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by Rockstar
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Max Payne, as in
the first Max Payne, was in development seemingly forever with so many
new screens, engine updates, and et cetera, that before it shipped
people were starting to make vapor ware jokes. For the release of the
sequel, Rockstar used the exact opposite tactic, just making a quiet
announcement to the public a couple months in advance of the game and
then hitting the target date on the head.
Those of you
familiar with Max Payne's controls will be able to jump right into the
sequel, as the basic third-person controls have not changed. In fact,
aside from absolutely stellar graphics and sound (which I'll get to
later), very little has changed from the first game except for a much
greater emphasis on story. The story is told as before through in-engine
cut scenes and out-of-engine comic book format screens. The
psychedelic states of altered consciousness that Max stumbled through in
the first game are here, too, although they serve only to move the plot
forward, instead of being mini games, a change that suits me fine.
What this means is that while the dream sequences are extremely dramatic
and pretty to look at, they're only interactive to a minimal degree: you
run through terrifying environments in a linear fashion, without having
to worry about jumping puzzles or death (as in the infamous red line
dream sequences from the first game which annoyed PC and console gamers
alike.)
Bullet Time, or the
relative slowing down of your environment while still allowing you to
aim your gun(s) in real time, is still the basic draw of the gameplay,
and like everything else, it's been improved from the first game. In The
Fall of Max Payne, the bullet dodge works just like it did in the
first game: press a direction, press shift, and watch Max do a
slow-motion dive in which he can aim in faster-than-real time to take
out enemies in a brutal, John Woo like fashion. However, unlike the
first game, there is no limit to the number of times you can make this
move (the hourglass returns, but only for Bullet Time, as discussed
below), giving players very little reason not to soar around every
corner and take out baddies on the fly. Another improvement I enjoyed
has to do with frustration encountered in the first game after
completing such a dive: sometimes the player would complete the dive
only to get shot to death trying to stand back up. While this can still
happen, Max Payne 2 allows you to continue to lie on the floor and fire
shots after you've finished a dive, until you run out of ammo in the
current clip, giving the player a chance to eliminate anyone they may
have missed in their dive.
As I mentioned
above, the hourglass icon from the first game makes a return, but it
functions rather differently. When you enter Bullet Time, the hourglass
slowly starts to drain, and when it's empty, you'll find yourself back
in real time. However, the Bullet Time in Max Payne 2 doesn't initially
seem as slow as the Bullet Time in the first game, and this is because
it's not. Instead of a fixed slow the game x percent modifier, as in
the first game, Bullet Time in Max Payne 2 has different levels of
slowness. After entering Bullet Time, anytime you re-fill the hourglass
meter to its top by killing people, it will turn a brighter shade of
yellow, and the rest of the world will slow down even more. On top of
that, these transitions into deeper levels of Bullet Time allow Max
himself to move faster. The newer, more dynamic bullet time means more
fun in killing hordes of mobsters.
Remedy licensed the
Havok 2.0 physics engine for this game and it shows. The ragdoll effect
used on all the enemies means you'll never see the same death twice
(indeed, more than once I found myself reloading just to see what that
would look like if I shot him in the head instead of the chest or
something similar). All the environments are littered with various
objects and debris that you can knock around, and exist only to make the
environments more believable. However, this isn't to say that the crafty
player can't find a way to use such objects for cover, or distraction,
or any number of other things.
Graphically, the
game looks fairly similar to Max Payne, but it has been necessarily
brought up to date with the latest in shaders, higher poly-count models
and environments, and a host of new graphical effects. In higher
resolutions, and with all the detail cranked, the game looks at least as
good as anything else I've seen this year, if not better. And the amount
of scalability included, in terms of turning effects on or off, means
that the game will, in theory, run on a 1 gHZ machine with an 32 MB
Direct-3D card. The box recommends nearly twice that amount of
horsepower, and twice that amount of video memory.
The sounds are
similarly excellent. The voice acting is, for the most part, convincing,
and moves the very linear story along nicely. Dynamic music and
environmental noises (televisions, raindrops, cars, etc) add to the
believability of Max's world without distracting the player from it.
People who enjoyed the in-game soap opera Lords and Ladies in the
first game will be glad to know The Fall of Max Payne features a new
season, as well as some other shows I won't spoil for anyone.
I realize that for
a game that I have described as so thoroughly story-driven, I haven't
said much of anything about the story. This is intentional; the first
eight to ten hour play through this game is something special I won't
ruin for anyone. I will say, however, that the story is (although not
faultless) much more concrete and less ludicrous and meandering this
time around, possibly as a result of the shorter and apparently more
directed development time.
Some people are
invariably going to fault this game for its violence. I do not because I
think the violence is extremely fun, albeit to a degree that's mildly
disturbing. Also, this game carries a Mature rating with a note of
intense violence, an impressive pedigree for a game that doesn't even
feature gibbing or corpse desecration (as in the Soldier of Fortune
games). The ragdoll engine combined with the new bullet time and better
looking models just necessarily seems to give birth to gameplay that's
just as visceral and violent as any Hong Kong cinematic bloodbath, and
also just as gripping. Needless to say, however, people who prefer their
violence to be cartoonish or absent entirely are not going to want to
descend into Max's world of nightmarish killing.
The brevity of the
game is in some ways compensated for by the modes which become unlocked
as a result of defeating the game; a single play from beginning to end
will unlock everything except for the hardest setting. The New York
Minute mode, also seen in the first Max Payne, returns here. In this
mode, the player has a single minute to complete each level, adding
seconds to the clock with each kill. New to Max Payne 2 is Dead Man
Walking, an arcadeish mode in which death is inevitable, and the goal is
to prolong Max's life as much as possible.
In conclusion, Max
Payne 2 is a an absolutely killer title that any action gamer should
play. At the time of this review, unfortunately, there was no demo
available, but I highly encourage anyone who goes for this sort of thing
to just go buy this one, it's a keeper. I don't feel like I can convey
in text the feeling one gets by steering max in uber slow motion into
an intense firefight, shooting mobsters in the head with unreal
precision. Like all the best things in life, it has to be experienced to
be understood.
Tristan Mayshark (10/29/2003) |
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Snapshot
Ups:
Everything that made the first game great is here
and has been improved, as well as some new surprises.
Downs:
Very short.
Platform:
PC
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