For two decades I dismissed this game as the "Namco Max Payne ripoff", after all, why would I play a lame copy of Max Payne on PS2 when the original Payne was right there on the family PC in all its tight, sharp glory?

Well I fucking missed out. This game's pretty good! Not a great game but it's a good game.

The shooting is fun in most sections and the setpieces are mostly pretty good, with intuitive level design and ammo/health/armor placements. Honestly some of the best I've seen in a shooter. After the halfway point the game gets pretty tough, too, forcing you to think about enemy placement and actually use them as meat shields as well as which weapon is best.

There's some silly minigames for cinematic purposes which are all really easy, and they're goofy enough to be fun.

The story is extremely simple but ridiculously cheesy. It's going for a noir detective atmosphere, but unlike Payne, it feels like a parody of noir movies at points. The voice acting for some of the villains is so bad it's good, and NPC lines on some levels had me chuckling for a few solid minutes. It's hilarious and completely took me offguard.

The main flaw with this game is just how long it gets. There is a very clear point where you feel like the story is wrapping up, yet it still goes on for a few more chapters, all of which are very stretched out. It's a bummer considering everything before that was pretty nice and concise. And the helicopter level. They really shouldn't have made that.

Overall, it's worth a play. Maybe not worth beating, but definitely worth checking out.