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-:-Aoshi's Games-:-
-:-Max Payne 2:The Fall of Max Payne-:-
Don't be fooled by the fancy screen shots lining the box art for the PlayStation 2 conversion of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. If you suspect they look a bit too snazzy and high-res, you'd be right. Where Rockstar's marketing department picked these shots from are anyone's guess, but it certainly wasn't from the shoddy port Sony gamers have been shoveled just in time for the Christmas shopping season.
Max Payne isn't what you'd call happy. On his last adventure druggies murdered his wife and child and despite his search for the truth, shooting all the bad guys in New York City wasn't able to fill the deep voids in his heart. Back on the NYPD beat, Max has been keeping himself busy solving the rest of the world's problems, quietly ignoring his own. The past has a way of catching up to you, though, and soon our problematic hero is back to square one, chasing after a new love interest, sputtering more hysterically cheesy metaphors and blasting at all who stand in his way with revamped bullet time.
Love it or hate it, Remedy Entertainment hasn't done much in the way of gameplay changes for the sequel. Fans will find themselves with plenty to love, and haters will proceed to view the game as little more than ten hours of tedium. Max still runs from room to room, snapping into bullet time when enemies appear and ingesting a sickening number of steroids to keep him in peak physical condition. What manages to keep Max Payne 2 interesting is the game's ridiculous level of insanity during its frequent action sequences. Dodging hundreds of bullets in slow motion as barrels explode and Max pumps slug after slug into enemies will leave you muttering "Whoa" almost as often as Keanu Reeves. Incorporation of the hyper-realistic Havok physics engine only adds to the coolness factor. Tossing limp bodies into stacks of boxes and watching them realistically topple over never gets old!
All this intensity didn't come at a price on the PC and Xbox. PS2 owners, on the other hand, will quickly realize that all of the bullet time in the world won't hide the issues mauling away at this sloppy conversion. The original Max Payne fared poorly on the PS2, as well, but it seems Rockstar didn't pick up on its own mistakes. The problems found in Rockstar Vienna's attempted port are simple but troublesome.
One of the most lauded features of Max Payne 2's visuals are its crisp, detailed textures derived straight from real-life photographs. The PS2 version tricks players into thinking there's Vaseline on their eyes, applying a thick blur masking to each texture. Texture reduction alone wasn't enough to avoid Rockstar Vienna's poor coding, though. The frame rate hops all over the place, jumping from barely stable to abysmally chaotic in even the most basic of firefights. Maybe the programmers believed the added slowdown would enhance the game's bullet time effects? Even cut scenes are hampered by mysterious second-long pauses while the engine grudgingly switches gears to cinematics. The essential core of Max Payne 2 is still present, but there's no reason to risk ruining a fantastic action-packed gaming experience with frustrating technical hiccups.
Too many corners were cut to ensure the timely shipping of this PS2 release, and Rockstar Vienna's lack of care shines through. There are far superior options for reveling in Max's personal turmoil a second time found on the Xbox and PC. Gamers should make sure to check into each before taking up the graphically handicapped escapade available on the PS2.
Final Score=4.5/10
-Patrick Klepek (1up.com)
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