It’s been years since I was a real gaming fanatic. Nowadays I’ve got to make time to start up a game. I’ve finished Modern Warfare 2 months ago but didn’t get around to playing it online since, even though I really wanted to. A couple of years back I played some games till my keyboard got tired of me. I started playing Max Payne 2 probably around 2004 (came out in 2003). I’ve played Max Payne 1 but didnt finish it because ..dunno..I sucked at it, Max Payne 2 gave me a new chance. I’ve finished this game on all levels of difficulty at least a dozen times and I’m still looking for a legal copy to start it up again.
What is it that pulled me into this game time and time again? I think it can be split up into a couple of things: the story, bullet time, guns, humour.
The Story
Max Payne gets blamed for the murder on his wife and kid and decides to hunt down whoever’s behind it. It’s a grim story told in comicbook style where each character gets its own voice. As the story unfolds you slowly find out who’s the bad guy, at least that’s what the storyline makes you think..untill the next twist. It’s a game which actually has quite a decent storyline.
Bullet time
We already got a taste of bullet time in MP1, but there were less restrictions on it in MP2. Here you can run around and dive and reload whenever you’ve got some spare bullet time, and you’ve got plenty instead of only being able to use it now and then. This also might make the game a bit too easy sometimes, but well..otherwise I might not have been able to finish it. One of the things that made me play it again and again was that I tried to use the bullet time to shoot people all over the place. I mean litteraly have them flying all over the place while I blew them up or emptied a machine gun into them. Just pure entertainment.
Guns
From the simple 9mm, the dual desert eagles to the Russian sniperrifle all guns are cool to use. Even outside of bullettime the guns are just awesome. In some levels you really need to use bullettime in combination with a certain weapon to be able to finish a level. Every weapon is there for a good reason. My favourite weapon? It’s hard to pick a favourite, but using the mp5 with it’s scope in the endfight puts it at #1.
Humour
The main story is grim, but there are tons of funny things.
The tv series shown on tv’s throughout the game:
- Lords and ladies: which has a basic dialogue of ‘My lord, my lady, my lord? my lady!’. I use the ’my lord, my lady’ phrase now and then, my brother immediately knows I’m referring to mp2.
- Captain Baseballbatboy: one of the bad guys is a big fan and gets trapped in a bombtricked suit.
- Dick Justice: a tv serie based on Max Payne’s life
- Address unknown: just a psychadelic version of Max Payne’s life.
Funny dialogues
There are endless crazy dialogues where you just want to wait till the bad guys finish before storming in.
Check out a selection on youtube:
And just plain funny ways you can kill someone using bullet time or dropping people at a certain place.
If you haven’t played it yet, get to it, it might be 7 years old, but it still holds up!
Oh and I almost forgot it has an awesome theme song by Poets of the fall ‘ Late goodbye’ ánd the instrumental theme is also worth putting on your playlist.
I got a copy of this from a trading site and it didn’t work… so I am waiting for another copy before I can try some of that stuff out.
Rockstar did some awesome stuff during the PS2/Xbox years.
a friend of mine borrowed the game from a friend of his..now I have to convince that guy to sell it to me..for a decent but not an idiotic price.
Given the ubiquity of the title, you might get it for a good price.
Max Payne is one of those games that I always intended to check out but never did. Considering I only have a Mac and a Wii now I think it’s unlikely that I will
It feels wrong somehow playing shoot em up games on the Wii
After Mad World, I think the Wii is capable of ANYTHING.
I’ve only played one – Metroid Prime, but it worked quite well using the controller to aim the gun.
Even though it’s a shooter it’s still not hardcore like Bioshock or something – the Wii is just a family console in my opinion – it plays to its strengths or weakness in this case as its graphics can’t deliver the same level of detail as the xbox or PS3
Look into a game series called No More Heroes… again… not for the families and I would link to it, but it has a lot of swearing and a lot of blood.
I played the first one for about five hours and did appreciate it but then I can’t remember what game distracted me and I never went back to play.
I’ve never played this one. My brother showed me the bullet time once in the first Max Payne game, and it looked awesome, but I never got the chance to play. It’s always been one of those “I’d like to play that someday” games for me. Seems like I missed some good stuff!
I’m assuming that the first Matrix was released before this (but too lazy to actually confirm on wikipedia) – just thinking about bullet time.
I remember people playing Max Payne around 2001, so I think the Matrix had been out for about 2 years by then (Spaced did Matrix references in their second season in 2001, so that backs that up).
short update: I ordered Max Payne 2 on e-bay. Counting the days till it arrives.
I wonder what region your games are? I should have checked before offloading all my PS2 games or are you talking xBox?
PC all the way. region 2 I think.
Oh okay PC is a whole different kettle of fish!
Actually I’ve been playing Pharaoh on my XP machine a lot recently and I now have the old PC game for Blade Runner loaded up and ready to go. I highly recommend it for fans of the movie and point and click adventure games.