Again, very enjoyable, and again, occasionally hilarious. In my opinion, it wasn't quite as difficult as the first — or, at least, it seemed to require a bit less of that dreaded trial-and-error save scumming in most levels. This is because fewer of the fights are set up in such a way that you'll be blasted as soon as you enter a room and subsequently die for no good reason other than your failure to predict the future (which, of course, was perfectly fine in the first Max Payne as long as you didn't mind saving often and learning things the hard way).
Regardless, I still progressed through Max Payne 2 at a snail's pace, retrying some fights over and over again before moving on, but that was usually by choice rather than by way of humiliating failure. After getting past a particular room, I'd often decide to see if I could do it again without getting shot, or with as few bullets as possible, or just for the sake of using some grenades (which I have a tendency to hoard until I can't carry any more).
The combat itself seemed a lot more forgiving. Either that, or I've just gotten that much less terrible at third-person shooters in general, and Max Payne in particular. So maybe I'm completely wrong, but I did get the impression that the enemies' reaction times were increased, and that the protagonist is a bit more bulletproof than he was before. Bullet time, also, seems considerably more useful this time around.
Maybe I'd be able to offer a better analysis of the differences between the two games if I were to play them both in the same day, perhaps side-by-side for a careful comparison, but I'm less interested in the details than in the overall experience of playing the game. In short, it was a hell of a good time.
The story, though I'd be lying if I said it were even 10% of my motivation for finishing the game, was a lot better than in the original. Spending some time playing as Max Payne's sidekick, nemesis, and love interest Mona Sax was a nice change, too, even if it was only a superficial one. What I really didn't like about the game was the occasional escort mission, the first of which has a player-controlled Mona Sax defending a nearly-helpless computer-controlled Max Payne.
Escort and defense missions are generally pretty terrible in any game, and I failed plenty of times in this particular level — partly because it was such a drastic change of pace, and partly because I vastly overestimated the protagonist's ability to survive when I wasn't controlling him. With Mona Sax high up in a building and Max Payne down with the bad guys on the ground, this part of the game is essentially an exercise in spotting those bad guys before they can start shooting. If Max is getting shot and you don't see the shooter right away, his health is going to drop very quickly.
By contrast, whenever the player is controlling Max Payne and Mona Sax is nearby, she's invincible and doesn't need to be defended. In these particular fights, if you're feeling lazy, you can even hang back and let her wipe out every enemy in the room. I can't help but wonder if the developers sought intentionally to turn the so-called "damsel in distress" cliché on its head with this rather unusual discrepancy. I almost wonder what Anita Sarkeesian thinks of it, and perhaps we'll find out when she finally releases the long-overdue premier video in her crowd-funded series on sexism in video games, but if she does analyze this game then she'll probably be more interested in the fact that the game's heroine is seen nude or partially undressed on multiple occasions, and might be regarded as little more than an excuse for sex appeal if you can manage to ignore most of the game's plot.
Whatever her purpose in the game, I really started to enjoy Max Payne 2 during the first level in which Mona Sax is the playable character, though I can't say exactly why. Maybe it was the level design. Or maybe it's just that I had finally reached the point where practice pays off and started getting a lot of headshots with the Desert Eagle... which, by the way, might just be the most satisfying weapon in the game. Even blowing up three guys with a grenade isn't nearly as gratifying as efficiently popping each of them in the head as you jump out from cover in slow motion, and even though painting the entire room with bullet holes while wielding dual Ingram machine pistols might be more effective if you're still a beginner, it also gets dull pretty quickly. Part of making an enjoyable shooter is including a selection of weapons that feel powerful (without actually making them so powerful that they break the balance of the game), and this means good sound effects. The Ingram, unfortunately, sounds awful, but the Desert Eagle sounds very nice.
It only does the job when you can manage to hit the bad guys in the face, but that's where you should always be aiming regardless of your weapon of choice. Headshots are everything in Max Payne (which is why I find it so strange that the developer, Remedy Entertainment, went on to create Alan Wake, in which shooting a bad guy in the head is no different from shooting him in the toe... but I guess that's just because Alan Wake really isn't a shooter). Max Payne 2, like its predecessor, very often becomes a game of activating bullet time and then clicking on heads as quickly as you can. Anything else is a waste of bullets.
Now that I've gotten both of Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne games out of my backlog, I can look forward to (eventually) playing Rockstar Games' Max Payne 3. But, as I've mentioned before, I'm in need of a better computer, and I'd rather wait until after I make that purchase so that I don't have to play the game on minimum graphical settings, or at a mediocre frame rate, or both.
