Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
| Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne | |||
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| Studio |
 Remedy Entertainment (Win) Rockstar Vienna (PS2, Xbox)
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| Publisher |
 Rockstar Games
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| Senior Developer | Petri Järvilehto Marin Gazzari |
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| Erstveröffent- lichung |
Windows October 14, 2003 October 24, 2003 Xbox November 25, 2003 December 5, 2003 PlayStation 2 December 2, 2003 December 5, 2003  |
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| platform | PC ( Windows ), PlayStation 2 , Xbox , Xbox 360 | ||
| Game engine | Max-Fx 2.0 (Windows) , RenderWare (PS2, Xbox) |
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| genre | Third person shooter | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse | ||
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| medium | 3 CD-ROMs (Windows) ; 1 DVD-ROM (Windows, PS2, Xbox) ; Download (Windows, Xbox 360) |
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| language |
English (Windows) , German (Windows, PS2, Xbox) |
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| Current version | Latest patch: 1.01 | ||
| Age rating |
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Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is a third-person shooter from Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment and a sequel to Max Payne . The game was released on October 24, 2003 for Windows PC , Xbox and PlayStation 2 .
action
As in the predecessor, the storyline is mostly told with the help of comics . This time, however, the focus is on cutscenes in game graphics.
As in the predecessor, the story begins in Max Payne 2 with a flashback. Max is in Alfred Woden's property , which is being surrounded by the police. In front of him lies the dying Mona Sax . Max tries to reconstruct how it all happened. First, Payne remembers being hospitalized the same day. Here his superior was shot and seriously wounded in front of his eyes. Payne ascribes the death of his also high-ranking partner Detective Winterson to himself when he finds her body in the basement.
However, this was not the real beginning and so the flashback penetrates deeper into the past, so that one learns what happened immediately after the end of the first part: Alfred Woden kept his promise and the rehabilitated Max could return to the NYPD. Here is the crucial criminal case, again decisively engaged in Paynes life: he can not prevent a confidant of the Russians Vladimir Lem to which a friendship has developed, from the cleaners ( Cleaners is shot camouflaged) criminals. In the course of the persecution, he is saved by Winterson. He hides her brief meeting with Mona Sax , who is now a wanted murderer.
After the violent liberation of Lem, who was besieged by Mafiosi under the leadership of Vinnie Gognitti , who is known from his predecessor , Max wakes up the next day in his apartment and meets Mona again, who offers him a collaboration, as both have a bounty . Proof of this follows promptly: Payne has to flee from numerous cleaners, but cannot prevent his apartment from falling victim to their arson. A short time later, the two of them meet again, this time in Mona's temporary hiding place. This is the first time you enter the so-called funhouse , a run-down amusement park . Sax suspects the inner circle behind the attacks. Together they want to visit one of its members, a senator . Again the cleaners are faster and kill him. Winterson blames Mona Sax for this and arrests her.
This is followed by an unsuccessful attack by this group on the police building, in the course of which Mona is even able to escape. Their hiding place, the bizarre, nightmarish funhouse , falls victim to a storm attack. However, Max at least manages to smuggle himself into the headquarters of the supposed cleaners. There the camouflage is finally blown and the cleaners turn out to be professional killers who have access to high-quality military equipment and have already killed countless people. Ironically, however, they themselves make the mishap whose explosions cause considerable damage to their own quarters.
Mona comes to Max's help when he is in an otherwise hopeless situation. At the end of the escape, the fleeing couple Max and Mona are found by Winterson. Sax does not want to arrest them, but shoot them. Payne shoots Winterson affectively , but is seriously wounded by her. His sacrifice helps Mona Sax escape again.
Now the game continues in the hospital scene described at the beginning. Max is able to flee from the killers who are now openly operating. Alfred Woden reports on a power struggle within the Inner Circle and reveals that Vladimir Lem and not Vinnie Gognitti is the mastermind. Max also learns about the love affair between the Russian and Winterson. He wants to confront the former. For this he allies himself with Gognitti, but he cannot prevent Lem's cruel death. He himself is badly wounded again.
Mona can still save him, which suggests the love affair between the two once again. Together they go to Woden, whose property is stormed by Vladimir Lem and his followers. The Russian not only kills the helpless Woden, but also Mona. In the end, however, Max manages to kill Lem. When he returns to Mona, she is bleeding to death in his arms. A dream of his dead wife closes the circle and despite the death of all his loved ones, Max seems to be at peace with himself because he has solved the complex case that was responsible for this extensive suffering.
If you play the game in the most difficult mode, Dead On Arrival , there is an alternative ending in which Mona does not die but survives seriously injured.
Gameplay
As in the first part, the levels are described by many as very atmospheric and are very linear. As in the first part, the enemy AI is almost exclusively scripted. One change is that Max works with Mona in some parts of the game and this is also controllable.
The bullet time and the shootdodges have been improved. So the bullet time recharges itself slowly and the time slows down additionally when you kill opponents. In addition, a new reload animation has been added in which Max rotates around his own axis and reloads at the same time. Shoot dodges no longer cost bullet time energy and it is possible to continue shooting while lying down after a shoot dodge. Due to these changes, the game plays faster and more action-packed than its predecessor and the level of difficulty is a little lower.
development
Initially, only the original English version was published for the PC. In later releases of the PC version, which are not specifically identified, however, the localization of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions, which were published in both English and localized, was used. The graphics of Max Payne 2 are based on a further development of the MaxFX graphics engine , which was used in the first part. In addition, the Havok physics engine is used in the second part , with the help of which, for example, more realistic trajectories of objects can be generated. The so-called ragdoll behavior is also part of the engine . Furthermore, Max Payne's appearance was modeled after the American actor Timothy Gibbs this time .
The Fall of Max Payne places more emphasis on the element of the femme fatale Mona Sax, which is controllable by the player in some parts of the game. In addition, a love develops between her and the main character. Therefore, the second part was advertised as a Film Noir Love Story .
The song Late Goodbye , by the Poets of the Fall from Finland, is a reference to the well-known Hard Boiled novel by Raymond Chandler The Long Goodbye . In the film adaptation of The Long Goodbye by Robert Altman - just like in Max Payne 2 - the same song with the title The Long Goodbye was played in different versions in several places .
The game has now also appeared as an Xbox original on the Xbox Live marketplace of the Xbox 360 , making it available to owners of these consoles.
reception
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Max Payne 2 received mostly very good ratings for the Windows and Xbox versions, but only average ratings for the PlayStation 2 version ( Metacritic : 86 out of 100 (Win) / 84 (Xbox) / 73 (PS2)). The reasons for the relatively poor assessment of the PS2 version were, among other things, the low video memory of the PS2, which resulted in a blurred appearance, low details and jerky displays during extensive battle scenes. The long loading times were also criticized.
Web links
- Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne at MobyGames (English)
- Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Max Payne 2 on Rockstargames.com (English)
Notes and individual references
Remarks
- ↑ Not officially released for Xbox 360; playable via backwards compatibility (Xbox game on Xbox 360).
Individual evidence
- ↑ 3D Realms download page for Max Payne 2 Patch 1.01 ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Thorsten Wiesner: Max Payne 2. In: Golem.de . Computec Media Group , January 26, 2004, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ^ Paul Kautz: Test: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. In: 4Players . freenet AG , October 20, 2003, accessed on May 28, 2012 .
- ^ Georg Valtin: Max Payne 2 in the test: Grandiose Film-Noir-Ballerei by Remedy. In: GameStar . IDG , October 29, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ↑ David Stöckli: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne - Review (PS2). In: Gameswelt . Web Media Publishing AG, January 30, 2004, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ^ Andreas Philipp: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne - Review (PC). In: Gameswelt . Web Media Publishing AG, October 24, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ^ Greg Kasavin: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne Review. In: GameSpot . CBS Interactive , December 4, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ^ Greg Kasavin: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne Review. In: GameSpot . CBS Interactive , October 16, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Tom McNamara: Test "Max Payne 2". In: IGN Entertainment . Ziff Davis , October 16, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Dirk Gooding: Test "Max Payne 2". PC Games, November 23, 2003, accessed May 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Tom McNamara: Test "Max Payne 2". In: IGN Entertainment . Ziff Davis , November 24, 2003, accessed July 14, 2014 .
- ↑ a b meta evaluation "Max Payne 2". In: Metacritic . CBS Corporation , accessed July 14, 2014 .
- ↑ a b meta evaluation "Max Payne 2". In: Metacritic . CBS Corporation , accessed July 14, 2014 .
- ↑ a b meta evaluation "Max Payne 2". In: Metacritic . CBS Corporation , accessed July 14, 2014 .
