Retrospective: Max Payne 2

By Will Porter Published 29 January, 2012

Let the bodies hit the floor. (Sometimes the ceiling).

When someone says they're not excited about Max Payne 3 my automatic reaction is to screw up my eyes and give them a hard stare. The statement, and often its calm delivery, destabilises me. Who is this person? Why do they have this wrong level of excitement? The balance nubbins in my ears revolve gently while I'm derailed onto a track several degrees asynchronous from reality. Max is the dearest of all my friends. How can he not be yours?

Perhaps it's a PC thing. Max's heyday was certainly seen in with mouse rather than gamepad, so it's entirely possible that he's more fondly remembered in the Keyboard Kingdom. Or maybe it's a symptom of both Payne games being instigators of great movements in gaming, rather than the classics that continued or ended them with a flourish. After all, the only thing our disgraced cop hero ever really ended with a flourish were the lives of gangsters hit by two taps from his sawn-off - in which case Max would tend to pirouette his body round a full 360 degrees while reloading.

1

'It's Payne! Get him!' 'He's here!' Ah, memories...

At the time of release both games delivered instant hits of novel gameplay that, as other developers caught up, wouldn't remain novel for very long. The first Max Payne saw the beast of bullet-time slouching towards Brooklyn to be born, while the sequel was one of the earliest outings for fully-fledged physics and cartwheeling ragdoll bodies.

Max Payne 2 was a game in love with gravity - willing go to any length to make things twist, tilt and fall over. Shoot your first crim in the opening hospital scenes, for example, and he'd dramatically collapse into hospital shelves (shelves!) while the camera gently span. In the year 2003 jaws were summarily dropped: a replay in 2012 reframes it as pantomime over-emphasis. The sheer amount of flying street furniture now becomes a third person shooter variation on over-enthusiastic writers getting hot and heavy with multiple exclamation marks.

Max Payne really isn't the only one doing the falling here. Wherever you roam there are bits of wood balanced on barrels that just happen to jut out into your path. Where there are explosive barrels, there are stacked tins of paint. When a man tumbles from a building, he does so onto an unlikely and unsteady outcrop of scaffolding and wooden planks. Much later you'll find a room with a fragile ceiling, its only occupants being an explosive crate upon which one enterprising criminal has balanced ten plastic chairs, four tyres and a bucket. It doesn't take a pyrotechnician to work out what happens next...

In this day and age the splayed legs, the flying bodies and the choral cries of "Get him!" don't make for a refined blend but, god damn, I still love it. It's a Valkyr shot that's kept me coming back year after year. I've probably completed the game six or seven times now - with replays of my favourite levels precariously balancing many tens of hours on top. My fanaticism however, doesn't just stem from its idiosyncratic mannerisms and narration (excellently, and tenderly, skewered by John Walker in his previous retro piece on the original game) that worked so well here - but would go on to add a little too much 'OMG, drama!' to renowned self-obsessive Alan Wake. (A shared acquaintance of Remedy's scenery-gnawing twosome is surely the MS Word mantra of 'Fragment. Consider revising.')

2

'Max! I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!'

No, what brought me back time after time was an undying sensation of pure, mindless and kinetic violence. It's by and large a fanaticism that first came about on the discovery that iTunes would comfortably run behind the scenes - letting me choreograph my own personal action scenes to a playlist of angry rock or (if I was feeling a little bit philosophical) baleful plinky-plonk schmindie-indie.

There is nothing, it turns out, more cathartic than lifting the body of an evil cleaner up and against a wall with sequential slow-mo bullets at the exact point of climax in Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff. Likewise, listening to the Mad World cover from Donnie Darko and lolling your head in time to the arse-cheeks of a cartwheeling Mona Sax before she obliterates two goons (and a stepladder) with dual-uzis really makes you think about life... and stuff... you know?

My primary reason for writing this Max love-in then (aside from dramatically revealing that my musical taste hasn't developed by one iota in ten years) is simply to address the crowd of people I've discovered who are steadfastly refusing to recognise Max Payne 3 as the most exciting game of the year. (Potentially ever!!!). There are plenty of 'gamier-than-thou' types just itching to inform that Payne's third outing looks like nothing more than running around and shooting. My answer to that is simply: when did awesome running around and awesome shooting stop being awesome? It didn't. The clue's in the over-use of the word 'awesome'.

It's true that this looks to be the first Max Payne game that's sat on a bandwagon rather than leading it. It's also true that 'Fat Max'™ doesn't worry my shrivelled, spluttering adrenal glands as much as he perhaps should. Payne remains, however, one of the greatest and most under-appreciated gaming heroes of all time: part pastiche, part serious and part (grudgingly) self-knowing.

3

Among Max Payne 2's many triumphs was the best 'it's raining outside' sound effect ever produced.

His world is also a fantastic and unique collision of noir desperation and Captain Baseball-bat Boy irreverence. There is no level in gaming as special or unique as the 2D drawings writ large in Mona's Reality Springs funhouse - whether it's on fire, or you're simply there to wander through its halls and wonder just what the hell is going on. Likewise Max Payne and Max Payne 2's fascination with dreams, and their student philosopher approach to the nature of reality, give the series an ethereal spin unmatched elsewhere.

To me, Max Payne is a bastion of quality - pure and simple. You wouldn't necessarily trust him with looking after your kids - there's a chequered record on that count - but at the same time you'd know that (after a breakfast of whisky and painkillers) he'd find the time to avenge your inevitable death. After all, everyone Max knows generally perishes.

Above everything else, however, the utter joy to be found in Max Payne is simply through picking up the guns of bad guys, and then feeling compelled to give them back. One bullet at a time.

Picture of Will.

About Will Porter

Will ‘Velvet Owl’ Porter is a roaming freelance writer who occasionally appears at EG’s back door asking for scraps. You can find out how cold/hungry he is by following @Batsphinx on Twitter.

Read more articles from Will by visiting the Will Porter archive page.

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Comments (67) Latest comment 4 months ago

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  • Lexx87 #1 4 months ago

    Max Payne 1 and 2 are both some of my favourite games ever. I adore them and everything about them. The gameplay, the story telling, the song at the end of 2 a janitor is humming half way through the game. Man it was dark and sexy and wonderful.

    The first thing I saw about 3 was some bald guy in a hawian shirt in a jungle.

    My picture of Max was broken completely. I was excited about 3 absolutely before I saw anything of it, now i'm very wary about it.

    We will see!

  • Deckard1 #2 4 months ago

    Great game. I used to spend hours murdering a granny in the apartment block in different ways to watch the body physics. When I'd finished with her I used to put this on to relax.

  • siksik6 #3 4 months ago

    Bought Max Payne 2 for some ridiculously cheap price when Steam had their sale a week or two ago, for £1.50. ONE POUND FIFTY!

    Personally in my top 10 of all time games. Awesome.

  • Stompy #4 4 months ago

    Post deleted at 23:13:35 17-04-2012

  • CaptainQuint #5 4 months ago

    The first part of this was a decent read, but then the writer just started rambling in that annoyingly pseudo-intellectual way which video game journos seem incessantly drawn to.

  • mattk84 #6 4 months ago

    Big fan of the MP franchise back in the day. Preferred MP1 to MP2 tho and remember playing it through many times to unlock the New York minute difficulty.
    When I first saw MP3 announced I was fairly nonplussed but now having seen some of the tech vids it is back on my radar. The shooting mechanic whilst on the ground being particularly impressive. Shame the movie completely forgot what MP was all about!

  • DDevil #7 4 months ago

    I love the Max Payne games (even the GBA version), the dark b-movie grade noir done with a knowing nod. A nod that said "we know this is pulp, it's meant to be, go with it". Oh and those strings. Wonderful.

    And I think that's why myself and many others saw those screenshots of a bald Max in a Hawaiian shirt, in a bright Brazilian town and said "What the fuck is this shit?"

    But now I've seen more of the game my interest has peaked. You start as the Max Payne we know and love, and it's about what happens to him for him to become old, bald and up to his neck in shit in Brazil. Done right we could have a worthy sequel.

    Done right.

  • Ptarmigandalf #8 4 months ago

    Still one of my top three games ever, and the best shooter by a mile.

  • Nazo #9 4 months ago

    I absolutely love MP2 it's my fave game ever.

    I'm not that excited about 3 because I think under Rockstar it will have a different vibe and lose a lot of what made it great. I hope I'm wrong though.

  • captainrentboy #10 4 months ago

    All I see is that Richard Hillman character from Coronation Street :( I just can't shake it.

  • munki83 #11 4 months ago

    I have both Max Paynes on my pc and love them both as action games, the first one more than the second. I don't know why some people see them as dark and gritty in my eyes its like an 80s action film.

    Been getting excited about the third one but thought one of the trailers was odd when it was going on about making aiming more precise like in fps. On the pc the little white dot and mouse is all I needed to cause mayhem

  • hiddenranbir #12 4 months ago

    He just wants to use the bathroom!

  • Thunderbolt #13 4 months ago

    As long as it doesn't have any if those drug induced dream sequences I'm in

  • MiY4MOTO #14 4 months ago

    I loved the Max Payne games having finished them both many times. I remember downloading a whole heap of mods for the original, including the obligatory Matrix-mod. (played while listening to Rob D's Clubbed To Death of course)

    I particularly loved the way the stories were told, twisting and turning. Partly being told in flashback, then in the present. Then all of a sudden you realise your right back where the game started only with some game changing plot point having been revealed. For a while Max certainly was the dearest of all my friends & I loved his brief cameo in Alan Wake

    However, I'm not remotely excited by Max's third outing. It's not by Remedy, it's not written by Sam Lake & it appears to feature some Bruce Willis look-a-like in a Hawaiian shirt, in broad daylight in a tropical location. How they ever thought releasing screenshots such as those would get fans of the original excited is beyond me.

    Personally, I'll sit this sequel out until I've read a review.

    PS. Max Payne didn't bring bullettime to the gaming world, Requiem: Avenging Angel did so before it.

  • Chakitty #15 4 months ago

    Max Payne 2 was one of the last games where I sat and finished it in one sitting. Awesome game.

  • Bagpuss #16 4 months ago

    I remember that bit where the guy was wearing on oversized clown suit in the middle of a gun battle,getting stuck in a doorway, with his funny NY accent mouthing off obscenities whilst mayhem ensued..funny as fuck it was, real LOL moment

  • Lunatic4ever #17 4 months ago

    It did not leave the same impression that the first max payne did but that's probably because it first introduced the noir in an jon woo style action game. Nevertheless it was awesome and I enjoyed every minute of it. Max Payne is quality. Let's hope Max Payne 3 will deliver.

  • misho8723 #18 4 months ago

    Ok, so the first and second title in this series are classics for me.. i played them so much more often than any other games.. yeah, the action, the shooting and overall quality of the new entry look great, but what it lacks? The atmosphere.. it's just isn't noir anymore.. the snow in the first or the rain in the second added such a great feeling.. and the comic book cutscenes are just great.. and don't forget the dreaming sequences - they were just excellent.. will all of this have the new title? We can only hope

  • makeamazing #19 4 months ago

    Loved Max Payne 1 and 2, just because it was so raw in terms of story and violence to the games released around it (or so my brain thinks that).

    I was very dismissive of bullet time when i first read about the game before its release, but it was just so a great feature.

    I - probably like many others were a little worried when we saw what max payne had changed to, seemingly they want to change him into a fat Bruce Willis, but if the game mechanics are still there intact, this could end up being one of the top 10 gaming experiences ever.

    Oh and its great to still hear the classic music :)

  • danjfor #20 4 months ago

    I've played this about once a year since it came out. In terms of gaming moves that you'll remember in your fingers until death, that dive -- fast going down onto the knees, then slow as he springs off them, and you've got that little bit of aftertouch that Max Payne 2 gives you as he's in the air... Beautiful.

    I trust Rockstar to make a good game with 3, but it does look like they've misunderstood the series. It's not that it's in Brazil, but that it's in what looks like a typically real-worldy Rockstar Brazil. Max Payne's set in a surreal nightmare world with apocalyptic weather and television shows that mirror your life and junkies that speak in riddles. There's a fine narrative line the games tread between, well, stupid and clever, and it seems unlikely Rockstar will care to tread it. Looks like good shooting, though.

  • disusedgenius #21 4 months ago

    Limp Bizit?

    /screws up eyes and gives a hard stare.

  • bobdebob #22 4 months ago

    Don't forget that the mods for Max Payne 1 & 2 were on one of the best things about it. Who could forget the kung fu mod for max payne 1?

  • gooner77 #23 4 months ago

    Never played mp1

  • arcam #24 4 months ago

    I agree that Max Payne is one of my favourite ever series. But I also agree that Max Payne wasn't just "awesome running around and awesome shooting" - what really made the game was the narrative style and the brooding atmosphere.

    Without that it just will not be the same, and I hope Rockstar is aware of this. However I'm sure they are - the question is just whether they can pull it off. Here's hoping.

  • kirankara #25 4 months ago

    Must be only person who thought these games were.extremely dull.

  • overcorpse #26 4 months ago

    Got into one of my all time favourite bands because of Max Payne."Late Goodbye" by Poets Of The Fall at the end of MP2 was brilliant.

  • Vaarna #27 4 months ago

    Max Payne 2 was also brilliant because it guest-starred Boris Becker as Mike the Cowboy.

  • syra #28 4 months ago

    In my top10 of all time too, one of the most moving games I've ever played and I go back to it every couple of years for sheer brilliance of gameplay!

  • atomicjuicer #29 4 months ago

    Those looking for the next Max Payne need to try alan wake. Same guys who made MP1

  • roughsleeper #30 4 months ago

    I built my first PC after seeing my friend playing Max Payne, and just ran around that first level in the snow with the shotgun in slow-mo for hours. I shot everything to watch the particle reactons; Bus stop adverts, street lights, people... and those hours are in my top 10 wow moments of personal gaming history. I also still have M1&2 on my shelf alongside Planescape Torment and Little Big Adventure.....ahhh blissful days.

  • -cerberus- #31 4 months ago

    Sadly, I can't stand both Max Payne games. They're probably well-designed and fun to play but I couldn't care less for the story and the characters.

  • lavalant #32 4 months ago

    I always wished that GTA4 and Red Dead would have adopted the Max Payne style of combat, would have been far more enjoyable.

  • Baleoce #33 4 months ago

    I absolutely adored Max Payne 2. Amazing comic-style between chapters, really helped set the mood.

  • Demiath #34 4 months ago

    Max Payne 1-2 were impressive in their day, for sure, but there are other games which have retained their relevance and originality to a much greater extent than Remedy's wordy, bullet time-infested third-person shooters. I don't say this often (because it isn't true in nearly as many cases as lot of people seem to believe), but the world has truly moved on...
    Edited by Demiath at 29/01/12 @ 14:03

  • MrFunky #35 4 months ago

    Max Payne 2 was pretty much the best sequel to an already great game I've ever played it was amazing but really short, too bad Rockstar are making the next one though

  • Po1ymorph #36 4 months ago

    @Demiath Sorry to say this buddy, but your totally wrong.

    Played through Max Payne 1 & 2 again last year. Still both great fun to play. True classics.
    Edited by Po1ymorph at 29/01/12 @ 14:42

  • Nodka #37 4 months ago

    Nice article, personally I think some of the blow back towards Max Payne 3 is the fact that Max has gotten old, gamers are used to characters who are forever young and it's rare for the main character in any franchise to age.

  • Nithron #38 4 months ago

    I think the blowback is actually just because they changed something, so automatically it must now suck.

  • Oskool #39 4 months ago

    Max's jacket looks like a pixelated mess in the middle picture in the article. I hope it's a bug where the textures haven't streamed in yet.

    I'm still looking forward to it though. Especially the slow-mo sequences.

  • Oh-Bollox #40 4 months ago

    I loved it when you found a group of enemies and by the time one of them had screamed "MAX PAYNE!" you'd killed them all.
    Edited by Oh-Bollox at 30/01/12 @ 00:04

  • zisssou #41 4 months ago

    Payne to the max.

  • kirankara #42 4 months ago

    @Po1ymorph

    Not sure I agree. If someone game me those games today, with modern visuals and charged me forty pounds.for pleasure,I would not be happy bunny. I.barely thought the games were worth forty pounds back in day. I breezed through them in about seven hours of play, and wondered where the hell the rest of my game was. They were also very much reliant upon the gimmick of bullet time, which.was fun at first, but got old quick

  • TazerFan #43 4 months ago

    I remember liking the mechanics of these games well enough, but LOVING the dream sequence bits.

  • mooseman721 #44 4 months ago

    @Deckard1 haha that's good matey! :)

  • Nova1977 #45 4 months ago

    This is my personal favourite game of all time. I'm in love with the Film Noire genre and MP2 was a love letter to that genre. I loved the tone of the story I loved the characters and I loved how everything was just neatly tied up in the end.
    The game left me with a lump in my throat. I really wanted Remedy to do Max Payne3 and I hope Rockstar treats the character with respect and don't end up turning him into a Michael Mann movie.

    Edit: Btw great article.
    Edited by Nova1977 at 29/01/12 @ 20:36

  • funnyboy_JP #46 4 months ago

    The Max Payne's are awesome games

  • Wyrm #47 4 months ago

    The funfair level was absolutley brilliant.

  • kangarootoo #48 4 months ago

    Great games, brilliantly balanced, really sharp mechanics. And gameplay aside, some of the best writing and character acting I can bring to mind. There are plenty of the comic cutscenes on youtube and they are all worth checking out if you haven't already.

  • dudefella #49 4 months ago

    I love Max Payne 2 more than should probably be legally allowed. I remember playing it for the first time and finishing it the same day. Then finishing another playthrough the day after that. And finishing it again for the third time on the third day, just to see the alternate ending. Mind you I was in high school at the time so I had oceans of free time.

    To this day, I think it's one of the most well-written videogames of all time, masterfully toeing the line between noir homage and parody. It's so damn quotable, too. I will play anything that Sam Lake (the writer) has had a hand in. The Max Payne tribute in Alan Wake was amazing.

  • Ledd #50 4 months ago

    Flash Gordon. :)))

  • jogyourmind #51 4 months ago

    I was so disappointed by Max Payne 2 because it seemed to be incredibly short.

  • FenderMaster #52 4 months ago

    I'm not excited about Max Payne 3. I played and finished Max Payne 1 and 2, and while fun, I ultimately found them to be shallow and repetitive.
    Edited by FenderMaster at 29/01/12 @ 23:33

  • md99 #53 4 months ago

    My all-time favourite game! Brutal psychotic violence, sick physics, totally bad ass weaponry, one seriously pissed main character (he was running around with a bullet in his brain ffs), Mona Sax, New York, great graphics, beautifully somber theme tune, flawless mouse & keyboard controls, etc, etc, etc....

  • brider #54 4 months ago

    mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN.

  • NegativeZero #55 4 months ago

    I loved Max Payne 1 and 2 and I'm utterly unexcited by the new one. It's a different developer and a different style, and so far it's looked like they're hell-bent on throwing away all the elements of the original games which made them unique and interesting, and instead focusing on the ropey combat which was often the worst part of the original games. If I want a mindless shooter then there's dozens of others I could play instead.

  • Number1Laing #56 4 months ago

    I loved Max Payne 1. But this game left me cold. It's been so long that I can't remember why, except for very vague things that there is no use in bringing up (as I can't fully articulate them). Maybe one of these days I'll give the game another try - if I recall correctly, it's a game that could easily be beat in one or two marathon sessions.

  • MaxFN #57 4 months ago

    Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake are my favorites games of all time.
    Edited by MaxFN at 30/01/12 @ 07:33

  • Marvelli #58 4 months ago

    Will, I just want to give you my gratitude on this article. I truly appreciate that people remember Max Payne (2) and think of it as one of the best games they have experienced. Let's hope Max 3 ends up being as good as it should!

    Best,
    Aki Raula
    Senior Level Designer / Max Payne 2

  • ZeroDayVirus #59 4 months ago

    I like the way Will wrote this article, it's so "sophisticated" that half way through I was asking myself "WTF am I reading"

  • SmytheBiggins #60 4 months ago

    I think if there is anyone we can trust with the Max Payne fanchise its rockstar. Not worried about this one in the slightest and I am chomping at the bit to play it. Also, Sam Lake and the remedy team have been consulting with rockstar throughout the development cycles. I think everyone needs to stop focusing on the skin head version of Max. It will be explained, also, skin head = hard

  • Po1ymorph #61 4 months ago

    @kirankara Thats cool man not everyone is going to like the Payne games. What I was getting at is the gamplay still stands up today, compared to most games of that generation.

    I will have to pull you up one thing tho, what's "gimmicky" about bullet time? Compared to what, is it a gimmick?

    Remedy created it and got the balance just right. Many developers have used it since but have tried to do to much with it always adding more and more.

    To disregard the Payne games as past there time, not relevant or a gimmick is I think wrong. Weather you like them or not.

  • Gecks #62 4 months ago

    Post deleted at 15:36:55 30-01-2012

  • MiY4MOTO #63 4 months ago

    Oh God. I just watched a trailer of MP3... it looks like someone described a Max Payne game to the new developers and they never actually played the originals.

    I'm sorry but it'll take more than simply sticking the cello music over the top of a generic shooter copy-pasted from Kane & Lynch to make a Max Payne game.

  • walidb123 #64 4 months ago

    Waited so long for this that it's kind of worn off on me. Not much remains of that person who played Max Payne 1 and 2 so I'll have to see if it still interests me.

    It probably will.

  • jogyourmind #65 4 months ago

    I'm sorry but it'll take more than simply sticking the cello music over the top of a generic shooter copy-pasted from Kane & Lynch to make a Max Payne game.

    Not really. Max Payne was never more than that anyway. It had nice graphics, but the rest of it was just typical 3rd person shooter with bullet time. The only thing that made it even slightly interesting, was the pseudo film noir twist that they put on it with him whispering about what's going on. I reckon the majority of people who rave about Max Payne are more attracted to that, than anything else. It's just a shame that with the death of Tex Murphy / Under A Killing Moon games, they have very few alternatives these days.

  • jessewiatrak #66 4 months ago

    BULLET TIME! AAAAAAAAAAAAW YYEEEEEAAAH!

  • jogyourmind #67 4 months ago

    Lol