Max Payne 2

Nick finds himself in a disturbingly enjoyable world of Payne...

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Cops, eh? Always whining. If my job involved kicking prodigious amounts of criminal ass with no repercussions, I'd be a happy man. That's what we need today - more Dredd style summary executions. Max Payne would know how to deal with the 'yoof' of Great Britain - he'd shoot them. No questions, no trials, no council paid holidays to Africa. Stole a car? Sentence: death. Graffiti artist? Sentence: death. Not speaking the Queen's English? Sentence: death. You get the picture. Anyway, my point is that Max Payne should lighten up. Okay, so his wife and child were brutally murdered, but his whole life is dedicated to ass-kicking. You can't pay for that kind of job satisfaction. Oh, and Max Payne 2 is a well-realised and generally improved game, that wisely sticks to the obvious strengths of its predecessor, while making some interesting changes and additions.

The original Max Payne was something truly special, providing an almost cinematic-quality festival of gratuitous violence and trashy plot. Some found the graphic novel style a bit cheesy, which indeed it was, but the minor faults present could be easily overlooked. Remedy had put themselves in the enviable position of how to improve upon a classic. Their answer was simple - you do it very incrementally. So Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne brings no major upheavals, just some minor alterations that add to the experience.

The most significant of these, undoubtedly, is the inclusion of the Havoc physics engine. Demonstrating the trend for increased use of middleware in games, particularly in areas like physics or A.I., the Havoc engine brings new fun to the proceedings. The physics engine in Max Payne 2 essentially applies the laws of physics to most of the items and characters in the game world, and the developers were clearly proud of their baby, with a number of rooms clearly designed to show of the potential of the engine. One hidden room, situated in the deserted theme park level, serves as a physics 'sandbox' with stacked paint tins to shoot, several balls and barrels to roll around and even a fairground catapult-like game which the player can use to explore the effects of Newton's famous laws. Of course, item physics won't set the average man on the street alight - no, what your average joe gamer wants these days is, of course, rag doll physics. Remedy, never a developer to let its fanbase down, duly provides, and Max Payne 2 is a veritable feast of delightfully arranged limbs, with not a clipped polygon in sight.

All throughout the game henchman are situated in precarious positions - on ledges, on top of walls, near open lift shafts, etc. - such that any homicidal cop looking for his next kill is sure to enact a Michael Bay-style slow motion fall. These are great moments, and truly impressive technologically. There have been plenty of games with rag-doll physics before, but rarely has it been so professionally implemented. Limbs are jointed in a sensible fashion, as opposed to the common 'ball-bearing' joints that produce unrealistic and painful looking contortions upon death. In Max Payne 2, corpses lie like corpses should - something we all agree is good for gaming. What is also particularly impressive is the lack of clipping, despite limbs flailing in all directions and interacting with quite minor environmental features. Other developers take note.