Max Payne 2: blown apart!

Taking its cue form classic film noir, while giving this aesthetic purpose through the skilled "reinterpretation" of a special effect from the most visually innovative (if crushingly, insultingly tedious) movie of the last decade, Max Payne, constipated grimace and all, made a huge impact when it first blasted onto the market.

In the time that's past, even The Matrix videogame itself has been unable to out bullet-time our Max, but nevertheless developer Remedy has been locked away, tweaking, changing, adding, building growing the Payne experience into something deeper, more substantial, and just plain cooler.

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Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne on Xbox and PS2 is a stunningly polished action title, boasting marked improvements over the original. We won't tease you any further: we know you want to know about the bullet-time - after all, it's as important to the Max Payne experience as it is to The Matrix.

The good news is the whole system has been refined and is much the better for it. Now the bullet-time dive can be used at any point with a flick of the right trigger, without players having to worry about draining the hour glass meter - it's become a set move in Payne's basic repertoire.

Using the separate, specific bullet-time button slows every moving object around Max right down, and will drain the hourn glass energy meter; but now the more enemies you kill in succession, the deeper into bullet-time you're drawn, slowing everything down still further. And kills during this state also replenish the hour glass.

What these refinements create is an opportunity to use bullet-time far more than before - which is by far the coolest aspect of the game, so tant mieux, as the French say. But this doesn't mean Max Payne 2 is a cake-walk; the bad guys are tough, and in groups are more than a match for the unskilled player.

A further major enhancement, which has a big effect on the game, is the inclusion of the Havoc physics engine. This allows full ragdoll physics to be employed when enemies are killed off, and the majority of objects Max comes into contact with can be knocked over, smashed, blown up and so on.

This both creates a far more believable game world and leads to a much greater level of enjoyment: blasting a bad guy from a balcony in bullet-time and watching them slowly flail to the ground and crumple realistically is something we can't imagine we'll tire of quickly.

Visually, everything's been tweaked up several notches. While not quite as polished as the PC version, MP2 on Xbox is a lavish production. Most notably, facial detail has improved dramatically: Max himself has been deliberately changed so he is no longer the grimacing, puffy faced freak of yore, and has been aged by time and his experiences. But the heightened facial realism is in evidence throughout the game's diverse cast. Texture work is on the whole superb also, and great care has been taken in creating the gritty, dirty, criminal underworld of New York

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With it's dark, mature love story, Max Payne 2 sets itself up for a fall far greater than that intimated in the title; yet Remedy's understanding of Max and the central themes of the narrative lead to a surprisingly (for videogames anyway) intelligent experience. And for once the term "mature content" can be used in a different sense from "abattoir-load of squirming entrails". Although we're quite partial to a bit of both. And the story, coupled with superb use of sound and the aforementioned visual quality results in an experience that is both heart-pumping and quick-fix while also involving and compelling.

Max Payne 2 on console is without doubt one of the most polished examples of the third-person action genre we've seen on console, and its trump card of bullet-time is more satisfying than ever. Happily the Xbox version features the oh-so important quick save function - essential to the experience - but Rockstar was unable to confirm whether this would be included in the PS2 version at the time of writing, though it seems unlikely.

On a negative note, we did find that, when diving in bullet-time, there were reasonably frequent occasions when the camera would be locked, zoomed up right behind Max, meaning we had no idea where our targets were, but overall the combat proved deeply satisfying. Also, it's debatable, despite notable improvements, whether this amelioration is enough to tempt those uninspired by Payne's first outing.

But as one of the slickest, action-packed, downright cool games we've played on console in some time, Max Payne 2 does not disappoint. Stay tuned for our full review soon.

CVG Staff