So immersive that sometimes you really feel the Pain! I mean you feel you are Payne himself :)
First of all I have a confession; since I sold my Amiga 1200 & bought my first PC back in 1995, and I felt since then that I was cut away from the games community; yes I have enjoyed early PC shooters like DOOM, DUKE NUKEM, Wolfenstein 3D etc. but I never felt the thrill that I felt with the Amiga games!
Then I played sporadically, most of time helping my kids on hard parts of their PS2 games, till they "out skilled" me few years back; and all this time I have never thought seriously about PC games, and accordingly never bought a good Video card for my PC; always invested in processors & Memory only!
Then few months back, I finally bought a new NVIDIA card & I started to redeem all the classics I missed! I really felt so stupid to miss all that fun all these years! And one of these best classics that I have just finished now in September 2009 is Max Payne 2!! Can you believe that?
This game has the best plot ever, to the extent that it is considered the spirit of the game & one of the reasons of its success; unlike many other great games where a silly plot just pull some important flavors out of it, or at least makes you feel uncomfortable while playing.
And back to the classic verdict:
- Graphics: 10/10 comparing to the date of its release, some amazing "after trauma" effects adds a lot to this aspect.
- Audio: 8/10 ; excellent voices for the characters and very good theme music ; but the in level music is boring & repetitive; also sound effects are slightly above average.
- Gameplay: 9.5/10 ; one of the best shooters / adventure ever; though some tricky graphics hides a lethal set of enemies! While some people gets frustrated from this ; others are considering it as an add on to the excitement of the game.