 Damn that rabbit. Max has had a depressing life and it just keeps getting worse. After leaving the DEA he takes his old job as a detective only to find that the local crime syndicates are in an all-out war. He gets caught in the middle and what little is left of his life begins to shatter all over again.
1. Gameplay
Max Payne 2 is the ultimate Film Noir game. That may not be saying much since the number of film noir games is extremely slim, but Max Payne 2 tops the list either way. There are few games that can maintain a depressing atmosphere while still creating an entertaining experience that is worth playing over and over again.  No matter how bad my life gets, it'll never be as bad as his. Max Payne is a hard-boiled detective. His wife and daughter were murdered by drug-addled psychopaths and he spent quite a bit of time taking down a few mob gangs and a corporate big-wig in order to enact strict and swift justice. In Max Payne 2, Max is haunted by the remnants of some of the power structures he destroyed. Every move he makes is an attempt to get something he wants, to move on with his life. Ultimately, however, most of these attempts are futile.  And yet he keeps going. The gameplay of Max Payne 2 is very similar to its predecessor. Max Payne 2’s primary feature is known as “bullet time”. The player can slow down time at will and use the slow-motion mechanics to more accurately take out enemies. Players will end up using this in liberal amounts, especially to perform slow motion shooting dives. It’s the most effective way to shoot around corners.  Or just for fun. The gameplay hasn’t seen many improvements from the previous game, which is acceptable. The game itself is almost flawlessly smooth, but isn’t the kind of thing that I’d put down as “best game design ever”. It’s the narration that makes this game worth playing. As with the previous game, Max Payne 2’s graphic novel style of cutscene makes the game better as a literary experience rather than just a simple video game. Max’s monologues include plenty of similes, literary and historical references so that those who have an understanding of the terms he is using will be in for a serious treat. Max Payne 2 has one of the best scripts of any game I have ever played. That alone makes it worth at least one attempt.
Max Payne 2 took me a little less than 6 hours to complete. While this wasn’t my first playthrough, I thought there should have been some more content to the game. The game does include some different difficulty levels that can give a serious challenge to any gamers, but I never felt much of a need to test them out. This game has decent replayability for the story, but with no multiplayer and no hidden items there isn’t much reason for gamers to replay it frequently.
The previous Max Payne game had an issue where the enemy AI was very smart and very accurate. This would force me to quicksave before every room so that, when I inevitably gained too much damage, I could reload and know exactly where the enemies were placed. Max Payne 2 doesn’t have this issue as much since the enemies are much more likely to be facing the wrong way and are much less accurate, but the lack of autosaves made things very difficult unless quicksaves were used. There were certain sections that seemed a bit unnecessary and frustrating. In one, Max manages to escape from the chair where he is being tortured but finds himself weaponless in a hotel full of mobsters. Trying to deal with the mobsters with just a bat is near suicidal, so the game tries to get the player to sneak through a rather large area. Only really serves to bring the pace of the game to a grinding halt though, so I ended up just figuring out how to shoot everyone instead. In one particularly frustrating section of the game, Max has to defend a known mob leader named Vinnie. Vinnie has gotten himself trapped in the costume of the fictional cartoon character “Captain Baseball Bat Boy”. Unfortunately for Vinnie, the costume is rigged with explosives. Somehow, Vinnie’s enemies didn’t get the memo and are still trying to kill him, which would result in an explosion that could easily take out a city block.  I hate this moron. So the player has to defend Vinnie. This sounds simple but, in reality, is absurdly difficult. Enemies will pop out from numerous directions and will almost always shoot at Vinnie first. While Max is dealing with criminals coming out of an alley in one direction, another criminal is shooting at Vinnie from the opposite side of the room. And Vinnie does nothing to defend himself. He simply stands there while gangsters stand in front of him and shoot him. It was easily the most frustrating section in the entire game. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in Max Payne 2 is fairly mild. The player will have to use a variety of firearms to shoot enemies. Each hit from a projectile weapon will result in a small cloud of blood from the target.  Dance party! Explosions do not cause blood or gore. Instead, anyone who dies from the blast goes flying into the air like a ragdoll.  He's got mad hops. Bodies surrounded by blood can be found in different situations during the game. These are designed to highlight where the “cleaners” have been.  Are people supposed to use mops to clean up blood?
Max has an ongoing affair with a femme fatale known as “Mona Sax”. The “affair” isn’t the kind that involves cheating since Max’s wife was killed early in the previous game, but Max is constantly torn between his love for his wife and his desire for Mona.  The face that launched a thousand ships. Their relationship is clearly sexual, but the game never depicts them having sex. The most that they get is making out. When they do try to get it on, they’re interrupted by armed thugs.  In one scene, Max breaks into Mona’s apartment so that he can find out what she has been doing (he thought she was dead). When he enters, she is naked in the shower. No parts are ever shown and he never talks about her nakedness.  That's a big empty bathroom for one woman. In another scene, Max is talking to Vlad (the main antagonist). Max asks Vlad what he knows about Mona. Vlad, after explaining what he has heard, states coldly “I would fuck her.”  It's never that easy. In one somewhat hidden area, the player can walk in on two mobsters watching what would be a pornographic movie. The screen only shows a woman’s lips, but the audio track is clearly supposed to be a woman masturbating herself (or something to that effect). It’s very easy to miss, and there’s little reason to stick around for the whole show.  For a peep show you don't see much.
Health is distributed in the form of bottles of prescription painkillers that can be found in every level. Using a bottle will slowly heal a portion of Max’s damage. It is implied that Max is using an entire bottle of painkillers to heal. However, since one bottle usually doesn’t heal all of Max’s damage, the player may end up having to down two or three bottles in rapid succession. Max cannot overdose on painkillers.  Maybe it's just a prescription for Tylenol. Max isn’t the only one with an addiction to painkillers. The police chief is also seen twice consuming pain pills when he is talking to Max.  Usually I have some water when I take pills. Numerous characters throughout the game are seen drinking and smoking.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
Mods are not a factor in this game.
At the end of the game, a painting on the wall depicts Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden. The metal structure that the main antagonist was on is shown as a replacement for the Tree of Knowledge. Other than this, religion is not a factor in this game.  In the beginning, God created this giant green metal thing.
Max Payne is a homicide detective with the NYPD. However, he does have a habit of bending the rules in order to get what he wants or needs. For example, Mona is introduced as a murder suspect that is evading capture. Max finds Mona and knows where she lives but does not turn her in despite strict orders to do so. This sort of rule breaking eventually gets Max into deeper trouble. Towards the middle of the game he is forced to choose to let Mona get captured or killed or to shoot his partner. He chooses to save Mona.  It was a good choice. During the course of the game, Max never calls in backup or assists the other detectives. He always acts as a sort of rogue agent. He’s always out to do the right thing, but sometimes the lines get blurred. The mafia and other forms of organized crime are also present throughout the entirety of the game. There are numerous times when Max will talk to or help known gang leaders in order to find answers to some of his questions.
There is no multiplayer game mode for this game.
One of the main mechanics in Max Payne 2 is “bullet time”. This allows the player to run, shoot, and even dive in slow motion. Players will end up using this liberally during the course of the game.  Stunt guys usually have a mattress on the floor to cushion the fall. In one section, Mona enters a burning abandoned theme park in order to save Max. It’s not the safest thing anyone could ever do, considering the entire structure is burning and collapsing around her.  Did she call the fire department first?
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Execution At the beginning of the game, Max enters a warehouse and finds that it has been taken over by murderous thugs who pose as a cleaning crew. He watches as the owner of a weapon repair shop is murdered by the thugs.  Who would try to rob a gun shop? In one section one of the antagonists, Vinnie, is tricked into putting on a costume that is rigged with explosives. Vlad, another antagonist, ends up killing Vinnie with the explosives after letting Vinnie compete for his life in a twisted version of a game show. The player sees the wreckage of the costume after the explosion, but only learns of what happens by watching a television station while he is dreaming.  How did he put on the head?
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