a quick perusal of his articles showed some serious logical fallacies (post hoc, complex clause among them) that would lose him an argument in any formal setting. He tends to show an effect, then show a cause or two and claim that those are the only causes. Pretty narrow scope.

Re:This game is such a Matrix Rip off.. But its go

[EricTheMad]

How is it a Matrix rip off? The Bullet Time feature was locked in long before the Matrix came out or was even advertised.

Re:This game is such a Matrix Rip off.. But its go

[mahdi13]

Oh ya, I thought the whole story about Max being a battery for a super computer and he gained self awareness was SO the Matrix!
And when Max flew off the Empire State Building into the sky at the end...that was SO lame!!

Oh wait...Max Payne was a mob game, no sci-fi what-so-ever...I guess super slow motion is a total rip off of the Matrix in every way that TV commercials and a few dozen other movies where trying to "be like the Matrix" with slow motion action...
Guess we can sue Etienne Jules Marey for making a camera that took 700 pictures a second in 1894...damn copy cats!!

Once a troll... (actually serious post)

[jvmatthe]

Last time I brought up how mind-numbingly weak Max Payne was, I got flamed. So I'll ask this time, just for fun. :^)

Was Max Payne's story, with hammy voice acting and so forth, a joke or serious? That is, did they think they were making a work of serious fiction or were they trying to spoof the hard-boiled detective "noir" genre?

I never found a story or interview indicating that it was meant to be parody/satire, but I could have missed it. So I took it as an attempt to be serious, one that was painful to watch. Others saw it as intentionally bad for humourous effect.

So, anyone have hard evidence one way or the other?

Anyway, here's hoping MP2 is somehow better. I didn't realize it was coming out on the PS2, so I guess I'll have a chance to rent it to see it for myself. (Previous curmudgeoning of Max Payne here and here for the morbidly curious.)

Re:Once a troll... (actually serious post)

[gl4ss]

if i know anything about the background the makers of the game come from.. it was dark humour most likely(as such noir detective stories usually are, the genre is NOT hard boiled beneath the surface by any means but filled with cliches that actually have to be there for it to be what it is).

as for what made the game fun? shooting people, plain and simple, the engine made 'movie like' shooting of people easy and fun.

now, that might just as well have been it's biggest shortcoming, as the game wasn't that long at all and basically you only shot people and there were around one or two places where you had to actually think a bit on how to proceed to shoot those mafiosos.

Re:Once a troll... (actually serious post)

[simoniker]

I always took it as a Finnish-constructed take on American film noir, which would necessarily get a little, uhm, skewed in execution. Whether this is a good thing or not is, naturally, open to argument - I think GTA has about the right balance of (slight) stereotyping and cheesiness without going overboard, so let's hope Rockstar do similar with Max Payne now they're in charge of the sequel.

Re:Once a troll... (actually serious post)

[ziggles]

Decide for yourself. If you want to take it as a joke, you'll probably enjoy it more. If you want to take it seriously, you're free to do that too. Why do you need an "official" decision either way? Do you have to read plot summaries after you watch a movie to make sure you enjoyed it the "right" way?

Re:This game is such a Matrix Rip off.. But its go

[Praedon]

Im just saying in general, the effects.. cause when you look at it.. You see cartoons like Shrek that had that camera rotation to copy Matrix... And the fact that really a game didn't come out with bullet time till after Matrix, unless I am mistaken, then I will swallow my pride and accept that..

No way.

[rjh]

Notice how the lady obviously does not have the upper body strength required to even hold up the weapon

A fully-loaded M-16A2 with undermounted grenade launcher weighs a total of about twelve pounds. My mother could carry that today, and she's not exactly young.

A Barrett M82A1--which is a big honkin' piece of hardware (click here)--weighs about thirty pounds. So as a rough guess, I'd say the hardware she's carrying there in the screenshot (a rifle I can't place, although it looks vaguely Dragunovish, which would make it nine and a half pounds fully loaded) weighs no more than twelve pounds.

So either you don't know jack about women, if you think they can't carry a twelve-pound weapon, or you don't know jack about firearms. Take your pick which. :)

(Up until her 50th birthday, my mother could beat me in skeet shooting. Her preferred rig was a twelve-gauge firing three-inch magnum rounds. So please don't tell me "real women can't handle hardware like that." Real women, especially real women who come from Alabama and grow up hunting and fishing with their fathers, most definitely do handle hardware like that.)

Re:No way.

[gl4ss]

yeah they're not that heavy(assault rifles & etc sized firearms).

now if it was a full blown machinegun then i'd be little suspicious though she looks fit enough for that(now, shooting with full mg's with some accuracy is another thing).

(and of course, carrying all the guns in your arsenal that you have 'under your jacket' or something and the ammo around might prove quickly a bigger chore than the gun in hand)

well.. at least mandatory army service puts some perspective into them 'toys'...

Re:No way.

[Henry V .009]

The weight of a rifle is determined mainly by the ammunition used. The higher the caliber you go, the more weight a rifle will need to absorb the recoil. The reason the M16 is so light is because it is a pea-shooter that uses what is almost .22 ammunition. The M16 was designed to be light -- that was its main feature.

But regardless of all that, the G.I. Jane woman you see pictured only exists in make believe.

Re:No way.

[rjh]

The weight of a rifle is determined mainly by the ammunition used.

M-16A2; 8.5 pounds loaded, with a magazine which weighs just about a pound. In other words, the weight of the rifle is determined only 12% by the ammunition used.

A G3A3 battle rifle; about 11 pounds loaded, with a magazine which weighs about two pounds. In other words, for a battle rifle chambered in the very hefty 7.62mm NATO round, the weight is determined only 20% by the ammunition used.

Try again.

Re:No way.

[Henry V .009]

You didn't read the sentence after the one you quoted, did you?

Re:No way.

[rjh]

Actually, I did. But you're arguing trivialties here, and more than that, incorrect trivialties. A Remington 700 chambered in .223 Remington weighs 11 pounds; an HK G3K in .308 weighs eight. You keep on trying to argue that "women are too small to handle full-caliber weapons", and completely ignore the fact that most weapons don't weigh all that much.

When you're called on the subject, you hide behind trivially-refuted tripe like "the weight of a rifle is determined primarily by its ammunition type", which is a non-sequitur (it doesn't have anything to do with your original statement) as well as incorrect (weapon weight is determined by many factors, and caliber does not dominate the weight consideration).

Re:No way.

[_Sexy_Pants_]

Dude, your mom sounds kinda scary

Re:No way.

[Henry V .009]

It is the momentum of the round leaving the barrel that is the main consideration for how heavy a rifle should be. Yes, caliber alone is not the deciding factor, but in order to make an accurate rifle that uses a heavy round as light as one that does not one must reduce the velocity of the round. It is caliber that is the main trend here, and that was what I was pointing out.

"women are too small to handle full-caliber weapons"

I said that? Where? I am forced to admire your facilities for invention. My actual point was that the particular woman pictured was too small for the particular weapon pictured. Especially if we are to believe that she is carrying it around for the whole game.

Re:No way.

[rjh]

It is the momentum of the round leaving the barrel that is the main consideration for how heavy a rifle should be. Yes, caliber alone is not the deciding factor, but in order to make an accurate rifle that uses a heavy round as light as one that does not one must reduce the velocity of the round.

You've clearly never done any serious shooting before.

For instance, a .45 Glock 21 is a very, very light weapon (about 1.7 pounds) due to its extensive use of synthetics--a clear exception to your "weapons of larger caliber are heavier" rule, considering that a Beretta M92 weighs considerably more despite the 9mm round's lower momentum.

Why and how can Glock get away with this? Because of synthetics; the Glock uses a lot of high-impact polymers, whereas the Beretta is solid steel. Why is the Beretta solid steel and the Glock polymer? Because of economics.

In other words, it's economic forces which dominate a weapon's weight--not caliber.

As another example, a .408 CheyTac costs about five grand and packs a massive .408 round into a weapon that's lighter than a Remington 700. More momentum, less weight--but the CheyTac is far more expensive.

In firearms, you pay for what you don't get. In this case, weight.

Where? I am forced to admire your facilities for invention. My actual point was that the particular woman pictured was too small for the particular weapon pictured.

You're claiming that a fit woman is incapable of carrying a nine-and-a-half-pound rifle, when other women of far less fitness routinely carry fifteen- and twenty-pound children around all day.

Whatever it is that you're smoking, do you mind if I get some? It seems to have some truly wonderful mind-altering effects.

Re:No way.

[Henry V .009]

How much does the .408 CheyTac weigh again? You said it is lighter than the 11 pound Remington 700?

And is there some reason we are talking about bolt-action rifles and handguns, not semi-automatics? And where did you get the nine-and-a-half-pound rifle figure you mention later on?

Re:No way.

[rjh]

Is there some reason we are talking about bolt-action rifles and handguns, not semi-automatics?

We have been talking about automatic rifles. Or were you not paying attention to the discussion about the weight of the M-16A2, G3A3, etc.? I'm bringing in other weapons and other mechanisms because it shows the trend is not limited to assault and battle rifles.

Good grief, man, think about it: if weapons are made heavier to handle more energetic rounds (more precisely, as you say, rounds with more momentum), then why is the M-16 as light as it is? You say it's because the M-16 was specifically designed for the .223 Remington, but that's not true; Eugene Stoner designed the M-16 based off the AR-15, and the original AR-15 was just a .308 AR-10 rechambered for .221 Fireball. (Once the Air Force agreed to purchase AR-15s, the AR-15 chambering was changed again to .223 Remington.) The AR-10 was the breakthrough lightweight assault rifle, not the AR-15 or M-16. So if every weapon designer "knows" that you always make weapons heavier to offset momentum, why is it the most brilliant weaponsmith since John Moses Browning (i.e., Eugene Stoner) had his biggest breakthrough slashing the weight of a full-caliber battle rifle by several pounds?

If what you say is true, then the M-16A2 should be heavier than it is by several pounds, since it's originally designed to chamber a cartridge with far, far more momentum.

And where did you get the nine-and-a-half-pound rifle figure you mention later on?

Jane's Weapons of the World lists it as between 4.3 and 4.6 kilograms, depending on its particular type.

I'm done with this thread.

Re:No way.

[rjh]

I'm done with this thread.

Except for a minor (pedantic) correction: the AR-15 was an AR-10 rechambered for .222 Special, not .221 Fireball. My goof.

Re:No way.

[Henry V .009]

"Jane's Weapons of the World lists it as between 4.3 and 4.6 kilograms, depending on its particular type."

It? I sure as hell couldn't tell what she was holding from that picture. All I could get was a good idea of size and proportions.

I'm done with this thread.

And thank god for that. Between your inventing quotes of mine, dodging questions, and pretending to have said something you haven't, it hasn't been a great deal of fun.

It _is_ a Dragunov.

[rjh]

Check another picture of the sniper rifle, here. It's clearly a Dragunov, although only God knows what specific variant it is.

Nine and a half pounds, fully loaded.

Dunno about you, but all the real women I know can carry nine and a half pound weapons without any problem.

Re:It _is_ a Dragunov.

[wickedj]

"Dunno about you, but all the real women I know can carry nine and a half pound weapons without any problem."

Yeah, it's called a purse and its deadly.

(no offense to the ladies out there)

Re:It _is_ a Dragunov.

[bigman2003]

Watch a woman who is holding a baby- she'll hold that thing forever.

Give a guy a bag of sand that weighs that same...he'll start complaining in 2 minutes.

Of course the kid looks uncomfortable as hell, being bounced, smothered, etc...but it ain't gonna hit the floor!

Re:It _is_ a Dragunov.

[Psmylie]

Of course he would.
"Why the hell am I just standing here holding a nine-pound bad of sand? This is stupid!"
I think a woman would react much the same way when holding a bag of sand for no reason.

Personally, I can hold a baby for extremely long periods of time without complaining, since babies are so much cuter then bags of sand.

Error?

[Jainith]

Max Payne 2 is developed by Finnish Remedy Entertainment, which sold the rights to the Max Payne name to Rockstar Games after the first game in the series a little over two years ago."

This seems rather confusing to me, is it a missprint? If not could someone clarify it please.

Jainith

Re:Error?

[Anonymous Coward]

They sold the Max Payne IP to Rockstar Games after the first game for (if I recall correctly) 15 million USD. Rockstar obviously has big plans for the name (and game), as there is also a movie production rumored. Remedy just made the deal with them to develop the sequel, otherwise they're not connected to Max Payne anymore.

Take2

[new_confused_mind]

Max Payne IP was sold to Take2 and not to Rockstar, which is just another Take2 'division'. From the linked page:

Take-Two also announced that it has acquired ownership of the Max Payne brand and all intellectual property rights associated with the brand, including trademarks, copyrights, characters, perpetual license to utilize proprietary technologies, including the Max Payne game engine and associated "Bullet Time(TM)" technology, and rights to license fees from ancillary Max Payne brand extensions such as cinema, television and literary productions.

Take-Two purchased the Max Payne property from Remedy Entertainment and Apogee Software in exchange for $10 million in cash and 969,932 shares of restricted common stock, in addition to certain future development incentives.

Let's get things straight please.

Fairly confident...

[op51n]

I am fairly confident it was a joke.

Yes it had it's serious plot aspects, but the speech and the storyline must have been a spoof to some extent, part of what made it so fun.

All you have to do is look at the section where he gets drugged up on Valkyr, and in his dream is told that he is in both a game, and a comic book. If that doesn't prove it what does?

Much as I enjoyed it I'm still a little bitter. Not only do I know one of the guys who worked on it, but it came out long enough after I posted the outline for my HL mod (Gotterdammerung) that I can believe they may have read it. Basically I wanted to do the dreams, though in a slightly different way, and they even had the club - the Ragnarok, which was the subtitle of my mod.

Maybe it's all coincedence, but I'm still bitter!

Not spoof, tribute.

[JMZero]

It takes some effort to appreciate something like Max Payne's story - much less effort to write it off as stupid. It took courage for the developers to play the story straight when lapsing into parody would have been so easy. But if they had lapsed into parody, it wouldn't have worked like it did.

They set out to create something pulpy and dramatic and different - and, if you let yourself enjoy it, you'll find a great story and a fairly solid game.

Huh??????

[Anonymous Coward]

How can it go gold when it isn't out yet!??? *Confused*.

Re:Huh??????

[evil-osm]

"Gone Gold" is an expression used to state that the game has been finished and is shipped to the game copy guys and will be on the shelves in a few days/weeks.

Check out this site for more info...

AGREED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't she be in the kitchen makin' me a pie?

whats needed to play?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone know the requirements on this game? I loved max payne but my computer couldn't run it "full power", I had to town down the resolution and stuff. my computer is pretty old for gaming standards, athlon 1600xp+ with a geforce2 ti 64mb card

Re:whats needed to play?

[xneilj]

According to Tech Specs section for the game on play.com:

1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
32MB AGP graphics card with hardware transform & lighting support
256MB RAM
1.5 GB hard drive space
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
DirectX 9.0
Keyboard and mouse

Looks like you'll be fine :)

Re:whats needed to play?

[jenoazrael]

thats an old gaming machine? come play a game on my sub-1ghz "beast" :)

the only reason i still play Quake3 is because thats all that will run decently on it! (albeit with all the details turned down) :)

I'm confused

[skinnedmink]

Wait, you mean a game made it's release date?

Re:I'm confused

[Dreadlord]

a game goes gold when it's development is finished, it just takes some time to create copies and be sold to the public.

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Re:This game is such a Matrix Rip off.. But its go

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow motion action scenes have always been big in hard boiled (Yes, I know. Cheers) Hong Kong flicks anyways, and that is the kind of style both Matrix and Max went for.

First person view should have been included!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this time around, they have included the first person view. Last time around, I have to get a specially crafted MOD to play first person view. phfffft.!~

Kinda quick...

[_Sexy_Pants_]

If I remember correctly, the original Max Payne was in development for years. In fact, those of you saying that it predates the Matrix are supporting me here. It saw numerous graphics engine incarnations, each of which were pretty amazing for their times. Now this one is done in, what, about two years? I guess I'm just worried that this is going to be a half-assed effort or done with a different development team to speed the process or soemthing. I'm not too excited On a seperate note, what happened to old Apogee? I loved their stuff as a kid. Do they still exist?

Re:Kinda quick...

[Kyouryuu]

I don't think two years isn't a particularly short life cycle for a game - particularly a sequel. Final Fantasy VII was made in a matter of months, granted they had a veritable army of people working on it.

Pretty sure it's a Dragunov

[eggmit]

I remember thinking that when I saw the videos last weekend