Max Payne is a great game.
Max Payne is the character you play as, he's a undercover cop in New York, who just lost his wife and daughter to murder and has also himself been framed for a vicious murder. Max is on the run, while at the same time trying to find out what happened to his family along the way, and hopefully in the end getting revenge. You'll be facing most of your foes inside doors, New York is experiencing it's worst winter storm in history. Throughout the story Max will be doing what ever it takes to find out the truth, some parts take a twisted turn but in the end it all makes sense. The story will be told through a graphic novel of sorts, taking the place of the more common cut scenes most other games use. The story is really great and needs a lot of attention paid to it, one little thing missed might through you off guard and confuse you.
The controls are pretty smooth for the most part, and easy to learn, thus making the game itself easy to get into. You'll start out with a 9mm semi automatic pistol, as you progress you get an arsenal of much better guns, along with some melee and hand thrown weapons. Even with all these your biggest weapon will be bullet time, with out this you want survive for very long. With this you'll be able to slow down your enemies and you as well but you'll have plenty of time to react, therefore giving you the upper hand. The difficulty of the game is self adjusting, which is a great feature. If it's to easy and your flying through it will become harder, and the same the other way around, it is a feature that would be nice to see in more games. Death is something you'll see more than once, once your health meter feels all the way up with red your dead, but don't worry if you got painkillers on you it will give you health.
Since Max Payne is an old game, the graphics aren't the most spectacular thing you'll find especially on the PS2. The voice acting is great, all characters sounding really well, the soundtrack at first isn't something you'd expect but it works out really well in the games favor. One of the nice things are the sounds you'll hear around you, from the foot steps to air blowing through a tunnel. It sounds as if it would if you were actually there, from a gun getting fired in a small room the sounds all surprising have the real effect to them.
There are some small problems the will for most players get frustrating, one of the biggest is slow loading times. This will be apparent if you die quiet a few times, especially towards the end of the game when it gets tougher. This also brings into play that you can't save anywhere you want to like the PC and Xbox counterparts. Which doesn't seem like a big of a deal, but once again towards the end it would make a big difference if it were there. A drop in frame rate will also be noticed throughout the game, not that bad actually and shouldn't ruin the game for anyone.
That being said, the PC version of the game is the best with the Xbox one being close behind. The PS2 version isn't all that bad, it just has a few problems that you want see in the other two games. I'd suggest going for one of those if you can, but if you can't don't worry to much. In the end you should come out of this games with a great experience as you would with any other version. With great gameplay that no other game offers like Max Payne, and one of the best story's you can't go wrong with Max Payne. A must play game that we will remember for years to come, and a game that deserves no less of a score than 9.8.