“I had a dream of my wife. She was dead, but it was alright.”

Max Payne 2 doubles down on its character driven storytelling by quite literally introducing a secondary playable character through Mona Sax.

The storytelling has never been better, and the stylistic graphic novel art choice has never been so compelling. With Exciting set pieces, a creative story structure, intriguing characters, and an incredible music score, Max Payne 2 is a worthy sequel to the masterful game that came before it.

Though it still has most of the same frame rate and gameplay issues as its predecessor. This is likely a port issue, but it’s hard to overlook. Especially when everything else is firing on all cylinders. This has the potential to be the better game out of the two. It’s just held back by the hardware I played it on.

I would love to revisit both games on PC or a later console port some day. They’re a couple of the greatest video games I’ve ever played.