Price: £39.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes 60Hz: No Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes Xbox Live-enabled: No When you begin Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, you're instantly transported back into the world of the detective who lost his wife when she was murdered which was his cause for revenge. The original game did for 'bullet time' in games what The Matrix did for the same in the movies. This is a technique which enables you to run and leap slowly around while using real-time thinking to twist and turn and achieve your objectives, often by shooting a lot. Note that the bullet time meter can turn from white to yellow, so time moves even slower as Max can move faster. When the game begins, you wake up in a hospital feeling like death warmed up and it comes to light that Mona Sax from the first game is still alive. Max Payne has "retired" from the DEA and is now working as a homicide detective for the NYPD. And so begins the title that any of the Die Hard games should've been.

The first thing that strikes you in this game is the brilliant graphics. It may seem different to launch into talking about that straight away, but describing what you see when you play will be what attracts you to this game if it is your bag. Firstly, when you throw a grenade, this title uses "ragdoll physics" for the bodies to flop to their death as the bullets and surroundings dictate. The same was done in the even-better Hitman 2, although I would've liked that game's freeflow of moment when you touch a soft surface like a curtain implemented since it was so smooth, but here has been left out. I might forgive them since you can kick over and move plenty of other things around the room at will. As well as killing baddies, you can shoot up plenty of things in each room and you'll see the realistic physics as those targets fall off the wall or shatter. It really adds to the atmosphere. Even being able to fill a sink with water and letting it drain out naturally is a neat touch. What does the same is the excellent varied locations, such as the set of the hit TV show, "Address Unknown", which has a pathway like a 'time tunnel'. Running around a bit in that location further feels like you've invaded Parappa The Rapper's game, due to the deliberate cardboard cut-outs.

One thing that really does give this game legs is the way it partially captures the free-roaming element of a game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in that early on I met a Russian guy who offered to help me out. I could let him come with, or shoot him full of holes and do it all myself... So I saved my position, shot him dead about 20 times in different ways and then brought him back to life so we could carry on. :) One of my favourite scenes for replaying the same bit again and again from the first chapter involved me diving through a door, shooting two men, aiming higher up to what turned out to be the high ceiling of another room I was still to encounter, blowing up the guy on the roof by shooting the petrol can, which caused him to fall all the way down as roof was made of glass, then I dived across this hole, ran along a platform to dive off onto stairs and shooting a guy dead along the way before moving onto the staircase in the next room for more blasting. This is what's so good about it. It makes you want to replay cool shooting scenes over and over again and, hence, I wish I was able to save some replays. Another element of free-roaming is such that you pass through some people's apartments to get to where you need to go, then if you disturb them by, say, shooting their TV, you can silence them too, the old-fashioned way..

Death comes in a lovely cinemascope rotating picture as your crumpled body falls to the floor or whatever environment you're currently in. Other opening and end-of-chapter sequences are in the same format, while the comic book-style sections are within the 4:3 centre of the screen, so that makes for a nice contrast. The latter doesn't quite do it for me in the way that it does for some though. However, the change in ratio and the overall look does give this game a movie-like feel, and the widescreen image covers the 16:9 screen completely with NO borders, and my TV has been adjusted to remove the usual amount of overscan too. As for the environment, while there's not much point in checking out too many doors in each corridor, since the gameplay is fairly linear in that respect. Occasionally you'll come across one, but it'll be well-signposted. That said, it's still in your want to check everywhere out for painkillers, to help you survive, extra ammo and lots of things to shoot at. The sound throws few surprises, with plenty of gunfire to be heard, but there are also some nice atmospheric touches around the 5.1 speakers. Playability is spot-on and pretty much what you'd expect if you've played the first game, although it can be a bit strange the way Max moves as you throw him against a wall, but the overall look can't be faulted.

There's improved AI on the baddies in this sequel, but before you go wading in, it's worth pointing out that it's fun to listen to people's conversations before you shoot them or move on, such as one in the cop shop where a man is talking to a detective about justifying the murder of his wife and her fancy man in their own bed while he was hooked on the infamous drug "V". Loading times are also few and far between, unless you skip cut-scenes since that's largely when they're loaded in. There are three main chapters to the game, so it may be reasonably short but it certainly packs the required punch while you're playing it, rather than being long and repetitive like some games - even though you may find one or two sections that go on just a little too long, but anyone who enjoys explosive action and gets this for Xmas or a birthday will be in for plenty of great fun. Overall, compared to the original, it does feel like more of the same, but it's *comfortably* and *enjoyably* more of the same.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2003.