My favorite video game.

A beautiful story of self-destruction. Max Payne's heightened superhero levels of slo-mo and shoot dodging abilities here are not able to save anyone. This is a story primary featuring the surviving characters from the original Max Payne and by the end of Max Payne 2, all except for Max have been killed.

The only real problems I have with Max Payne 2 are minor. Explosive barrels take way to long to blow up. By the time they do, you've around ran slo-mo circles around the cleaners and blasted them with dual uzis. If I had to say what's really a problem in this game it would be the overuse of the same levels. They recycle most of them in some way. You go through the fun house three times, until they have to finally let the place blow up.

I've seen several reviews on YouTube claiming they don't understand Max falling for Mona Sax. They say this "Mona thing" happened over a couple days, how could he be so deeply in love with her? Max Payne is a noir character and he's destined to lust for Mona until the bitter end. It's really out of his control. Max Payne 1 played with Norse mythology and Max Payne 2 explores the American mythology of the hardboiled hero and the femme fatale. He's a deadly killer, she's a deadly killer, and there is no way for both of them to get out of this alive.

Cada jogo dessa saga foi jogado em uma fase diferente da minha vida, então é um grande desafio decidir um favorito. Sobre esse meu último capítulo, tenho a impressão que ele engloba perfeitamente dois aspectos que amo.

O jogo é do final de 2003. Antes mesmo de Half-Life 2, temos foco nos cenários com física, interatividade e simulação. E o jogo é da Remedy.

Sinto falta de um pouco do "amadorismo" do primeiro jogo, mas as séries de TV (que parecem se conectar até mesmo com Alan Wake 2), a escrita, a trilha sonora e a ambientação linda são como uma exposição do charme do Sam Lake. A dublagem e as cenas de quadrinhos me pegam tanto que tô até produzindo uma paródia. Pena que há tantos cenários repetidos, ao invés de termos mais e mais dessas exposições maravilhosas.

É muito bom, mas falta alguma coisa.

Gun mecanics are simply WONDERFUL. The bullet time is straight on point, and the level design is precise enough to create an action game in which you feel endangered. Guns are varied, so are the situations and objectives. One mission is an escort mission, another one is a sniper assist mission, another one features a lot of plateforming, another one is a giant ghost train featuring small puzzles, another one is a race to find back your weaponery...

Characters are iconic and quite well written. It is as goofy as parodistic as... I don't know, serious? Sam Lake does seem to be serious about it... Boss fights are great, mise-en-scène is inspired. The pace is 20/20, the game length is ideal. Art direction is strong even nowadays.

I see no reason for you not to play except the PC version is, apparently, bad. Like really bad.

eu pensei que ia gostar menos desse, já que eu tinha perdido o interesse quando joguei pela primeira vez uns anos atrás, mas dessa vez acabei me divertindo. foi interessante observar os pontos fortes do primeiro jogo sendo expandidos, como a tatilidade dos cenários, os combates divertidos e a história (geralmente) bem escrita. tais pontos não foram expandidos ao ponto de tornarem max payne 1 obsoleto, mas acaba tornando o segundo jogo como a sua própria coisa, quase que divorciados entre si, seja por bem (como os combates mais frenéticos e o aumento de objetos interativos no cenário) ou por mal (o camp perdido com o aumento do orçamento e a narrativa que mantém a boa escrita mas se torna mais esparsa).

self-loathing as a broken funhouse mirror, distorting and reflecting back everything you hate about yourself; you see it everywhere; on billboards, on tv, in everyone else. It all seems to reaffirm the ugliness you see in yourself; you can run from it but it'll always be there, right behind you. The only way to escape is to confront the man in the mirror, to look at the twisted parody you've become and choose to do something about it; as max says "It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free"

a masterpiece

awesome! while this is a shorter experience than the first game, its packed with tightly designed gameplay and a more fleshed out story. the gunplay feels a bit more refined. better hit detection and whatnot. it just feels good to play! bullet time is very cool. the introduction of mona gives max a foil, and her involvement gives max a reason to push on. i had a good time! i think i prefer the alan wake games, but that's not to dismiss these. they're rock solid action games. looking forward to the third one! (i understand why sam lake isn't max payne anymore but i miss him)

Starting to realize that I just don't gel with Remedy's style, be it 20 years ago or today (up to Control, I haven't played Alan Wake 2 yet). I'd only ever played the first Max Payne prior and found it pretty mid but assumed that the sequel would deliver the experience everyone claims to have had back when. It was, against all odds, a bit worse.

I could write an entire diatribe taking MP2's story apart, why it fails at being noir or whatever sort of subversion it believes itself to be, and why its legacy is entirely a product of nostalgia for a time when games that so much as attempted any kind of consistent tone were a rarity. Maybe I will someday, but not today. Point is what's here is stupid. Max is a moron. Mona sucks. Everyone else is irrelevant.

The tour of locations you go on is less visually varied than the first game's while also playing worse. You like hallways? What if they were in a funhouse that only a tween gifted an M-rated game would find impressive? How about escorting an obnoxious stereotype in a mascot suit? Sometimes you're given a bigger space to get shot in, which only serves to make you wish the hallways would return faster.

And god, the gunplay. I know good and damn well there were better third person shooter options in 2003, I played them! No amount of slow-mo or John Woo dives makes this gunplay feel good, and the platforming can go straight to hell. Fucking Dead to Rights has a better system and that game shouldn't be a benchmark of anything beyond how to handle animal companions (functionally an airstrike).

I remember people being super pissed about MP3 being completely different. Maybe that one's actually good. I won't be in a hurry to find out.

Decent game but overall stepdown from the original

+The game is just fun to play

+A lot of the things that i like in the original are here,the bullet projectiles,bullet time,comic intermissions,wide variety of settings with a similar overall aesthetic (last game was snowing this game is raining)

+Plenty of quality of life changes

+Way better graphics than the original,especially physics wise,now you have good ragdolls and every object has physics,not only being fun but also serving a purpose in combat as cover.

+The new bullet time mechanic is cool af,dodging bullets matrix like will never not be dope

+There are some pretty cool levels like the dreams or part 2 finale

-Game is WAY to easy,the new bullet time mechanic is cool af,is way to op,you can basically always suffer no damage since you can dodge bullets because they are projectiles.you dont have to be half as paranoid and alert as in the first game and that was one of my fav things about it

-Game is way to short,even the last one was a little short,this one is a whole 2 hours shorter,this is the reason for a lot of the errors that the game has

-You get almost all of the guns out of the bat,making progression almost non existent,this also makes some guns unviable or useless,like why would i ever use the double berretas when i have double deagle,and why would i use the double deagles when i have double ingrams and why would i use the double ingrams if i have the ak 47,or did you remember that you had a sniper rifle with max?,they nerfed tf out of it in this game putting it with more than 5 bullets in like the last level,and in that level it isnt that useful.

-That ties to another problem that is that the new guns feel to samey,like the mp5 apart from the scope has the same use that the ak,also the m4 feels way too like the ak,and you get way more bullets in the ak so you will never use it,double barrel shotty is still trash,melee is useless,you most of the time will be using the same 3 or 4 guns and the explosives

-They give you way to many consumables,making surviving and managing resources a joke,especially with the painkillers,i basically have whole health near full playthrough with painkillers to spare,or with the ammo that you can pretty much just use 2 weapons for the whole playthrough if you wanted

-That also ties to another problem is that projectiles just kind of suck,since they give you like ten of them at all times they have to nerfed them and neither of them one shot enemies so most of the time they only serve to finish of enemies,shot them while they are stunlocked or to throw multiples at a choke point

-Way too many characters introduced,most of them dont get any progression or screentime,and are killed off in a matter of minutes,making them forgettable and take time of the story.

-One of the best things of the original game was the amount of intricate metaphores and funny liner or moments,and this game just doesnt have a lot of that,it takes itself too seriously and is too linear in its writing

-The romance story line can get a little annoying sometimes

Overall,even though i gave it a lot of shit,it still has fun to play gameplay and an decent story
Light 7 to Decent 7

I mean, it's almost as if they traveled forwards in time, read my review of the first game, saw the things I wished were improved, saw the things I didn't like, and just improved all of them.

The gameplay feels so much tighter than the first one, the graphics are frankly beautiful, the voice acting is better, even the story is better. My biggest issue with the first game's story was how generic it was due to it being so influential to future games. This game, while it still has some classic beats of detective thrillers and crime dramas, had a much more compelling and unique story. I was engaged the entire time.

This is also where you can start to really see the Remedy branding come in to play. The first game had a lot of features that are absolutely reminiscent of modern Remedy, but this is where you really see that flower blooming. Specifically, the various TV spots like Lords and Ladies and Address Unknown really add so much character, there are so many fun dream sequences/set pieces, and without spoiling anything, the Vincent Gognitti part screamed Remedy.

I described the first game as having a lot of potential to be one of my favorite games of all time if the remake irons out my issues with it. I dare say that Max Payne 2 COULD be on that favorites list, and I will say with certainty that it's going on my Honorable Mentions list as soon as I post this review.

Review EN/PTBR

Max Payne 2 really followed up the legacy of the first game, so much so that they even made bullet time much more fun, however, I still prefer the story of the first game.

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Max Payne 2 realmente seguiu muito bem o legado do primeiro jogo, tanto que até fizeram o bullet time muito mais divertido, porém, ainda prefiro a história do primeiro jogo.