2/5 ★ – Certified_gamer's review of Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne.

SPOILERS Wow that was disappointing. I played this game straight after beating the first one and had relatively high expectations from my enjoyment of that game. Unfortunately I felt that this game was worse in every way. First of all they fucked up the dive and bullet time. In the first game the purpose of the dive was to cover a small amount of distance quickly while making yourself a harder target to hit. The drawback was that once completed you were a sitting duck for a few moments, so this move needed to be used tactically or it could backfire. However in Max Payne 2 you move so fast in bullet time that could can cover about the same distance if not more than the dive just by walking and because of how fast you can operate in bullet time you are just as safe in bullet time as when performing a dive without the drawback of ever being a sitting duck. This renders the dive an inferior ability and one not worth using. Additionally you always seem to have an abundance of bullet time in this game (due the meter automatically regenerating half way) so you can almost always use it in every combat encounter, instead of the tactical usage of the first game where it was a more rare resource that was earned. This makes a lot of the game trivial and doesn't require much thought or decision making when playing, just oh enemies? Ok use bullet time and kill them with no resistance. Some of the level design is also quite disappointing. This game reuses the same locations multiple times and for a game as short as it is feels very lazy. There are also a few escort missions thrown in here. Yay. Max and Mona's love story didn't feel compelling at all. Throughout the game these two lovebirds would talk to eachother in such a deadpan and monotone manner it was almost comical. What also doesn't help is that this game moves at such a fast pace the relationship didn't have enough time to develop into anything I could care about, so much so that when Mona died at the end I didn't feel anything at all. However my biggest problem with this game's story is actually the ending. I know this ending is beloved by many but to me it was just awful and so unbelievably out of place and unearned that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. So Max Payne, who's trauma began when the love of his life died (his wife), is now over all of his trauma because the love of his life died (Mona Sax). WHAT, what the fucking hell what? This doesn't make any sense, throughout this game there was nothing that happened that would lead Max to gain closure on his trauma. He only further threw himself into the world of crime and had someone he cared about die. The fact he has some sort of life changing positive revelation right at the end, given all the events that have just happened to him is laughably absurd to me.