Bringing back the Payne. Review

Bringing back the Payne.

It’s been over two years since we helped Max Payne clear his name and take
revenge on those who relieved his family of their right to exist. But like the
killer in any slasher film, he’s back, with a similar preternatural
proclivity for mayhem and wanton destruction.

Max is a hard-boiled NYPD detective, but as a cop he always seems to come
up short. In Remedy’s third-person shooter Max Payne 2, however,
our hero shines like my Uncle Buck’s hairless dome under the hot Indiana sun.
Admittedly, there are few hurdles along the way – you may find yourself bypassing
much of the exhaustive story to get to the bloodletting, – but at the end of
the day, this is about as cool as a cop gets.

Unfortunately,
he’s not cold enough to stay away a femme fatale who has seemingly defied the
Reaper’s death grip. Those of you who helped our sleepless detective on his
last mission will remember Mona Sax, the bombshell assassin who until now
was thought to be dead. She returns to Payne’s life as a love interest and plot
catalyst providing plenty of mystery and intrigue.

Like his previous outing, the drama unfolds in a sequence of clever, stylish graphic novel sequences, with Max himself as the narrator. The seasoned detective will find himself on the opposite side of the law yet again as a one man army against impossible odds.

Thankfully, Max’s signature ability evens those odds like a hot iron over
a cheap polyester suit. Often imitated but never truly duplicated, Bullet Time
is back and badder than ever.

Bullet Time has gone through a bit of a revision. Now with the press of a
button time seems to slow, but in reality Max is moving at break-neck speed
while the enemies plod along at a snail’s pace. Shoot more knuckleheads while
in Bullet Time and Max moves even faster while his assailants move slower. This
also replenishes your Bullet Time meter.

This new Bullet Time allows Max to more effectively handle the scores of enemies.
It was possible to get through the fist game pretty handily without using Bullet
Time much at all, but thankfully we no longer have such luxury. You’ll need
to use it a lot, but that’s a very good thing because it’s a very cool
thing. It’s amazing how a feature inspired by The Matrix is better
implemented than the video game
adaptation of its progenitor.

Also born from the cinema is the shootdodging ability, which is completely
unchanged. Press a button while moving in any direction and Max will dive in
slow-motion with the ability to aim and shoot in real-time. Handy and damn cool.

A third ‘feature’ increases the cool to Sean Connery-James Bond status – details.
The new Havok physics engine adds the finishing cinematic touches Max has been
begging for with an unparalled use of rag-doll physics and a level of interactivity
that will leave gamers speechless. It’s virtually impossible for Max to kill
a guy the same way twice. Everything is taken in to account. Enemies react differently
if shot in various parts of the body and/or with different ordinances. A Desert
Eagle shot to the arm, leg, torso or head produces a much different animation
than an Uzi or shotgun blast to the same locations. Even momentum from running
or diving out of the way is accounted for when baddies catch lead. It’s incredible.

Plus, everything
in the game world can be moved, shot up and destructively disassembled. Death
animations include guys flying through windows, over railings into boxes, onto
tables (which will buckle under their weight) and so much more. I nailed one
poor sod with a shotgun blast so fierce that it sent him flying into a series
of shelves which promptly fell apart, dumping their contents on top of the sucker
as he slumped over a barrel. Sweet!

The textures and overall look of the game are just as stellar, even more so
than the original. Bullets can again be seen in flight, but when they stab into
various materials the surfaces behave appropriately. For example, wood splinters
and releases dust while metals dent, giving off sparks for a great particle
effect. The attention to detail is award-winning.

The texture quality manages to hold up no matter how close you get to objects.
The game is also quite scalable for low-end systems without losing too much
of the graphical bells and whistles. Moreover, a patch has been recently released
to decrease load times on lower-end systems.

But there is no patch to fix some of Max’s flaws, including his awkward, jerky
running animations and the enormous amount of story that gets in the way of
the action. I appreciate the gloomy storytelling, but often you just want to
speed through it to get to the more glorious gunplay.

Also, a patch to increase Max’s stay would have helped immeasurably (although
I guess that’s called an ‘expansion’). His visit seems even shorter than last
time, clocking in at about 10 hours tops, and that’s just too bad. This was
perhaps the biggest complaint about the original, yet Remedy failed to remedy
the situation by adding more replay value. Despite all the slick coolness, Max
is still just running and gunning. He’s not stat-building, jumping in and out
of vehicles, taking alternate paths to right his wrongs or taking his grievances
online for any sort of multiplayer. Max is on a very linear, straightforward
path, and once you get to the end of it, the only incentive to do it again is,
well, to do it again.

In fairness, New York Minute, Hard Boiled and Dead on Arrival modes make a
return, so at least you can play through the story with some added pressures.
But it’s the same plot and the same path no matter how you play.

With that said, Max Payne 2 is still a great surprise all
around. Improvements were made to the key aspects of the gameplay with an increased
sense of cool. Max Payne 2 is about as slick as they come,
with a presentation and verve that supercedes cutting-edge. It’s a short one,
but good things do come in small packages after all.