YMMV / Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

• Badass Decay: The mercenary commandos return in 2 but they now have a regular mook version and are in fact who's wearing the Cleaner jumpsuits, and are working for Vlad this time. They have even more comic relief moments with one moment making Mona think of them as unprofessional. By the end of the game, you'll probably lose count of how many you've killed. Max's Bullet Time being stronger than ever lowers their threat a bit further though they still aren't a pushover in gameplay.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The game is well known not only for fleshing out Mona Sax and making her playable, but also for making her way more gorgeous and a Third-Person Seductress. She also gets a brief intimate scene with Max, which is interrupted by the cleaners.
• Even Better Sequel: Max Payne 2 took everything the first game did and improved upon it, with a physics engine for a more interactive environment, a more complex story and characters, better graphics, and better gameplay. The main criticism of the game was its short length; otherwise its only failing was poor sales due to being marketed as "A Film Noir Love Story", which brought the series to an end for a time until 3 came out nine years later.
• Franchise Original Sin: Many of the elements that would divide fans with Max Payne 3 got their start in this game: Max is treated in gameplay as a nigh-unstoppable force that can clear rooms full of armed men in seconds, but then loses these abilities in cutscenes and is stopped by situations that would present a minor nuisance in gameplay, and the story has an overall darker and more dramatic tone, playing out almost as a tragedy as Max repeatedly fails to stop the bad guys' plans or even keep anyone other than himself alive. These weren't seen as an issue in this game thanks in part to Sam Lake's writing, draping the story in metaphor and peppering it with meta-humor; 3 ditched the metaphor and subtext, gave both the story and Max's character a much more caustic edge, and pushed a further divide between Max as an unstoppable killer who routinely kills a dozen people in the space of two seconds in gameplay and a stumbling drunk who screws up something in just about every cutscene, resulting in a far more divisive reception.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Woden dying of cancer can hit a lot harder as the voice actor for Max himself, James McCaffrey, died of multiple myeloma in late 2023.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One criticism of this game is that it's notably shorter than the first. While it has about the same number of chapters as the first game, most of the chapters are significantly shorter.
• Magnificent Bastard: Vladimir "Vlad" Lem, debuting as an ally in the first game, is a friendly Russian mobster, quick with a joke and a smile and refers to everyone as the "dearest of all [his] friends". In truth, Vlad is a member of the Inner Circle who was manipulating Max from the start. Using his own professional assassin crew, the Cleaners, Vlad has the rest of the Inner Circle steadily eliminated while playing the NYPD and Max to do his work for him, even planning on having Max killed by Vlad's lover Detective Winterson, whose blind son Vlad is truly loving and affectionate with. When exposed by his former mentor, Alfred Woden, Vlad plans to manipulate Max and his hitwoman lover Mona Sax into killing one another while never losing his pleasant smile or friendliness.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: While still not exactly a cakewalk, the game makes a number of subtle gameplay changes that make it overall easier than the first one. Killing several enemies quickly will slow down Bullet-Time further while making Max even faster. He also has a spinning animation he performs while reloading in Bullet-Time that allows him to reload weapons far more quickly. Bullet-Time also regenerates on its own while in the first game Max had to kill enemies to fill it again, and Max can also stay on the ground after a Shootdodge by continuing to fire his weapons. Shootdodging also no longer drains Bullet-Time.
  • Even outside of Bullet-Time, most guns are very accurate in the small confines where the vast majority of fights take place, and do realistic damage against unarmored targets. Given that none of the enemies have head protection, they're all the same height, and their AI doesn't use cover outside of preprogrammed sequences, a canny player can simply hide Max on one side of a corner, position the aiming reticule, and headshot enemy after enemy as they gradually amble over in single-file.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: On the other hand, shoot-dodging no longer provides invulnerability while it lasts, Dead on Arrival difficulty limits the player to 4 saves instead of the 7 the original game's Dead on Arrival difficulty had, and shoot-dodging with an empty magazine no longer instantly reloads your weapon. The player is forced to be far more careful in regards to shoot-dodging.
• That One Level:
  • The long Escort Mission near the end of the second act. Playing as Mona, you'll have to rush to various vantage points and snipe the enemies before they kill Max. Unfortunately, not only are you under a lot of pressure, but there aren't many Painkillers in this chapter, and Mona is likely to not have much ammo or Painkillers left by this point, given that you don't start with many of either when you switch to her.
  • Vinnie's Escort Mission also counts. Vinnie constantly rushes ahead of you when you've cleared out the enemies in the immediate vicinity and promptly getting himself killed, forcing you to stay with him at all times instead of scavenging for ammo and painkillers. All the while, you're relentlessly attacked by enemies from all directions, plus you have to deal with Vinnie's constant whining and the fact that his costume squeaks with every step he takes. Worse, he dies in the very next level as part of the plot, making the entire mission rather pointless.

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