Spoilers

If you finish the game on dead on arrival, Mona lives at the end. I'm not sure if this is meant to be the REAL ending, because it doesn't seem fitting that it ends happy.
This comment was edited on Jan 18, 12:52.

oh
i knew that

*pulls foot out of mouth*

awsome demo but I think Ill wait till the preowned price drops on this one.

It should be a sign of how bad things have gotten when we consider a game with 15+ hours of gameplay as 'long'.

W3rd. I remember when reviewers complained that 20 hours of game wasn't enough. Now reviewers love games that long.

Mind you, I saw someone on those boards complaining that DX wasn't long enough at 40 hours. Um...

$50 for 6 hours of this? Sad. I mean truly sad. I'd pay maybe $15 to $20 for this, but that's the limit.

Anyone play the "dead man walking" level? That thing is pretty damn hard. Best time I could get was 3:09... then I got rushed by about 10 of them and blown to hell...

Supporter of the "a happy fredster is a wet fredster with jumper cables attached to his nads" fanclub.

Last week's episode of G4TV.com posed the question, "which is better: quality or length?"

The resuts were that it's better to have a good game that's short, than a long game that sucks.

It's a juggling match, people. If you go for quantity over quality then your game either suffers from being unrefined, or it takes so long to develop that by the time it comes out (if it does) that it get's panned as being "yesterday's technology".

so, which would you rather have?

(and no, this doesn't have anything to do with that vaporware game DNF)

This is exactly the problem. It is not a black and white answer. When did everyone start assuming that games could not have both quality and quantity? It should be a sign of how bad things have gotten when we consider a game with 15+ hours of gameplay as 'long'.

okay, I generalised again. What I meant is that games always want you to go from point A to point B. How you do it is irrelevant. You just need to finish the level. Some games allow you to choose diffrent paths, others limit you to one (which is the case here).
The problem I have is that real plot-forwarding events are often out of the hands of the player. This is the case in Max Payne and that was what I was talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I love going from A to B

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I don't like that too, but that is the way games are nowadays. Interactivity is limited to shooting baddies.

What are you talking about?! Games are getting more and more open all the time! Deus Ex/DX:IW? NOLF1/2? System Shock 1/2? All of those games offer a measure of choice in who you kill or rather how you play the game. It's certainly more open than it's ever been. What did we have in the past? Doom, Quake? There was hardly even a plot, leave alone a consideration of the merits of leaving characters x, y and z alive.

um, I'm feeling really inept right now. I can't get past the first 3 minutes of the demo level. I kill the cop then run to the tv room; the elevator opens and I get in and nothing happens.

edit : yeah I'm a retard..didn't realize zoom was use..nm
Oh yeah..unrelated Max got stuck half way through an animation walking around. Also I got stuck on a wall for about 2 minutes until I got out.


So anyway, how do I get past the beginning hospital part?

This comment was edited on Nov 18, 11:11.

Whistles

Ah, now you're talking about something diffrent. You're talking about linearity now, which is a whole diffrent ballgame. There are a lot of points in the game where I would have done things diffrently. I probably wouldn't have shot Witherspoon (sp?), but the choice wasn't mine to make. The developers have the story outlined for me and all I need to do is follow that path. I don't like that too, but that is the way games are nowadays. Interactivity is limited to shooting baddies. Max Payne is not a game where I can make the choices. So in fact, it's quite similar to a play or a movie or a book. When games have reached a higher level of interactivity, where the player can actively can send the story in a direction the developers didn't intend, then we'll talk again.
For now we are stuck with linear games and I feel that Remedy has made the right choice with the ending. This is a Film Noir Love Story. In a Film Noir, the (anti)hero never gets the girl.

The end fight was crap indeed. Reminded me of an old Rogger Rabbit game on the GameBoy

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*looks innocent*

The way I read it, vlad was the protege of Woden, but not nessecarily even around part of the big conspiracy thing at the time of the first game. afaik, you killed the person responsible at the time.

I think the point of Romeo and Juliet was that everyone who reads it and sees it wanted them to live but, by the nature of being a passive reader or watcher of the piece has no power to alter the tragic outcome. In Max Payne, we have a similar situation, except that the player is playing one of the major plot characters *actively*, and but for the control that is taken away from you at that point in the story, could perhaps do something about it. It's natural to want to do something to prevent the death of mona where we are meant to be controlling the character there that can do something about it - in the end, the responsibility for her death lies in part with the player, but not as with the first one where you can try as hard as you like and not get there in time, but because the control is taken away from you by a distinctly non-game mechanic. I don't really have to like what happens, but I would have far prefered something where I could actively tried to stop it. I also didn't particularly feel motivated to follow Vlad to Woden's place - given how weakly I felt about that decision, it's fairly natural for me to go back to it and not like that I was forced to take it. But yes, I feel that even revenge against vlad wasn't enough (it wasn't actually that satisfying a battle anway) to make up for gaining something during a game and losing it because the game takes all control away from the player at that point.

I think it took me about 6 hours, which puts it somewhere under jedi academy (8ish?) and quite a long way under tron 2.0 (15ish?).

How do you figure you can't win. I was more or less satisfied with the ending. It was about as good as could be hoped for.

You kill Vlad, who is really the guy behind the murder of your family (from what I can figure), Woden dies and he was more or less a scumbag. Yeah, Mona dies but oh well. You don't get taken in for like 20 years in prison (again, this is just my interpretation) so its all more or less good. Plus, the very last scene says "I dreamed of my wife today, she told me it was ok"

____

As for the lenght, I said it before and I'll say it again. I just don't see how you guys can finish this in a single day. Are we playing the same game? It took me about a week on easy (or Detective or whatever the starting difficulty is) to beat the game. This includes tons of reloads and stuff, and considering I played about 2 hours a day. So, Unless you are the type to sit down and play a game for 10 hours striaght, I don't see how you could have finished it so quickly. I must disagree with the majority here and say that I got a nice amount of play time out of Max Payne 2, so I'm satisfied.

Nexus (we continue the spoilerish secret thingy), you CAN win the game. If you play all the levels to the end, you win the game. Max Payne lives and the bad guy is punished.
I was perfectly satisfied with this ending. I loved the bittersweet taste it left behind. This was a bold descision by the developers and I applaud this. It's your full right not to like this, but you cannot say that the player is destined to lose the game. You loose Mona, but that was a cursed love. After all, she IS a murder suspect.
But I will probably not convince you of my point. I do have respect for you point, I just think it's wrong ;).

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I'll have a go on hard today, shouldn't take more than a few hours

#35: Actually no. Romantic tragedies are all very well in plays and books, but I don't think they make for good material where there is a player who is, in effect, destined to lose the game. My entire point *does not* revolve around how emotionally well done the entire thing was (yes, I appreciated that in the first one too), but how I feel the satisfaction of the player works. A game that you cannot (from most perspectives) win, is a very debatable descision, yet you seem to have little to no respect for me debating not liking it.

Anyways, I think to add a little bit of replayability without having to model more and more full levels. Add something like a "free fight" mode.

That's pretty much what Dead Man Walking is. I think that mode is a lot of fun.

And Nyarlathotep, and others talking about the max payne ending (spoiler!):

Beat the game on the hard difficulty and Mona lives at the end.

~Steve

This comment was edited on Nov 18, 05:00.

I haven't played MPII full or demo yet, but I''m downloading the demo right now. I'm sure I will like it.

Anyways, I think to add a little bit of replayability without having to model more and more full levels. Add something like a "free fight" mode. Just hand players some guns and let them run around shooting insane ammounts of enemys, maybe even allow them to unlock a couple of new things like more weapons and stuff.

Just a thought.

To the rockstar dude: Great game. I enjoyed every single bit of it. It couldn't have been longer, otherwise it would get boring. Ideal length. But robbing my purse for €50 isn't good. The game is great, but the price too high.

To the 'I didn't like the ending' dude (spoilerous text): I guess you wanted a last minute rescue in Romeo and Juliet as well? There's nothing better than a good death to increase the emotional value of an ending. Plus there was a positive note as well: Max dreamt of his wife, but it wasn't a nightmare anymore. He finally learned to deal with that loss.

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The reason why the demo took so long is that we've been working with Rockstar Vienna on getting the PS2 and XBox versions done (which has been a lot higher priority than the PC demo).

No real conspiracy behind it (sorry ;).

...that MP2 is more like a toy to play with every now and then that you really dont take seriously, like the first one? People bitched about it being too short...I thought it was too long, considering all you do is point and shoot with no form of strategy, tactics or any kind of thought required what so ever.

Ive been waiting for this demo for a while, so I guess Ill find out.

And one more thing...wtf is it with devs releasing a demo so long after the game comes out? Ill tell you what it is, its them knowing that releasing a demo is going to hurt sales more than it would boost.

Eh, at least I know that shit doesnt work on me.

This comment was edited on Nov 18, 01:42.

If you liked Max Payne 1,
You'll love Max 2