I had very mixed feelings upon finishing the original Max Payne last week, so I'm very pleased that I was just able to blow through the sequel in a single sitting; this is night and day more polished than the first.
The gunplay feels snappier than ever, and I immediately noticed the separate keys for both bullet time outside of the dive and bullet time with the dive from the getgo to strengthen the plethora of approaches. Speaking of which, it's much easier to utilize bullet time in the sequel since you'll get more meter just from landing hits on opponents and it slowly regenerates over time anyways. Enemies are no longer busted from the adaptive difficulty and you can reasonably take them out with headshots from the less shaky aiming or tear through them with the automatic weapons just as they can tear through you; the shotguns are finally fixed this time around too, without the constant bullet spongyness from adaptive difficulty and enemies not having all their shotgun bullets lined up perfectly able to snipe you from 50 feet away.
The presentation's been upped too; the characters have much more expressive and animated faces, the comics look just a tad bit sharper, the dream sequences feel more woozy thanks to the wobbly camera (and don't have flimsy 3D platforming on tightropes), and you get to see Max do a sick spinny reload animation whenever you're fighting in slowmo. I didn't think there was much they could have done to improve upon the overly serious and dark noir themes of the original, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. And you can finally skip the cutscenes so you don't have to worry about constant saving to avoid unskippable cutscenes!
Only complaint really is that some of the "protect the ally" missions where you have to pick off enemies before they down your friend can result in scenarios where you get soft locked if your ally has taken too much damage and you run out of old saves, since there's no way to heal allies and they will probably take some inevitable damage. Other than that, the ante's been upped and the heroic bloodshed's back and better than ever with tightened & over the top combat; no reservations recommending this over the original (though maybe you'll still want to watch the cutscenes as the original sets up the sequel well) and this was a blast to run through.
The gunplay feels snappier than ever, and I immediately noticed the separate keys for both bullet time outside of the dive and bullet time with the dive from the getgo to strengthen the plethora of approaches. Speaking of which, it's much easier to utilize bullet time in the sequel since you'll get more meter just from landing hits on opponents and it slowly regenerates over time anyways. Enemies are no longer busted from the adaptive difficulty and you can reasonably take them out with headshots from the less shaky aiming or tear through them with the automatic weapons just as they can tear through you; the shotguns are finally fixed this time around too, without the constant bullet spongyness from adaptive difficulty and enemies not having all their shotgun bullets lined up perfectly able to snipe you from 50 feet away.
The presentation's been upped too; the characters have much more expressive and animated faces, the comics look just a tad bit sharper, the dream sequences feel more woozy thanks to the wobbly camera (and don't have flimsy 3D platforming on tightropes), and you get to see Max do a sick spinny reload animation whenever you're fighting in slowmo. I didn't think there was much they could have done to improve upon the overly serious and dark noir themes of the original, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. And you can finally skip the cutscenes so you don't have to worry about constant saving to avoid unskippable cutscenes!
Only complaint really is that some of the "protect the ally" missions where you have to pick off enemies before they down your friend can result in scenarios where you get soft locked if your ally has taken too much damage and you run out of old saves, since there's no way to heal allies and they will probably take some inevitable damage. Other than that, the ante's been upped and the heroic bloodshed's back and better than ever with tightened & over the top combat; no reservations recommending this over the original (though maybe you'll still want to watch the cutscenes as the original sets up the sequel well) and this was a blast to run through.
Silverhand
1 year ago