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Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – 17 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/20/2020

Posted in: Mac, Microsoft, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox. Tagged: max payne 2, remedy entertainment, rockstar games, the fall of max payne, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 10/14/2003 (PC), 11/25/2003 (Xbox), 12/02/2003 (PS2)

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Max Payne 2 was released a little over a year after the original, and a surprising amount of fat was cut from the original. It’s the same game, but more refined and updated, and it feels more tightly woven than its predecessor. A lot of problems were fixed, but new ones arose as well. The narrative continues right after the first game, with Max still trying to avenge the deaths of his wife and child, still trying to get to the bottom of The Inner Circle, and a new love blooms: Mona Sax.

The game starts off similarly to the first game; we get some weird, trippy dream sequences, but they aren’t nearly as awful with zero platforming this time. Once you are in control of Max, you can instantly feel the difference. He has more weight, his animations are smoother, and the gunplay overall just feels punchier and sharper. More weapons were introduced, with many old ones coming back. The new M4 and Kalashnikov weapons are a great addition, but unnecessary. One assault rifle is good enough, as is the addition of the HP5, but the Ingrams do just fine for a submachine gun. While the older weapons pack more of a punch, the new weapons just feel like they were added just to add to the weapon count; less would have been fine. A new dedicated projectile button has been added, so you can throw grenades and molotovs without equipping them.

Bullet Time has been refined and fixed as well. Max can now spin around in a 360-degree motion while dodging, the bullets impact harder, and there’s less of a delay when you shoot. There is also better feedback on enemies when hit, as they stumble more and drop their weapons, so you know they’re dead in bullet time. Max can also stay lying down while continuing to empty a clip, so the delay in getting up doesn’t make you completely vulnerable as the first game did. The difficulty has been dialed way back, and I died a lot less than in the first game. All these great fixes and additions make Max Payne 2 the better of the two games already.

When it comes to level design, Max Payne 2 has more interesting levels like a creepy funhouse, a sprawling mansion, a construction site, and some apartment slums, but there’s a lot of backtracking, and I feel the overall scope of the game feels claustrophobic. The variety is better, but you explore those few areas longer, and I just feel like I wanted to see more of New York inside this noir world Max lives in. Also, gone are the boss fights, so the game feels better paced, and I felt a tempo of gameplay going that the first didn’t have. However, the game is much shorter, clocking in at 4-5 hours. There aren’t any collectibles or anything like that, so once you fly through the game, it’s over, and there’s no reason to ever go back, honestly.

Max Payne 2 is a memorable ride. The story is still told in those awesome comic strips, and I feel that at the end of the game, we get to know Max and Mona well enough to understand their characters and want them on screen more. Their love story is a great centerpiece for this Mafia revenge tale, and it makes Max and Mona feel more human. There’s still a cliffhanger at the end of the story, and a third Max Payne game didn’t come until a decade later, but what we get is one of the best single-player shooters of the PS2/Xbox era. It’s tightly compacted and solid, and while it’s short, sometimes that means quality, and that is rare even to this day.

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Keyboard & Mouse

Max Payne – 19 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 04/18/2020

Posted in: Android, Game Boy Advance, iOS, Mac, Microsoft, Mobile Reviews, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox. Tagged: bullet time, max payne, remedy entertainment, rockstar games, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: Gathering of Developers

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 07/23/2001 (PC), 12/06/2001 (PS2), 12/12/2001 (Xbox), 07/16/2002 (Mac), 12/16/2003 (GBA), 04/12/2012 (iOS), 06/14/2012 (AND)

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Bullet time. While The Matrix made it popular in pop culture, Max Payne started it all in the video game realm. You play a cop, Max Payne, who is framed for the murder of another NYPD cop. Your wife and newborn child were also murdered, and you are trying to get revenge on the people who did it. The story isn’t anything amazing, but Max Payne’s voice actor and the well-done writing keep you hooked long enough to find out what happened behind the scenes. The game is told in a comic noir graphic-novel style, and it suits the game well. The cut scenes are imaginative and different, and they don’t look cheap or like the developers were trying to take shortcuts.

Outside of the story, the gameplay is all about shooting, because that’s literally it. Max runs around with various weapons, such as Barrettas, Ingrams, shotguns, grenade launchers, Molotov cocktails, grenades, and assault rifles, to mow down the Mafia and corrupt cops. Bullet time is the main gameplay element here, and when activated, Max does a jump dodge in the direction you move, and you can see him dodging bullets in real-time. This is actually a mechanic you must master, as most situations require you to use it to stay alive. You can’t stand in one spot, or you will be dead in a few hits, and there’s no cover system. I had to quicksave every 2-3 minutes as well because the game is so difficult. It’s cool to jump dodge around a corner, but once Max lands, there’s a delay in him getting up, and you are completely vulnerable to gunfire. I had to make sure I jump dodged behind cover or across a hallway so I wouldn’t die the second the bullet time finished. You can also activate bullet time and just run your meter down so you can run and gun with it too.

There are very few scenarios in which you do more than press buttons. One scene has Max driving a crate crane around an area, but it’s nothing special, and there are some interactive objects that trigger comic-cut scenes, but 95% of the game is just shooting. The weapons themselves feel good, and I felt I had to switch up weapons depending on the situation to make my life easier. The locales are varied, but they are a bit too stale and boring for my taste. They don’t quite capture the noir feeling of the comic-cut scenes, but there is one level early on called Ragna Rock, which was a gothic cult house that reminded me a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, so that’s a good thing. The game really does feel like a first-generation PS2/Xbox game, but it’s very polished. The game flows nicely, but the difficulty is all over the place; you will die dozens and dozens of times in this game.

The visuals are clean and look nice even 20 years later. I installed a texture upgrade patch and some other things to make the game upscale to 4K nicely and play on modern hardware, and it looks pretty good. Even in the original, the facial textures are nice and very realistic, and the aesthetic of the game stands out over most shooters of its time. The voice acting is great, and I finished the game in about 7 hours. After you finish it, there’s literally nothing else to do, as the multiplayer mode was scrapped. It’s a fantastic single-player game that holds up well even today, despite its insane difficulty and unbalanced gameplay. The story isn’t anything special, but Max is a great character to dive into, and it makes for a fun evening.

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Keyboard & Mouse

Control

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/10/2019

Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S. Tagged: action, control, dlss, remedy entertainment, shooter, third person shooter, tps. Leave a comment

Publisher: 505 Games

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

Release Date: 08/27/2019

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I love Remedy’s games and always have. From the first Max Payne all the way to Quantum Break, there have been ups and downs, but Alan Wake still remains my favorite game from them. Control takes place in the same universe as Alan Wake and even explains what kind of happened down there, as you play as Director Jesse, who has a crazy gun that can transform, and you fight off weird enemies called The Hiss, and your goal…well, I can’t tell you what the end goal is as this is Remedy’s most incoherent story yet, with many plot holes, and even after the credits rolled, I still couldn’t make sense of the story at all.

Let’s start with the exploration. Control takes place solely inside the Federal Bureau of Control and is a generic, boring, and ugly building that is basically a labyrinthine maze that requires a ton of backtracking and is a pain to navigate. There are several floors in this building, and spread throughout are control points, which you use to level up Jesse and fast travel. Even though fast travel is nice, trying to find new areas from those points is a serious pain. Throughout the game, you can find files to read and solve simple puzzles that use your telekinetic powers. Jesse can throw objects as weapons, break off pieces of buildings, and hurl them. This is a key combat mechanic, as you will swap between this and your weapon when either is recharging.

Combat in Control is pretty boring and frustrating. In fact, I would have rather had no combat in this game, and it would have been more enjoyable. Shooting enemies that float in the air, have shields, larger health bars, and some bosses are all fun, but not in Control. The game throws an insane amount of enemies at you at every turn, and there are no cover systems, so you must run around like a bafoon, trying to avoid explosive enemies, bullets, and projectiles. You don’t get to levitate until the last fourth of the game, and I never even got the dodge move or shield, as completing side missions is an absolute chore, and I didn’t care enough to see the level-up system all the way through.

Many times I died because you can’t heal unless an enemy has dropped health, and if you pick it all up, you’re screwed. This is essentially a broken mechanic, and I hated every minute of it. Not once did I enjoy the combat because instead of fun and unique bosses, you get tossed into arenas, gauntlets, and waves of enemies to chew through, and it seriously hinders progression. Not to mention they respawn in certain areas when you’re trying to cut through somewhere. The gun itself isn’t fun to shoot as it requires recharging, and there’s no ammo or reloading. There are various forms, such as a sniper pistol, machine pistol, grenade launcher, shotgun pistol, etc., but I only stuck with a couple of forms throughout the whole game. You can add perks to Jesse and each weapon that can increase health, decrease recharging, reduce energy costs, etc., and these are vital to surviving.

As you explore the game, you will notice Remedy’s signature trippiness as levels twist, turn, and transform. There’s a supernatural aspect to the game, of course, but it’s all for naught. Nothing in the game is ever explained, like why I can pull a string three times and get warped to the Oceanview Motel and have to solve the same stupid puzzles inside. Ring the front desk bell, go into a room, remember the placement of objects, ring the bell again, and move the objects to the next room. It’s stupid and makes no sense. Why is Jesse communicating with this Hadron entity, and who is her brother anyway? What purpose does the director have in all of this, and why does a slide projector harness so much power? Yeah, it makes about as much sense as it sounds, and nothing is ever explained. It’s hard to push through the boring and frustrating combat only to get another confusing cut scene that seems like a random piece from a storyline.

Control-Screenshot-2019.08.25-08.09.26.90.low_

Control looks pretty good, but Nvidia’s DLSS anti-aliasing is awful here, and the game is a blurry mess even with MSAA enabled. The engine is decently optimized, as I got a steady 60FPS through most of the game with RTX on, and it rarely dropped below 45FPS. However, the art style is dull and stale, with concrete hallways and corridors. It doesn’t have a unique identity, and that’s sad, as Remedy is good at this.

Overall, Control is a disappointing follow-up to Remedy’s legacy. With Quantum Break being as disappointing as it was, was Alan Wake their last great game? Control isn’t the game we all wanted, and I honestly won’t remember this game a week from now, and that’s sad as there’s lost potential here with Remedy’s signature touches that just don’t quite connect. The combat is boring and frustrating and very repetitive; there is lots of backtracking, and the confusing mess of a building to explore just doesn’t strike me as fun. If the story was at least solid, it would be worth it, but it makes no sense, and when the credits roll, you just shrug and wonder why you wasted your time.