- Official Post
The other day I was watching some dumb videos online, and someone mentioned that Max Payne 2 was their favorite game in the series. It made me realize that while I do own MP2, I've never actually played it. So I decided to do that. But it'd been a few years since I played the original, so I figured I should start with that. And that's what I've been doing over this weekend: sitting in front of a fan and playing my old PS2 copy of Max Payne.
This fuckin' game holds up surprisingly well. The loading screens are atrocious, and there are maybe 2-3 platforming segments that can just go fuck off and die in a fire. But aside from that, everything about the game is still great after 14 years. The graphics are dated for sure, but they're confident in their own style, and they're clearer than a lot of PS2 graphics are. So they never really bother me. The fact that the cutscenes are comic panels, rather than animations, helps a lot.
The gameplay is simple and functional. Walk around, and kill people. The level design is completely linear, and the controls are simple. But within that framework, they manage to work in a lot of really engaging variety.
Though what really makes the game so worthwhile to play is the writing. The writing is pitch-perfect, self-aware, "gritty noir" in neon quotation marks. But the writing never crosses the line to being cynical about what it is. It knows what it is, it loves what it is, and if you pretend you're too classy to love what it is, then the game thinks you're a loser.
I've still got a little ways to go, but I'm eager to move on to the second game and see how things grew from there.