The answer? Well, sort of the first one. Max Payne 2 is as much a generic sequel as you'd expect - it's more of the first game, with a slightly different reason for Max to kill everyone, and everything else has been refined as much as possible. It's a considerably better game than the first one, but brings very little new to the table. What it does bring though is a graphics and physics engine that shows what the major improvements in games are going to be for the next 5 years.

   

If you have a half decent PC graphics card, then you should probably buy this game just to see what it can really do, because this is the best looking shooter that I have played on my Radeon by a good margin. The lighting is quite accurate, the rooms can get to quite a size without losing any detail or speed, bits of debris fly off objects as you shoot them, brass ejects from guns and there's nice big muzzle flare - it's all undeniably pretty. Then you add the physics - Max Payne 2 is the first game to showcase the 'Havok' physics engine, something of which I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty more. Havok gives the basic objects of the game quite a lot of life - brush past a pile of boxes and they will topple gently, run into them and they fly in all directions. However, the physics are limited to dead bodies, and general building clutter (such as the ubiquitous piles of cardboard boxes, barrels, and wooden planks). So it's a good thing that Max likes to keep plenty of both around him at all times, and that snipers like to sit on ledges above piles of clutter. But you don't ever see a filing cabinet toppled over, or a cupboard detached from the wall - there's a lot of static furniture. Neither do you see any environment deformation, apart from where scripted, so it's safe to say that there's a good margin for improvement in the future here, however impressive the current product. As I hinted in the last paragraph, we can expect to see this sort of stuff develop heavily over the next 5 years. Overall, the graphics are very nice, and go to make bullet time look ridiculously good.

Then there's the sound - also very nice. Lots of lovely echoes and different noises for gunfire, and always appropriate (although maybe not varied enough) music. The voice acting is excellent, although it's obvious that the voice actors have benefited from a good script too.

But that's pretty much where all the improvements end, and they're all cosmetic. The gameplay is very close to being a carbon copy of the previous game, apart from the levels being laid out better, the lack of stupid jumpy bits (there are dream sequences in the game, but no running along a stupid white line, and leaps of faith into nothingness), and the fact that shoot dodging costs nothing on your bullet time meter. Whilst you might think that could make the game unbalanced, shoot dodging seems to have been reduced in effectiveness, where as the standing bullet time will give you the drop on all enemies, and make you a pretty effective purveyor of death.

   

OK, so my point is that there are cosmetic improvements, and bullet time has been tweaked. But that's it. Oh, but the plot is better too. Darn.

The narrative is clearer whilst not losing its film noir stylings, and the plot is actually quite emotionally involving, as well as being vastly less clichéd. Ya see, Max Payne 2 is a love story, and whereas last time Max was just pissed off, this time he seems more driven by his emotions, and the gamer will probably find that they feel much the same. The problem is that the plot is quite a direct continuation from the first game, and feels more like the proper ending of Max Payne than a full sequel. The length of the game doesn't help dispel the feeling either - finished by me at a leisurely pace in around 8 hours first time through, the game finishes before the plot really gets going at any pace. When you're done and dusted with the game, there's little to attract you back to it, apart from being able to play on the harder levels, or a couple of basic extra game modes. You will most likely play the game again for a little while, but whether you will want to beat it twice more to see the alternate ending is debatable.

In the end, Max Payne 2 is a very nice game, and although it does everything better, it does little new. But then, there's nothing else quite like Payne out there at the moment, and it does look very pretty...