Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
- December 29, 2003 07:49 AM PST
- Email this!
Welcome back to Max?s own personal hell. Everything is right where you left it.
?Noir? is a French word meaning ?life is hardship, the world is dark misery, and when you think about it, happiness is kind of sad.? Few games typify this bleak, crime-ridden cinematic genre quite like the Max Payne series. The Fall of Max Payne is wonderfully executed, but be careful?it?s so depressing, you may never crawl out of its dark, dank hole.
Legends of the Fall
After surviving his debut game, Max wakes up in a hospital with little more than multiple gunshot wounds and a vague sense that something?s missing?like answers. He?s back on the light side of the force, so to speak, picking up where he left off in the NYPD, running into old friends, and battling the ghosts of the past and the monsters of the present while dealing with that ol? four-letter word, love. (It?s tough to separate all those things when your girlfriend is a fugitive murder suspect.) In addition to painted comic-book-panel cut-scenes, the game sometimes slips into hallucination mode, in which the camera swims, the environment blurs, and Max sees and hears things that don?t really exist?or do they? It?s a powerful and effective form of storytelling that few other games even attempt.
The gameplay, however, doesn?t feel as fresh, especially if you?ve played the first game. Most of it is very linear: Go into this room, shoot everybody, and use Bullet Time to slow things down if the heat?s on. When you?re not blasting bad guys, you?re opening lockers and cabinets to find ammo and painkillers. For all of Max Payne 2?s unique plot exposition, the core gameplay seems old.
I Love Noir York
The Xbox world bristles with detailed textures, from blood-soaked apartments and dingy warehouses to Max?s worn leather coat and ugly tie. The PS2 version comes off significantly less crisp and lags a bit in frame rate. Our hero looks a bit like Bruce Campbell and sounds a bit like Keifer Sutherland. (Thankfully, Max?s famous, permanently squinched facial expression is gone; he no longer looks like he has bad gas.) The maudlin, minor-key strains of a cello dominate the surround soundtrack, and every phrase of the hard-boiled voice-over pushes the atmosphere deeper into depression. However, it would be nice if the sound effects (like rain) were blended more smoothly. The controls take a little getting used to, and there are many buttons to juggle, but they respond well on both platforms. Max is a bull in the proverbial china shop; many things in the world are interactive, but few have weight. Chairs, canisters, and the prerequisite horde of cardboard boxes all tumble at Max?s mighty touch. The corpse physics, however, rock.
At Home in the Dark
The first game?s take on noir was fresh and powerful; the sequel has the same haunted spirit with less surprise value. While Max Payne?s rain-soaked world is a weary one, it?s also undeniably compelling.
