Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Remedy's film noir love story is fantastic, but not on the PS2.
Published: December 5, 2003
It could be argued that Max Payne is just an elaborate tech demo; a way to show off the technology that Remedy Entertainment cooked up, and indeed the MAX-FX engine they've crafted and now brought into a second iteration is truly a showpiece for the latest PC technology. Given the relative shortness of the Max Payne games so far, it's safe to say that Remedy is banking on licensing the technology after the game's release, much like id Software with the Quake (or more recently DOOM) engines, Epic Games with the Unreal technology and to some extent on consoles, Criterion with their RenderWare platform.
So then if a game that was crafted from an engine built from the ground up to take advantage of the bleeding edge of technology, to capitalize on the latest 3GHz processors and gigabytes of RAM, the fasted 3D cards and positional audio technology, to push a PC to its limits with any given hardware, how could it possibly make the leap to the PlayStation 2 and its limited RAM and comparibly far lower specs? The simple answer, it can't.
Oh, sure, this IS Max Payne 2 (or a version of it anyway), but it's certainly not the PC version, and it's not even all that passable as a PS2 copy. The problem is, that despite all the levels being included, the moving love story and hilariously over-melodramatic prose told over fantastic art stills, all the voice acting and upgraded bullet time, the game still looks like a PlayStation game, and if you're going to port a game known for its visuals on the PC over to the PS2, you should at least make the effort to preserve some of those looks. The PS2 version of Max Payne 2 does none of this, though if you can make it past the frustrating bits and won't be getting the PC or Xbox versions any time soon, there's still a salvageable game here.
MP2 picks up shortly after the events of the first game. Max, tightly woven into a secret society, is miraculously freed of any wrong doing after the events of the first game, and quickly returns to the NYPD where things all started. Still feeling the loss of his wife and child, Max is an understandably calloused man, though when a beautiful assassin starts dropping clues that both may be in danger, it kick starts a quest for exploration – both internally and throughout the city's seedy underbelly.
Say what you will about some of the dialogue and eternal stream of metaphors, but the Max Payne games tell a decent story and more than the first game, Remedy has begun to explore the art of really pushing emotional buttons. While things were a bit over the top with the first game, especially near the beginning, MP2 seems lighter overall, and even pokes fun of it itself with a few running gags throughout the game. Moreover, the developers seem to have listened to some of the complaints with the first game – most notably the incredibly crappy running-on-streams-of-blood-in-the-dark sequence from the first game. There's still a very real effort to try to screw with your head and really impart Max's feelings of disorientation and psychosis, but this time it's done in a much more manageable way.
For those that didn't play the first Max Payne and thus didn't experience the bullet time aspects that were introduced (and then readily copied) with the game's release, you missed out on one of the better gimmicks in video games, and nobody does it better than Remedy. By simply tapping R1, you can pull a slo-mo dive in any direction, evading shots and surprising enemies while giving yourself enough time to unload a half pound of lead into a bad guy. Hold down R2 and you'll kick in bullet time full-time, and each enemy you kill while in this mode will slow things down further. Because you have a limited amount of bullet time, conservative use of both modes (as well as clean, quick shooting) is necessary.
Aside from a handful of new weapons, there isn't much more to MP2 than there was in the first game. The story is a bit more grounded this time around, and stays a bit more centered than before, despite some interesting plot twists. The narrative itself in the game has matured a bit, and through a thoughtful bit of scripting, the story manages to wrap around on itself a few timesl; where you start off in the game is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. It's imaginative and works quite well. Toss in a few inside jokes and references from the first game and you have
a story that should keep most Max fans plenty happy.
Then again, MP2 certainly feels like a game made for the fans of the first one. With the action/story/trip sections of the game are split up a bit more evenly than the first game, it's even more obvious that all the action is made of the same storyline/shootout/shootout/storyline/head trip sequence over and over again. You'll start out shooting in a hospital, then shooting in a construction yard, then a mansion… You get the idea.
And then there is the matter of Max's looks. Again, Max Payne 2 on the PC is a technical showcase, highlighting some of DirectX 9's best effects and giving all the latest 3D cards plenty to chew on and a slew of effects to show off. The PlayStation 2 is now over three and a half years old, and suffers from a comparatively crippling case of hardware inferiority. Still, with a little tweaking, some redone texture work, perhaps a little level design mojo, things can still look decent, right? Wrong.
At its worst moments, Max Payne 2 may have the dubious honor of being one of the worst textured games on the PS2. Especially in areas where it's darker, grittier or just plain dirtier, PlayStation-quality textures are stretched over every surface, and with the engine's liberal use of close-up cutscenes and slow-mo pans meant to show off detail, it just makes the mottled, four-color, blocky texture mess that much worse. Max and Mona's faces should show a bit of shadowing and perhaps a wrinkle or two, not what looks like two poster children for Roseacia. The levels are similarly textured, with what looked like a heavy optimization script run over all the art assets in the game, leaving huge swatches of three- or four-color chunks of color where a detailed wall should be. What's odd is that things usually tend to look halfway decent during the normal-pulled out shots, but as soon as the camera moves in (and it does pretty regularly), things quickly fall apart.
If all this lack of texture detail were shown through 60 silky smooth frames a second, it would explain a whole lot, but instead things hover around 30 most of the time and the engine randomly chokes during some of the more intense firefights. Effects for flames and explosions have been turned down quite a bit, and the overall lighting just doesn't feel as solid as on the PC. Sure, Rockstar was able to port the game over to the PS2, but the graphical tradeoff was nowhere near worth it.
Fortunately, things are salvaged a bit by the audio. One of the coolest parts of using bullet time is the way everything slows down, including audio, so if you hear machinery thumping away, it'll slow down when you kick in slo-mo, and keep getting slower if you're in extended bullet time mode. When things finally return to normal, hearing a low moan turn into a high-pitched siren is a nifty little aural treat.
Once again, the music, effects and voice work in the game are all phenomenal – particularly in the hand-painted cinemas that take place between levels. Perttu Kivilaakso's haunting cehllo solo that serves as the main them to Max Payne is still wonderfully haunting, and the rest of the music composed Kartsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto provides the perfect sonic backdrop for each level. Bullets are ejected from each weapon with plenty of pop, the conversations you can eavesdrop on, and the little details in things like hearing each individual piece of the reloading process while in bullet time add a wonderful richness to the experience.
In fact, the only major gripe I had about the audio save for some interesting performances is the frequent skips in sound clips and truncated sound bites from characters if another conversation is triggered. Perhaps a bit more audio buffering should have gone into the voice clips, since the stuttered, repeating sound bites are far too common.
Max Payne 2 is a genuinely fun game, but it's also a looker, and those fancy schmancy graphics are more than just window dressing in a game like this. Without the graphical chutzpah of the PC or even Xbox versions, Max feels like a deflated, stripped-down, hack of his former self. If you don't have access to a PC or an Xbox, this is still definitely worth checking out as it's a short but sweet experience, just know that there are far better options out there.
So then if a game that was crafted from an engine built from the ground up to take advantage of the bleeding edge of technology, to capitalize on the latest 3GHz processors and gigabytes of RAM, the fasted 3D cards and positional audio technology, to push a PC to its limits with any given hardware, how could it possibly make the leap to the PlayStation 2 and its limited RAM and comparibly far lower specs? The simple answer, it can't.
Oh, sure, this IS Max Payne 2 (or a version of it anyway), but it's certainly not the PC version, and it's not even all that passable as a PS2 copy. The problem is, that despite all the levels being included, the moving love story and hilariously over-melodramatic prose told over fantastic art stills, all the voice acting and upgraded bullet time, the game still looks like a PlayStation game, and if you're going to port a game known for its visuals on the PC over to the PS2, you should at least make the effort to preserve some of those looks. The PS2 version of Max Payne 2 does none of this, though if you can make it past the frustrating bits and won't be getting the PC or Xbox versions any time soon, there's still a salvageable game here.
MP2 picks up shortly after the events of the first game. Max, tightly woven into a secret society, is miraculously freed of any wrong doing after the events of the first game, and quickly returns to the NYPD where things all started. Still feeling the loss of his wife and child, Max is an understandably calloused man, though when a beautiful assassin starts dropping clues that both may be in danger, it kick starts a quest for exploration – both internally and throughout the city's seedy underbelly.
Say what you will about some of the dialogue and eternal stream of metaphors, but the Max Payne games tell a decent story and more than the first game, Remedy has begun to explore the art of really pushing emotional buttons. While things were a bit over the top with the first game, especially near the beginning, MP2 seems lighter overall, and even pokes fun of it itself with a few running gags throughout the game. Moreover, the developers seem to have listened to some of the complaints with the first game – most notably the incredibly crappy running-on-streams-of-blood-in-the-dark sequence from the first game. There's still a very real effort to try to screw with your head and really impart Max's feelings of disorientation and psychosis, but this time it's done in a much more manageable way.
For those that didn't play the first Max Payne and thus didn't experience the bullet time aspects that were introduced (and then readily copied) with the game's release, you missed out on one of the better gimmicks in video games, and nobody does it better than Remedy. By simply tapping R1, you can pull a slo-mo dive in any direction, evading shots and surprising enemies while giving yourself enough time to unload a half pound of lead into a bad guy. Hold down R2 and you'll kick in bullet time full-time, and each enemy you kill while in this mode will slow things down further. Because you have a limited amount of bullet time, conservative use of both modes (as well as clean, quick shooting) is necessary.
Aside from a handful of new weapons, there isn't much more to MP2 than there was in the first game. The story is a bit more grounded this time around, and stays a bit more centered than before, despite some interesting plot twists. The narrative itself in the game has matured a bit, and through a thoughtful bit of scripting, the story manages to wrap around on itself a few timesl; where you start off in the game is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. It's imaginative and works quite well. Toss in a few inside jokes and references from the first game and you have
a story that should keep most Max fans plenty happy.
Then again, MP2 certainly feels like a game made for the fans of the first one. With the action/story/trip sections of the game are split up a bit more evenly than the first game, it's even more obvious that all the action is made of the same storyline/shootout/shootout/storyline/head trip sequence over and over again. You'll start out shooting in a hospital, then shooting in a construction yard, then a mansion… You get the idea.
And then there is the matter of Max's looks. Again, Max Payne 2 on the PC is a technical showcase, highlighting some of DirectX 9's best effects and giving all the latest 3D cards plenty to chew on and a slew of effects to show off. The PlayStation 2 is now over three and a half years old, and suffers from a comparatively crippling case of hardware inferiority. Still, with a little tweaking, some redone texture work, perhaps a little level design mojo, things can still look decent, right? Wrong.
At its worst moments, Max Payne 2 may have the dubious honor of being one of the worst textured games on the PS2. Especially in areas where it's darker, grittier or just plain dirtier, PlayStation-quality textures are stretched over every surface, and with the engine's liberal use of close-up cutscenes and slow-mo pans meant to show off detail, it just makes the mottled, four-color, blocky texture mess that much worse. Max and Mona's faces should show a bit of shadowing and perhaps a wrinkle or two, not what looks like two poster children for Roseacia. The levels are similarly textured, with what looked like a heavy optimization script run over all the art assets in the game, leaving huge swatches of three- or four-color chunks of color where a detailed wall should be. What's odd is that things usually tend to look halfway decent during the normal-pulled out shots, but as soon as the camera moves in (and it does pretty regularly), things quickly fall apart.
If all this lack of texture detail were shown through 60 silky smooth frames a second, it would explain a whole lot, but instead things hover around 30 most of the time and the engine randomly chokes during some of the more intense firefights. Effects for flames and explosions have been turned down quite a bit, and the overall lighting just doesn't feel as solid as on the PC. Sure, Rockstar was able to port the game over to the PS2, but the graphical tradeoff was nowhere near worth it.
Fortunately, things are salvaged a bit by the audio. One of the coolest parts of using bullet time is the way everything slows down, including audio, so if you hear machinery thumping away, it'll slow down when you kick in slo-mo, and keep getting slower if you're in extended bullet time mode. When things finally return to normal, hearing a low moan turn into a high-pitched siren is a nifty little aural treat.
Once again, the music, effects and voice work in the game are all phenomenal – particularly in the hand-painted cinemas that take place between levels. Perttu Kivilaakso's haunting cehllo solo that serves as the main them to Max Payne is still wonderfully haunting, and the rest of the music composed Kartsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto provides the perfect sonic backdrop for each level. Bullets are ejected from each weapon with plenty of pop, the conversations you can eavesdrop on, and the little details in things like hearing each individual piece of the reloading process while in bullet time add a wonderful richness to the experience.
In fact, the only major gripe I had about the audio save for some interesting performances is the frequent skips in sound clips and truncated sound bites from characters if another conversation is triggered. Perhaps a bit more audio buffering should have gone into the voice clips, since the stuttered, repeating sound bites are far too common.
Max Payne 2 is a genuinely fun game, but it's also a looker, and those fancy schmancy graphics are more than just window dressing in a game like this. Without the graphical chutzpah of the PC or even Xbox versions, Max feels like a deflated, stripped-down, hack of his former self. If you don't have access to a PC or an Xbox, this is still definitely worth checking out as it's a short but sweet experience, just know that there are far better options out there.