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Max Payne 2 Reviewed
Some random reader writes "Max Payne 2, the sequel to the awesome original game released years ago, hit shelves three days ago. The first review I've seen thus far is at PCSynapse. It seems to be what fans want, give or take a few quirks. Overall conclusion - 'MP2 was not designed to be revolutionary - but more evolutionary, and in that apparent goal it has succeeded with flying colors.'" There's a selection of other reviews collated via GameTab.
Yesterday's Penny Arcade weighs in with its own review. :)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
yep
Max Payne is one of those games where you literally forget you're playing a game. It's that good and realistic. The first one had a good, solid plot, which in my opinion makes a game worthwhile to play.
It's going to be the longest short wait ever for me until Max Payne 2 comes out, I'm just hoping it's as good as it sounds and can live up to the reputation the first one got.
Thief was a game. Games that make you think and can build suspense like in a good movie. There seems to be a lack of real story telling and artistic talent at these game companies. The game are all cookie cutter now.
It's short. Think of it as an interactive movie trilogy, and expect to spend as much time on it as you would watching a movie trilogy. That said, the gameplay is fun, and the story is good, and you can always go back and replay it.
Wow!
There's another review here.
--It's Pimptastic!--
3 years?
How's everything going for you in 2005?
is GameRankings.com which has a lot of MP2 reviews here
As someone who does artwork for games, Max Payne is just great; gameplay-wise, not much new going on but as far as visuals, stylistically Max Payne is a major cut above the rest. Before Max Payne, stylism was there in FPS games, but not in the quanities as it was in MP. Throughout the game, I felt like I was fighting in a grungy, bleak and lonely version of NYC, much like the one depicted in comics and movies. Then include their photo-realistic textures that gave everything such grit and depth, and you end up with a visual masterpiece. Max Payne is not great because it brings revolutionary changes to the table, but because it raises the bar for the quality of art in games and not only that but the thought behind the stylization, not just 'because its cool'. Lets hope that other games follow suit (Doom3 is another example of good art direction and stylistic techniques.)
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Is the fact that the model for Mona Sax is hot.
"Fans will love the new realism this lends to the game, as the enemy shoots out your cover right in front of your face, or when you find yourself knocking over stacks of crates in search for ammunition or painkillers."
Woah. And I thought I was the only one who hid their ammunition and painkillers inside stacks of crates. Now that's what I call realism!
Max Payne has mods too. Very good ones.
And have you gotten easily over a thousand hours of time out of HL and at least 500 out of BF1942, *single-player*? Otherwise you're not making a fair comparison.
Some people still appreciate good single-player games.
"Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
So maybe the physics aren't quite up to what HL2 is supposed to offer, but they sure are neat. Knocking a bucket with a plank in it off of a ledge offered me more satisfaction than any part of the plot. See, it fell off, then bounced, then the plank came out! And it was the real deal, no scripting. Another highlight of the game was having an bum (armed with dual 9mm pistols) say in a slurred, drunken voice "I'll cover you from here!" The story is still awful in an amusing way, if you're wondering.
I say by 4 AM sunday.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Max Payne was an excellent example of how you can integrate a compelling story with a great action game. If you liked that, and are looking forward to playing this one. I would highly recommend playing Mafia. Great story, graphics, and variety in the gameplay.
Seriously! I mean who buys games based on what mods are out their for it? Last time I checked mods were made by the community AFTER a game has been released. I can understand if this guy doesn't like the game because it's short but for my money ($50) I will buy a game like mp2 in an instant compared to a long game that sucks.
meep
meep
Because of our Protestant roots... Violence is okay, but nudity is not.
by making it too easy.
the gameplay consisted of mostly save, enter the room, hit bullet time, shoot, save/reload, repeat.
i absolutely loved the graphic novel presentation and the noir genre, but i didn't much care for the actual gameplay.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
PLEASE be a troll, PLEASE be a troll... don't you fucking DARE be real.
Machine - 1Ghz, and still the reviewer said that tha game ran perfectly. That is impressive and commendable, well done devs.
I'm still waiting for the game that forgoes the traditional crates, but offers me a mini-game for opening a bottle of aspirin with a child-proof cap. Then I will know we have crossed a new threshold of realism, not just because the box looks REALLY well lit and falls into a rag doll which crumples realistically to the side.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"nu-geek case mod Wintendo crowd." haha as opposed to the MTV osbourne crowd?
meep
You a game programmer? I doubt it. I'm not either, and I've stayed the hell away from graphics work, but I somehow doubt you have the slightest clue wtf you're talking about.
/. catering to the Windows crowd? That's almost laughable.
It doesn't work yet you mean. If there's enough interest in it, it will be run under Linux. Not like it's that big of a freakin deal to dual-boot or anything. You want to apply market pressure, don't buy any windows games, period. Don't emulate Windows, don't run Windows apps. You're going to have to give up a lot of very good, mature software. I don't buy computer games anymore personally, but I may make a notable exception for the new Sam and Max.
Now that you've stopped buying windows games you now need to get at least a quarter of Windows gamers to do the same. Games will then be made for Linux(ignore the fact for the moment that I, and I assume others, like Linux because it's almost a purely workhorse OS.)
Wintendo? That's a new one. I thought most of the hardcore microsoft fanboys/girls owned X-Boxen.
Yes, come develop games for Linux, but they must be free or else our hippy community won't buy them! Free games pay the bills alright(ignoring the resume add and reputation increase inherant in completing a decent game).
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
GameSpot
IGN.com
FYI, both reviews seem to think its a lot better than 'evolutionary.'
I can definitely see some of the game's flaws:
Too short, too linear, too easy.
However, the rich plot, the voice acting, the music, the ambiance serve to make this a worthy game to play. And they finally got Bullet Time right. In MP1, you had to use it so sparingly that it was almost useless. The Quenten Tarantino feel to the Bullet Time cinematics were awesome. I would have preferred a little bit more play between cutscenes, though. Seemed like just when you got going, you had to stop for a three minute cutscene. Max Payne (and MP2) ranks up there in my top three (including Thief/Thief2 and Splinter Cell). I'm so tired of Run 'n Gun that it's nice to see the occasional gem with something extra to offer.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Max Payne 2 is, as you would expect of a sequel, much like the original Max Payne. Both games are short by game standards, and Max Payne 2 seems even shorter than its predecessor. That isn't a complaint, merely an observation. Max Payne 2 is a lot of goodness packed into a tight package. It does leave you wishing for more. Firstly, I am going to skip over AI, graphics, and sound. Any other review of the game can tell you about this, so let it suffice to say that they all come together to produce a great gaming experience. What matters is how the developers use them to suck the gamer into their world. By video game standards, Max Payne is original, but like so many games it is an imitation of movies, in this case film noir. They get it very close to right, but at times it almost seems as though they try too hard, and after a while the lines start sounding a bit cheesy. I suppose it is silly to expect a game to rise above this, as great writing/acting talent is no doubt drawn to movies themselves, but I'm still holding out in the hope that someone will put together a really great original script for a game. But again, this is a video game, and by those standards Max Payne 2 rises above the rest. I don't know about you, but I am getting a bit tired of the "aliens/monsters invade, it's your job to save the world" plot. The idea of using comics to tell the story was a stroke of genius, as it is a perfect work around for the incapability of video game characters to act. The technology just isn't there yet, and when games try to tell a story with emotion it is more likely to come off comical than serious, as the stick figures jerk around in an attempt to appear human. Obviously comics aren't great at conveying emotion, but they certainly don't detract from it the way in video game cut scenes tend to. Film noir being the straight faced act that it is allows Max Payne 2 to flow nicely. The atmosphere of the game is outstanding. The attention to detail put into every level is phenomenal. One wonders if the trend will be for games to become shorter in coming years, as the effort needed to build ever more realistic worlds from scratch becomes greater. There is a mad fun house level in the game that almost makes you cringe as you realize how much effort went into making all the props and setting them all up to move as a fun house does. The cringe comes from the realization that the detail must have cost the game some of its length. Apparently the developers realized this too, as you actually pass through the level twice during the games. My gripes about the game are few. I think there could have been a little bit better enemy placement, and the difficulty of the game could have been increased to make the game both longer and more challenging. Shooting enemies in bullet time doesn't lose its charm, and with quick save and load being such an easy thing you think they would have made things a bit tougher. There were times where I would take out 2 or 3 people and turn hoping to see one more bad guy, only to find an empty corner. Another thing, I think they should have placed the bad guys in front of more breakable objects. I don't know about you, but I love to see stuff fly apart, and it just didn't happen as often as I wanted. More often they would be standing on some ledge, ready to die and give you yet another display of the physics engine. I personally don't think it is that cool to see the person you shoot instantly go limp and fall like a sack of potatoes. It may be realistic for a rag doll, but it isn't for someone who just got shot. But hey, I guess that is why it is called "rag doll" physics and not "guy who just got shot" physics. If they wanted to show it off I would have rather seen them add slow motion deaths for grenade explosions, of which there were none. All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience. I hope they are able to lay Max Payne to rest however, as I don't think they can really do much else with this. Hopefully their next game will be as fresh as the original Max Payne was.
Time to maybe visit your preferences and start selecting what sections you WANT to see on your /. homepage, huh?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Aside of the interesting story and gameplay, one of the reasons I like MP2 is the fact it's using a licensed version of Havoc, the engine for Half-life 2. The first time I got into a major firefight involving grenades, rifles, smgs etc, the room afterwards actually LOOKED like a major firefight had just occurred there. Objects were blown all over the place, bullet marks and char marks from explosions... It makes the experience more immersive and enjoyable. Sure the overall game is short, but it's very sweet.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Many slashdotters enjoy gaming. Some of us still have inner children and are not dead inside.
Makes me wonder how this game would stack up using Old Man Murray's Crate Review system...
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html
Translation: Everyone who spoke up about any new ideas has been fired and replaced with a quiet, imaginationless drone. The rest of the work was outsourced.
Maximum revenue, minimum cost, almost totally riskless, and none of those edjicated types interrupting meetings with newfangled ideas.
Just the way corporate middle management likes it.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Tracker keeps timing out for me :/
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
On a side note, the problem might be that Linux isn't the most install friendly OS sometimes. Granted, I haven't bought any of the boxed games out for it, but I was too entertained making it work for a month straight(thank you gentoo and a lack of knowledge). I might try and get NWN to work sometime though... Wow, a new sam and max... You've made my day.
FryCarson off to see if you lie
Warez for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Sigs are for losers
Too bad the review does not touch this question. While I loved the bullet-time effect and the general "noir-esque" storyline in "Max Paine", I really HATED acting in all the cut-scenes. Most of the villains are unintentionally funny, they are not scary at all. It is common among the game developers to employ theyr friends and family as stop-gap "actors", but I've never seen as horrible acting in a computer game. At least Walton Simmons in "Deus Ex" is really scary - he creates a memorable character, just like interesting villains from the movies. But do you really remember any character from "Max Payne"? The graphic novel was kitschy as well, nothing even close to Alan Moore or Frank Miller. Those cheap bastards should employ a good designer and some half-decent actors for a sequel, but did they?
8 hours of interactive film(it's not really a _game_, you have to play it on the easiest setting first too).
retarded boss sequence at the end(i prefer that if i can see somebody that i can kill him/her in a 'game', rather than try to guess what the script writer thought that i should make. this is the problem with games that resemble more like a film than a real game, you have to be an actor but you dont have the script). if you're having trouble there think about max payne 1's ending(and look for hotspots to shoot).
retarded plot compared to 1(wtf, hundreds of cleaners and nobody notices them ever? one local detective working on cases that have have 50 bodies and completely 'cleaned' buildings?)
havok is great in it, boxes, chairs, bodies.
they don't use too much havok for anything that really matters gameplay wise, which is a shame.
bodies don't show damage or get torn apart..
it's a good play(even if only in theatretical sense, i wonder if i got the word right even) though, looks great and more importantly also _runs_ great.
so, all and all it is a bit like unreal 2(as a gaming experience), though unreal 2 had more variety in the missions(mp2 of course has those cool comic strips telling the story, but i'd rather have the variety of gameplay. now mp2 is just 'find the open door, go in and shoot people. repeat' apart from few annoying protection scenes).
it would have been nice to include max payne 1 in the package with the new engine, if just to expand the length of the package.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
the game imho was to short and to easy. yes i know that as soon as it was finished you could try it on a harder level, but that was too boring, because the game was exactly the same so unless the demo blows em away i think ill pass
sig censored by america
I just downloa- er, legally obtained- a copy of MP2, and I've started playing through it. Like people have said, it doesn't seem to be anything terribly new. I have, however, noticed a number of improvements in gameplay. My favorite: When you shoot/dodge and land on the floor you stay lying there until you stop shooting. This has its pros and cons, but I remember being fantastically annoyed at being so vulnerable while Max picked his ass up off the ground.
The graphics are better than in MP, of course, but to my great pleasure the game runs much smoother on my oldish Dell than its predecessor did. I still have a lot of playing left to do, so I'll get back to it. Don't dismiss this game out of hand; it builds on a very strong foundation.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
In other news, adult entertainment professional Moaner Sexx has approached Max Payne publisher Rockstar Games via her solicitor regarding the unauthorized use of her artist name in the computer game Max Payne 2.
(How blatant can u be!)
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
It's been on the shelves here since Thursday Oct 16
I picked up mine with the free hat thingy
-joe
get past the first level without eating enough painkillers to kill Rush Limbaugh.
mck
I'll leave it to Gabe and Tycho to talk about Max Payne 2.
Join Tor today!
I just (not 10 minutes ago) finished Max Payne 2, and I LOVED it. The first game was great, and part two was equally as good.
The only problem is that it was very short, and for $65+tax Canadian, I'd expect at least twice as much gameplay.
For those who scoff at the whole 'film noir' aspect of the storytelling, that's the whole point of the game. Without it, all you have is another 3rd-person blah shooter. Aside from the story, however, the game itself is just beautiful. At times when I was safe, I found myself just walking around and admiring the excellent texture work, reflections, Havok physics, etc.
Can't wait for Max Payne 3!
- c -
Graphics: same or just a little better
Sound: same
gameplay: a little better (you get to play with some guys on your side a few times, you get to play with mona too)
replay value: worse. The game is even shorter (about 8 hours). Although it has some more playing modes.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Done so quickly they didn't bother with such trivialities as a knowledge of the English language, presumably. "[T]he comic-like sequences inherent of the first game"? "To a point of dissention"? Did the reviewer write this by throwing a thesaurus at the PC and hoping it would hit the right keys when it bounced?
Completely off-topic, but how the heck could you get 500 hours out of BF1942 single-player ? I don't think I got *5* hours of play out of the single-player mode, it was awful and useful only as a training ground for the real reason you buy BF1942, which is multiplayer.
Max Payne 2, Doom III, Half-Life II...yeap, good FPS games with emphasis on gameplay and visuals are coming!!! what a good year it must be!!!
Aside from that, MP is one of the best games ever. The sequences where Max has nightmares (and the player must complete) are absolutely stunning and brilliantly executed.
By the way, am I the only one who turns bullet time off ? it is impressive, but not while really playing the game.
...then I noted it needs a gigahertz class processor.
Maybe next summer. Or the one after it.
Well, Max Payne was good enough to make me upgrade my video card, maybe this one is good enough to make me get a new proc... =)
I've been playing this a little and it has the same stuttery feel that Max Payne 1 has. I actually just got Max Payne 1 after reading about the excellent Kung Fu mod. My graphics card is pretty new though, so it should be able to run either game easily. Anyway, it seems like the major feature of this sequel is the higher system requirements. The gameplay is only slightly different, maybe the presentation is a little slicker. I don't really see new features in the graphics engine (more complex shadows, self-shadows, improved transparency, something) but I do see higher poly models. It looks like Remedy thought "don't change the game, just make it so they'll want a new graphics card to play it."
Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I think I have to agree that the game is too short. I finish it in 2 days and there is no multiplayer, so the replay value goes down a bit
Overall it's a great deal if you can offload it to somebody else after you are done
-joe