One of the best games.

[Dashima]

I wanted to know your opinion about the game. For me, the history is pretty nice, little sad about Mona Sax being killed by damn Vlad. The gameplay is one of the best, they improved so much from the first game, with the kill sistem was damn bad, no one dies with 10 headshots. But Ill leave it to you guys.

[Natalya]

True

[Pvtpile666]

Too short though and loses some of the grittiness from the first one i think but still a great game.

[Dashima]

Originally posted by Pvtpile666:

Too short though and loses some of the grittiness from the first one i think but still a great game.

Well, if you played the first one, obviously you gonna be like, a "pro" at the game, and as Max Payne 2 the headshots are effective, the game is easier and of course short. Its a matter of gameplay style.

[mc ride gaming]

The whole franchise is really enjoyable from start to finish. All of them have a decent replay value, especially MP3 with it's "GRINDS" .

[Sidewinder]

I agree. Just finished this right now. Loved it.

[dbzlucky]

Game is alright but suffers a bit from some blatant artificial difficulty in certain areas ( i've tested running certain areas multiple times from a save point ).

Enemies in certain areas won't spawn in until your back is to them ( literally caught a group of enemies spawning in mid air, after i did a 360 in the vinnie section ).

Vlad would pop out and start shooting the FRAME you hit reload . Although i'm sure some might argue that's tactic. I call shenanigans due to the fact of how fast he reacts to it.

There's some enemies put in spots where you have to ALREADY KNOW they're there to kill them before they point bullets into you ( and we should all know how easy it is to die in this game ). This was probably the smallest offender, but still i was able to correct guess an enemy would be in a certain position solely because the angle would keep them hidden until they had line of sight on you

I enjoyed my time with the game and may even play it again for fun, but its got faults that stopped me from jumping back in immediately

[Marius]

I think Max Payne 2 is more down too earth than Max Payne 1; In the first game you're suddenly into some weird world-domination plot, but I love them both ,tho.

[Prophet]

The best in the series. A Masterpiece and gaming history milestone,
cementing Rockstar's legacy beyond the GTA titles.

Story, cutscenes, dialogue script and voice acting are pretty top-notch.

The game mechanics have a few flaws, especially the "platforming" parts.
The shooting is okay, but somewhat inaccurate at a distance
(which makes sense given Max is such a casual chad who doesn't aim properly).
It feels and sounds very underwhelming though and has aged to make it feel even worse.
There's a sound fix available, as well as sound packs to buff the boom.
The graphics are another thing that hasn't aged well.
Usually I'd run Reshade on it but this game in particular seems to struggle with it, though apparently the widescreen fix is based on something like it.

There's a good number of often overlooked quirks and combat mechanics,
i.e. you can knock down opponents with doors (Max himself is immune to that sort of thing,
being an immovable object that stops doors being pushed by 3 ppl) or by jumping at them.
And while bullet time reload spins are quick and cool to do,
"Deep Bullet Time"-reloads will get tiresome to watch pretty soon.

I'm not sure what exactly changes at lower difficulty settings,
but any seasoned hardcore FPS player should have no trouble with the highest one
(though beware: The highest difficulty shows the non-canonical, slightly shorter ending where Mona survives)

The TV shows and ads are hilarious and there's a number of traditional easter eggs.
The game is pretty much free of unintentional bug occurrences.

There's some cool mods and maps that keep it fresh for longer. While they're all easy to copy paste and load by themselves, combining them can be a pain in the ass.

Payne Effects 3 for one polishes the shooting and sound and adds additional weapons, mechanics (shoot through soft materials, ...) and a good number of (combat damage related-) textures and particle effects.
It does however f*ck up jumping and shoot-dodging with some stuff borrowed from Kung-Fu-moveset mods as well as very few bad character texture replacements on i.e. Mona's eyes (tbh the corpse tex replacements are a great improvement).
The two sections where the mod plays Curve's "Hell Above Water" are cringe as fk and can't even be disabled.
So yeah, while it does sort of HD-update the game, it comes with its own bag of sh*t.

I want to shoot Winterson and Bravura so badly

Originally posted by dbzlucky:

Game is alright but suffers a bit from some blatant artificial difficulty in certain areas ( i've tested running certain areas multiple times from a save point ).

Enemies in certain areas won't spawn in until your back is to them ( literally caught a group of enemies spawning in mid air, after i did a 360 in the vinnie section ).

Vlad would pop out and start shooting the FRAME you hit reload . Although i'm sure some might argue that's tactic. I call shenanigans due to the fact of how fast he reacts to it.

There's some enemies put in spots where you have to ALREADY KNOW they're there to kill them before they point bullets into you ( and we should all know how easy it is to die in this game ). This was probably the smallest offender, but still i was able to correct guess an enemy would be in a certain position solely because the angle would keep them hidden until they had line of sight on you

I enjoyed my time with the game and may even play it again for fun, but its got faults that stopped me from jumping back in immediately

Can't relate at all. "Artificial difficulty" is more something like damage sponging and death zones in my book.

Enemy spawns are never dependent on your vision angle since the entire game spawns them out of sight (behind obstacles) or before you arrive to begin with. If you've had enemies spawning mid-air, it must have been a problem on your end (engine hiccup due to trash tier pc, imagination, etc.)

I don't know the exact ins and outs of Vlad's AI, but it seemed to take cover when facing surpressive fire, not reloading per se, and the FRAME thing sounds more like whiney bs to me.

As far as the enemies hiding in spots go: To begin with, it's a game, some NPCs are set to move towards the player with aggro, some NPCs are set to move along a set path without being combat-triggered from the beginning. And then there's NPCs who are set to either wait unaware or wait in ambush for Max. Both from a game design perspective as well as a realism perspective, it's viable (check out some CQB training footage if you have doubts).

Originally posted by Marius:

I think Max Payne 2 is more down too earth than Max Payne 1; In the first game you're suddenly into some weird world-domination plot, but I love them both ,tho.

So true, lol.

[Marius]

Another thing I dislike about Max Payne 2 is that you can use bullettime without the famous jumps. Most of the time I just cover behind a wall. Press bullettime. Go into the room. Kill everyone. Done.

Last petpeeve is that you can't choose a difficulty right from the start. Max Payne hasn't the most huge replayvalue, so yeah.

[Prophet]

Originally posted by Marius:

Another thing I dislike about Max Payne 2 is that you can use bullettime without the famous jumps. Most of the time I just cover behind a wall. Press bullettime. Go into the room. Kill everyone. Done.

Well I guess it's better to have the option to do both...

Originally posted by Marius:

Last petpeeve is that you can't choose a difficulty right from the start. Max Payne hasn't the most huge replayvalue, so yeah.

Oh yeah I forgot you can't go with higher ones right away, I run the game with -developer parameter by default, that should do the trick if you ever want to pick it up again.

[Marius]

Originally posted by ☆ Individualist №2 ☆:

Originally posted by Marius:

Another thing I dislike about Max Payne 2 is that you can use bullettime without the famous jumps. Most of the time I just cover behind a wall. Press bullettime. Go into the room. Kill everyone. Done.

Well I guess it's better to have the option to do both...

Originally posted by Marius:

Last petpeeve is that you can't choose a difficulty right from the start. Max Payne hasn't the most huge replayvalue, so yeah.

Oh yeah I forgot you can't go with higher ones right away, I run the game with -developer parameter by default, that should do the trick if you ever want to pick it up again.

Oh, thank you! Wish I knew it sooner. Just finished 1 & 2 two weeks ago. Just binned it after finishing the story. Would love to started on the highest difficulty.

[retro_Ed]

Originally posted by Marius:

Another thing I dislike about Max Payne 2 is that you can use bullettime without the famous jumps. Most of the time I just cover behind a wall. Press bullettime. Go into the room. Kill everyone. Done.

Same bullettime mechanic works also on MP1.
Only differences are (1) that in MP1 both bulletjump / bullettime are combined to mouse2 as default. On MP2 those inputs are on different keys. I always combine those inputs to mouse2.
(2) Bullettime regenerates automatically on MP2 so this is what makes this game "easy"

[// Interceptor // 桜]

Actually, if you complete the story on the highest difficulty, Mona doesn't die ;)

[Hydef]

Unmarked endgame spoiler for your second sentence, nice man.

[Dashima]

Originally posted by Urth:

Unmarked endgame spoiler for your second sentence, nice man.

Firstly, I was new at the platform I didnt know of the spoiler mark yet.