Max Payne, dearest of all my games.

I know the whole point of Max Payne is to be doing bullet time stuff. But they kind of made it too easy to use and recharge in this one. The game is pretty trivial.

I could be wrong, but this is the very first 3D game I can remember using the "Havok" physics engine. This was really cool at the time, but hasn't aged the greatest. Everything is really floaty.

So on the whole the game lacks a bit of the oomph of the first. But it's still a pleasant breeze to play through. And they levelled up on the story presentation across the board. Compared to the meandering original, this one is laser-focused (modulo classic video game padding, which is funny because I remember this game got ripped on release for being too short at like 12 hours or something.

They replace the over-the-top apocalyptic myth of the first game with over-the-top melodrama. The endless blizzard becomes endless rain. The same, but different.

Four Stars.

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Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is the:

• 3rd greatest Remedy Game of all time.
• 3rd greatest Video Game of all time.
• 4th greatest Thing of all time.