With an all new bullet time, a plot that manages to live up to the Max Payne name and a second playable character, Max Payne 2 is definitely worth a buy. What makes this latest Max Payne so engrossing isn't the well-balanced blend of puzzles and blasting or the detail rich graphics or even the well written plot – what makes this game so hard to put down is Max Payne himself.
Like the original game, Max Payne 2 places you in the heart of a graphic novel choosing to use well-drawn art delivered in blocks as its main medium instead animation for cut scenes. What this does is force you to pay attention to the plot – something worth doing. Instead of building a game and injecting it around the occasional cut-scene, Max Payne blends the two seamlessly making the plot not just interesting but integral to the game.
Instead of trying to fight your way past wave after wave of bad guys, there are whole sections of the game built around Payne's memories and inner turmoil. The game finds you walking through Payne's nightmares in a very real and disturbing fashion.
Of course Payne isn't all about plot. The gameplay is fluid and fun, using a simple set up to guide Payne and his counter-part, Mona Sax, through the seemingly endless stream of well-armed bad guys. Although the control is well put together, using the right trigger for shooting and the left for the slow down bullet time that made the original Payne so famous, moving a character across tight spots can be unnecessarily tricky. There are times when it feels like you are balancing Payne on a ball, trying to find the sweet spot to get him up on that board or stairs.
The voice acting is excellent, but the sound is a little odd. Payne 2 uses a sort of directional sound that increased and decreased volume depending on which direction your character is facing. I'm sure it was designed to make the game more realistic, but it ends up just being annoying.
This time around Payne uses Bullet Time 2.0. Instead of just using Bullet Time to dive and shoot in slow motion, as in the last game, you can now use it for an extended period of time to run around blasting bad guys. While this is sort of fun, it does make the game much easier than the original. However, the effects in Bullet Time 2.0 are just as impressive as the original with reloading becoming something more akin to ballet.
The game also features a new physics engine that turns just about everything in the game into an interactive part of Payne's world. Max Payne 2 is more an experience than game, a cinematic feat that really lives up to the idea of putting a gamer in a story and making them care what happens.
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