It seems that the coolness factor of this writeup might get higher if I mention that I am a Remedy Entertainment employee. So there you go. And now when that social pornography matter is taken care off, to the business:
Max Payne 2: Fall of Max Payne (aka the FOMP) is the latest game by Remedy Entertainment. It was a collaborative effort with the publisher Rockstar Games, who provided Remedy Entertainment with motion captured animation, dialogue voices, character photos and basically handled the marketing by themselves.
In Max Payne 2, Max has resigned from DEA and returned to NYPD. Soon the events start to roll after a shootout in Vlad's warehouse. And while Max is still haunted by his past, he enters into a new story of crime and love.
Max Payne 2 features the refit Max Payne 1 -engine and is also powered by Havok2 -physics engine. But instead of technological buzzwords, the game focuses on the story and gritty style.
The new Bullet Time has been improved a bit. Now Max's timescale has been separated from the normal flow of time. Instead of simply slowing time universally down in Bullet Time, the effect might affect the enemies more than Max. If you kill a lot of baddies in BT, the time is getting slower for them, while Max continues in the normal Bullet Time speed. It might feel weird on paper, but it is pretty cool. The more enemies Max kills the more he gains BT and the more slower the time goes for the enemies.
Physics was added only a few months before the release of the game. To be honest, the physics does not really play a big (gameplay relevant) role in the game, but should add to the immersion factor. Almost all objects which does not have a dimension above one meter are physical and act like a real life object should.
Music was composed and produced by Kärtsy Hatakka (from Waltari) and Kimmo Kajasto. Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen assisted with the credits song "Late Goodbye" (which is also hummed by many non-player characters in the game). The cello section of the theme song was done by Perttu Kivilaakso from Apocalyptica.
The graphical glory has (believe it or not) improved. The models and the detail of environments has gone up a few notches and the engine still runs fluently even with a slower computer. Character models now uses pixel shaders and the bullettime features a full screen remap effect where the color spectrum flows towards brownish black and white while at same time adding more contrast. Also the mirrors are this time left intact (in Max Payne they were all broken) and they reflect the game world correctly.
Here's the official machine specs requirements:
MINIMUM SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
- 1Ghz PIII/Athlon or 1.2Ghz Celeron/Duron processor
- 32MB AGP graphics card with hardware transform & lighting support
- 256MB RAM
- 1.5 GB hard drive space
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- DirectX 9.0
- Keyboard and mouse
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
- 1.4Ghz Athlon or 1.7 Ghz Pentium 4, Celeron or Duron processor
- 64MB DirectX 9 compatible AGP graphics card with hardware T&L support
- 512MB RAM
- 1.5 GB hard drive space
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- DirectX 9.0
- Keyboard and mouse
The game has been rebuked of being short, but there is a simple explanation and ideology behind it all. First of all, we want to make games you actually want to play through. Surprisingly, it is very rare that a casual gamer completes a game at all. Usually because the player becomes bored even before (s)he is halfway through.
And second, we don't want to put in some bullshit game stoppers which only point is to lengthen the gameplay time. Like long empty corridors, confusing locations or illogical puzzles.
The player is supposed to be entertained the whole trip.
It is normal in modern games that the beginning is superb and somewhere in the halfway the quality suddenly starts to drop. We tried to remedy that in this game, we wanted to keep the player sitting in front of his/her computer/console to the very end. And hopefully we succeeded.
Max Payne 2 for PC is now available in the US and will be out in Europe by 24th October. PS2 and XBox -versions will be on the shelves by 3rd of december.