Gamers nowadays are probably already familiar with "ragdoll physics." It's a technology where the game uses a realistic physics model to simulate a falling body (sometimes with comical results) so that, for example, they'll fall properly down a stairwell or won't land with their head clipping through a wall. The designers of Max Payne 2, focused as they were on cinematic action, knew that ragdoll physics on dead bodies alone wasn't enough. They implemented real physics modeling to every object in the game, including the 'live' characters. If you hit someone in the arm, they'll flinch accordingly before firing back.

When the action gets heated, Max can't take anything for granted.
More importantly, all the objects in the game have their own weight and behavior. No longer are rooms built by the level designers with furniture that appears bolted to the ground. No, Max Payne wades into a room like an action hero, kicking over chairs or knocking boxes aside. This accomplishes two things: For one, screenshots don't do the game justice, because it looks incredible. Every room is filled with clutter that'll be knocked aside as characters careen into it or grenades blow it across the room. When you go into slow-motion with an assault rifle, blasting five or six guys into a pile of boxes or shelves full of paint cans that clatter to the ground around them, it's immensely satisfying.

To a lesser extent, the new physics also impact gameplay. Although you won't be pushing around furniture to block off doors (it's just not that type of game -- guns talk, not brains!), you will constantly wrestle with a changing environment. You can hit bad guys in the face by smashing open doors, or blow away their cover with explosives. Stuff will fall in your way as you're trying to make your way across a cluttered room, and you'll have to leap over it or find other sources of cover against the constant hail of bullets. The physics are so well integrated into the gameplay that you'll wonder how you ever played games without it. The locations in Max Payne 2 simply feel more real than in other games; they feel lived in, cluttered, and genuine.

The environments in Max Payne 2 aren't destructible by the player, but the designers found plenty of excuses to blow them up around you in any number of carefully scripted sequences. With all the cinematic flair of Die Hard, you can send an elevator to the bottom of a shaft with explosives, then jump down into it and kick aside the heavy steel doors with a crash. That's just good gaming.

A Story Well Told

Oddly enough, the same caption as above works for this screenshot as well.
The attention to detail with the game engine extends to the storytelling as well. As in the previous game, the action is divided into chapters, each one glued together with a mix of in-game cinematics and "graphic-novel"-esque art panels. Game designers would do well to take a page out of Max's book; the storytelling is excellent. As in Carlito's Way or Goodfellas, the action begins in the middle, tantalizing us with glimpses of what's to come: Max in the hospital, a dead cop, a love spiraling out of control. Discovering how Max got there (and how he's going to get out of it) pulls you into the game more quickly than the best graphics in the world.