Max Payne 2

Picked the game up at Best Buy this weekend for $35. I'm only on the 3rd level but so far it's very polished. The level design is a bit too linear for my tastes, but the graphics are nice (mainly due to the textures).

 

me too

it's the first thing i've noticed , very nice soft shadows.

 

It's the real-world physics for me and the greatly overdone ragdoll effects, they just add a ton of immersion & depth.

 

*nod* much the same here, in all respects. Things that impressed me:

Performance--MP2 runs faster on my rig than the original Max Payne

Textures--nice, very nice indeed!

Shadows--good combination of light maps and (soft) character shadows. The shadows don't look half as artificial than UT2003's. Very well done, Remedy.

True 5.1 sound--yessssssssssssssssssss.

Bullet Time V2--woah. My jaw dropped when Max performed a special move for the first time, no kidding. It gets a bit repetitive over time, but it still impressed the hell out of me.

The storyline so far looks promising. OK, promising if you like pulp fiction / Chandleresque detective stories.

93,
-Sascha.rb

 

Everything about MP2 is good. It's a very well presented, slick piece of work. They've obviously spent a lot of time polishing this one, and it shows in spades.

Well done to all those involved making this one happen, you may well have the PC game of the year here.

Anyone tried multiplayer?

Oh, and one other thing. I'm generally not into the whole female video game character thing. Lara Croft just doesn't do it for me. But Mona... OMFG. I've had to wipe down my keyboard on more than one occasion.

I guess they must be doing something right...

 

Yeah, Mona is a complete cliche character, but they got it perfect. I think it's something to do with voice acting in the comic sections and the fact that she's slutty enough to have sex against the wall of an alley with Max.

Looking forward to the movie....

 

MP2 is a pretty fun game. I would say the graphics are evolutionary, but I really do like them! 8) As DW said, the ragdoll physics sometimes gets a little too carried away, but all in all, its much better than what we had before (none?!?)

As a very cool bonus.. it looks like there are two additional levels that you can download from Rockstar Games: http://www.rockstargames.com/maxpayne2/mp2_downloads.html

I guess you can't play these additional levels until you finish the single-player game, but it's always nice to know that there's some gravy @ the end of the tunnel.

 

A superb game that will be on my list of the top games for 2003... What MP2 does, it does very well, be it firefights, cinematic effects, or storyline. A no-BS, amazingly well-crafted game, even better than the first one. It is a truly mature game, not childish posing as mature.

About the length, I've not finished it yet (only received it on Saturday, can't play it when the child is awake), but I don't object to short games, provided I still get a good experience out of them.

 

Thanks for all the positive comments

 

Thanks for the great game !

 

First of all, thanks for the game! Seconldy, I have a question on this matter that nobody has been able to answer:

Its about the mirrors effects. We've all seen them work on Rads 9800, 9700, 9000, 8500. And know that they cant work on TI 4600, 4200.

But a friend of mine and I got the mirror effects on an rather old mobility radeon, and whats more, on a Radeon 7500! shock. This card licks the TI 4600s feet!

So, is it all about the hardware clipping planes? Rad 7500 uses hardware clipping planes in a way that a TI4600 cant? Does a 7500 provide support for hardware clipping planes at all?

Screenshots taken with the 7500:

http://www.mi-pagina.cl/RedMan/Mp1.jpg
http://www.mi-pagina.cl/RedMan/Mp2.jpg

 

multiplayer what?

 

GF3 series does support hardware clipping planes, but for some reasons, its support in the D3D driver is removed. I don't know why. It is surprising though to see that it works with the "puny" Radeon 7500. I have that card, but ain't got time to try it with Max Payne 2.

 

I finished the game yesterday, and I'm completely overwhelmed by the quality of the gaming experience. The last levels (apart from the one with Vinnie, which was a bit frustrating at times) were totally awesome, one of the best gaming moments I had in a while... Heck, at times, it even compared to the "Woooah" factor of coming out of the ship for the first time in Unreal 1 (Glide)...

Where's Max Payne 3 ?

 

Great game (if only waaaay to short... ). But what a possible successor really needs is some sort of Doom 3-ish lighting system. Lots of shadows are perfect (I'd go as far as to say they're a must) for a film noir setting like in MP.
Only think about it: Evil Guy 1 has found Max in a dark alley...but you only see the glimmer of his cigarette in the darkness. Suddenly Max steps out (with the shadows going over his body)..."Bring it on". (I know its a horrible example, but I hope you get my meaning)

 

The game definitely needed a 4th act, because with the dream sequences and occasional re-used area it definitely felt too short. But I picked it up at Best Buy for $35 and certainly feel like I got my $$ worth. I'll take a shorter yet more polished game over a rambling mess any day of the week.

 

Moebius, the hardware clipping planes were supported and exposed in the drivers by GeForce3 in the past.

I do not have details as to why they are not exposed now, but to venture a guess it would be because some WHQL test.

We could (and in fact did) write a workaround that checks PCI Vendor / DeviceID that could be used to enable the mirrors, but decided that it wouldn't be used - as the performance suffered in some locations pretty badly with anything but a Ti4600 or better. And it would've been a hack anyhow that wouldn't have worked with all vendors/drivers.

 

So, if we revert back to using the old driver, then mirror effects can be turned on in GF3 / 4 Ti series? Anyway, I still don't get your justification about anything below GF4 4600 will run it slowly, since evidence suggest, even a Radeon 7500 (which is FAR FAR FAR less powerful that NV25 series) runs this game flawlessly with mirrors turned on.

 

Does anybody know whether widescreen resolutions are supported (with square pixels)?

MuFu.

 

Widescreen is not fully supported on Max2 PC. We have some code in there to not make it suck though.