Ahead of its Time: The Fall of Max Payne 2

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Ahead of its Time: The Fall of Max Payne 2

Why didn't Max Payne 2 reach the audience it so richly deserved? Andy Chalk believes it's because the game's mature themes demanded too much from a public not ready to take videogames seriously.

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tsumake

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Jul 1, 2008
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I'm sorry, I find this article to be filler at most. No one, no one with any cinematic sensibility would consider the Max Payne series to have a good narrative. It is a painfully bad story, told horribly, filled with cliche after cliche. The game is/was successful because of its then-brilliant gameplay. I played through the original Max Payne twice because the bullet-time mechanic was so refreshing. Gamers will put up with a bad story if the gameplay is there. If the Max Payne series were told in movie form, it would have a hard time going direct-to-video, much less a theatrical release. To reiterate: they are bad stories.

I would imagine Max Payne 2 wasn't considered a success because it was really just more of the same, which is actually fine for me gameplay wise, but for the general audience wasn't enough for a second run. I don't know if they should make a third Max Payne game. The bullet time mechanic is rapidly becoming a gimmick.

As for the movie....who knows what they're going to do with the story? The game's story is so bad, they can only go up?
 

eggdog14

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Oct 17, 2007
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tsumake said:
If the Max Payne series were told in movie form, it would have a hard time going direct-to-video, much less a theatrical release.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467197/
 

Echolocating

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Jul 13, 2006
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I was blown away by the original Max Payne, but never picked up the sequel. I found the story to be good, but not great. It was that bullet-time element that totally grabbed me. However, as the game wore on, it became too repetitive. By the end, I was all bullet-timed out.

The original was brilliant and simply wore me out with it's repetitive gameplay by the time it was over.

Have you ever watched a really great movie where you never felt the need to watch it again? That's Max Payne, for me.
 

Cousin_IT

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Feb 6, 2008
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My favourite part of the first max payne was the nightmare sequence where u had to follow the trail of blood to the sounds of your families dying screams. It was genuinely compelling, uncomfotable & well executed & wouldnt have worked in a movie. THere is the problem I have with the whole movie/game trend. Games are active, movies are passive. Its a very fine line the two must be balanced on if u want them to sit comfortably together. That sequence worked because you were pushing yourself through this nightmare maze, experienceing the horror as it unfolded. If you were just watching Max Payne run around; all id be struck by is the mess the bloods made on the carpet.

On the subject of Max Payne 2. I didnt play it because I just never got round to it. Simple as.
 

eggdog14

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Oct 17, 2007
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I beat "Max Payne" for the Xbox when i had it a while ago, i t h i n k it was a launch title, no? Also it was the first game i experienced in 5.1 surround, and it was a truly eery game with 360degrees of wailing.

Max Payne 2. . . i never played, most likely because the lack of any kind of media attention, it simply slipped through my fingers.

I just bought Max Payne 2 on steam for a measly $10, and i'll be playing that tonight, i hope it holds up.
 

L.B. Jeffries

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Nov 29, 2007
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tsumake said:
I'm sorry, I find this article to be filler at most. No one, no one with any cinematic sensibility would consider the Max Payne series to have a good narrative. It is a painfully bad story, told horribly, filled with cliche after cliche.

I would imagine Max Payne 2 wasn't considered a success because it was really just more of the same, which is actually fine for me gameplay wise, but for the general audience wasn't enough for a second run.
"Cinematic sensibilities"? Is that supposed to be intimidating? Please actually play the second game before you launch into this unfounded ranting. Yeah, the first one was awkward and I know you're getting all this from that game. But Chalk is right, the second one is flawless. It took out all the corny dialog from the first one and told a really good redemption story. Hell, the narrative quotes from imdb alone are great vignettes in of themselves.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366758/quotes

Personal favorite: "When entertainment turns into a surreal reflection of your life, you're a lucky man if you can laugh at the joke. Luck and I weren't on speaking terms."

And just to back my point up, some academic with "cinematic sensibilities" besides mine posted an article talking about how brilliant this game is.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19066

"Even more importantly, not only was the goal progression rewarded with cutscenes, but the cutscenes would also set up the transition into different settings and places. The player could skip the cutscenes but watching them (at least the first time around) really made the game experience something that you could care about.

Like a noir puzzle film, each viewing offered new layers of understanding not only Max Payne as a character but also the complex world of which he was a part. To this day Max Payne 2 is one of the few games I've not only completed repeatedly but in which I've actually watched the cutscenes repeatedly as well."

As for the film, Wahlberg has been interviewed as saying it's the most complex character he's ever played.

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/06/17/mark-wahlberg-calls-max-payne-the-most-complex-character-hes-ever-played/
 

Forwardassist

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Feb 12, 2008
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I played the first Payne game a few years ago, and was underwhelmed by it. Yes the game play was refreshing but I found the story did not draw me into it. Actually the bad writing in ways turned me off to the otherwise decent game. I also found the game became boring at times so I never replayed it on harder difficulty levels. All it would be would be more of the same. Also I am not a fan of third person view, so that was a another knock against it in my book. Since Payne 2 is now offered for cheap on Stream, maybe I will pick it and give it a whirl.
 

calelogan

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Jun 15, 2008
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I enjoyed both MPs.

Both of them are really good and i'm also a fan of a "noir" theme, even if it can be extremely cliche at times. Nevertheless, both MPs were excellent because of their gameplay and while the second one relied on the first's tested and proven formula, I have to agree that the second refined the narrative.

From a visual standpoint, I also have to agree that pressing the "PAUSE" key and having that revolving camera around Max while all the action was frozen in place was awesome and provided excellent screenshots. Especially when he made that reloading-spinning move.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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I disliked the first so didn't buy the second.

The gameplay, to me, consisted of walking to a doorway, bullet time, bang-bang-bang, check for traps. Rinse and repeat.
 

Juan Regular

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Jun 3, 2008
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I never knew Max Payne 2 sold so badly. I bought it the day it came out and so did most of my friends. I always thought it was a succes. Anyway, I love the game. 2 especially. I don't know why everyone seems to be bothered with the writing. It's not bad, it's just cliche. And that fits very well with the story and art direction of the game.
The nightmare sequences are some of the best moments I had in videogame history. They're so well done.
 

ReepNeep

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Jan 21, 2008
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My favorite out of those IMDB lines is the one that ended the game: 'I had a dream of my wife. She was dead, but it was alright.'

It had characters that were closer to human than you would see in most RPGs, which is saying a hell of a lot for an action game. Compared to what usually passes for a 'good' story in videogames, MP2's was a Rembrandt to a Kinkade.

I was always mystified as to why the game sold so poorly when it was so much better than the first one. The refined bullet time mechanics, better level design and far better writing should have made it a bigger success than it's predecessor, not a bomb.
 

Frybird

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Jan 7, 2008
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I never looked it up, but i am truly shocked that Max Payne 2 was a commercial disappointment.

MP2 is, for me, a true game of dreams: A dark, mature Plot, but also lots of (dark) humor, highly moddable, an overall complete improvement over Max Payne 1 (especially since in Max Payne 1 Bullet Time was only really usefull when you did that dodge-jump move, wich resulted in "John Woo Bunnyhopping" through every level), and cool use of the then relatively new physics engine Havok, and a fun survival mode.

And all that plus the traits of the first Max Payne: Nice Pacing, the Beautiful-Noir-Comic Artworks and "Cutscenes" and the extremely funny TV-Shows (another thing where Max Payne 2 outdid itself..if you took your time, you could watch at least two complete stories within the game...also, the Self-Parody "Dick Justice" has some of the coolest metaphors ever) and the nice use of actual photography for textures wich makes both games age in a slower way than thier counterparts of that time...


...If i go home from work, i will reinstall the game and play the shit out of it.

Thank you, The Escapist!
 

Juan Regular

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Jun 3, 2008
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I recently read the script for the movie (legit according to trailer transcripts) and the movie will most likely suck. Ludacris is Jim Bravura, no sicilian mafia, no voice overs, no nightmares, etc.
Pity...
 

Eagle Est1986

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Nov 21, 2007
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An excellent game, can't remember how many times I've played it but some of my most memorable gaming moments have been provided by Max Payne 2. It's a shame that so many people have judged the game on the first game, it's superior in every way.
Infact, I might just have to steal it from my mate who I'm sure still has his copy lying around somewhere.
 

domicius

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Apr 2, 2008
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I remember this game. I started playing it on my PS2, and about 30 minutes in, around the second level I died.

And then realised that the game didn't autosave. Oh dear.

Anyway, I kept playing it and, true to the genre, the story is pretty paper thin. Half way through I got stuck in some level and there just wasn't the drive to push through and find out that MP really wasn't going to find redemption. Which I could have guessed.

And the mechanics were really tired.
 

in_95

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Jul 2, 2008
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Videogames and traditional media (movies, TV) are converging, but not in the way Warren Spector had evisioned. The problem is that traditional media is converging towards games, rather than the other way around. It is simply easier and more profitable to dumb down things than to make tight, compact, compelling stories.

How many seasons has it been for the most profitable shows on TV- Lost, Heros, Prison Break, SG-1? They never seem to go anywhere. Normally sequels are bad because the original story was told so well that anything made afterwards feels tacked on and passe. Now films actually build the seeds for sequels into themselves. Why? Because it is easier to make a continuation of a placcid franchise than taking the effort to actually think up a new, exciting IP.

Why is the world still bonkers over Mario? It is precisely because it's a bad IP that it's able to perpetuate itself for so long. If I watched a new cartoon featuring a plumber, with mushroom baddies, pipes that go places, flying clouds with faces, a dinosaur baddy and a stock princess-in-distress-in-need-of-rescue I would say it's the most random, boring thing in the world. But in game form it's apparently celebrated as "original".

Not to rail on Mario per se, I love the games. But the stories are all the same. It is tepid, unoriginal things that last; and the TV and movie industries are already on the bandwagon.