Need a 20+ year old, dumb, fun, short, third person shooter? Let me tell you about Max Payne 2…
What Is It? A 20+ year old, dumb, fun, short, third person shooter! Max Payne 2 arrived a couple of years after the original Max Payne. Max Payne 2 doesn’t disrupt the formula at all, but it succeeds in the margins by cleaning up so much of the control mess and poor level design from the original.
You take on the role of the titular police officer who constantly blurs the line between good and bad. The game begins in a morgue before a few hours worth of flashbacks showing how you got there. You will spend the entirety of the game mowing down mobsters with a wide range of guns and explosives. There is a bit of light platforming, but it is an extremely welcome change that these areas are few and far between as the game mostly ditches the precision platforming levels seen in the first game.
A major selling point of the original was to rip bullet time from The Matrix and throw it into a game. That makes a return here, but feels a bit less necessary given the overall controls have been tightened up a bit. Oddly, I found myself unable to actually dodge a bullet in this game. Triggering the slowdown would bring the enemies to a near standstill, but their bullets would still fly. It is helpful in taking out an enemy or two without getting filled with bullets, but it does fall well short of the iconic bullet-dodging scenes from The Matrix. Oh well.
The game takes somewhere around 6 hours to beat and you will be doing the exact same thing for almost all of it; running and gunning. There are a few sections where you play as Mona Sax, Max’s would-be lover. These are mostly more of the same, but there is a fun sniper level where you get to provide cover for Max from above. There is also a very good escort level and a fun final boss to switch things up for short periods.
The game will also throw a temporary friend or three alongside you for very brief periods to help you in a fight. These are fun as you can simply let them run in first and see how many baddies they can take out before dying. A nice chance for Max to rest his legs and trigger finger for a bit.
The game is decently challenging as things can get out of hand quickly with an ill placed grenade or running into the open at the wrong spot. It is a double-edged sword that the game allows you to save anywhere; you will want to do this frequently to avoid replaying large sections after deaths, but this is a PlayStation 2 and saving takes longer than you’d like.
The Best Part: It is good, dumb fun. Running through room after room, mowing down hundreds of bad guys is classic video game escapism at its finest. Getting a variety of weapons lets you have some control over how to play and if you want to shoot a lot of bad guys it is hard to go wrong with Max Payne 2.
The Worst Part: While the level design here mostly avoids disaster, there are still some highrise building ledge jumping sections which should not have made the final cut. The developers properly recognized that their engine does not hold up for the controls required in the first game by removing the extended sections in the sequel, but they could have gone further.
The Verdict: Max Payne 2 is a very fun game if you are looking for the one thing it offers. I do not provide a blanket “everyone should play this” recommendation, but if you find yourself with the $12 a complete PS2 or Xbox copy currently sells for, you can do much worse than spending 5-7 hours of third-person run-and-gun action. It holds up better than you could reasonably expect and the core gameplay remains a good time.
How to Play: PlayStation 2*, Xbox, PC
*console played on for this review
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