Very solid shooting but an awkward story and poor level design holds it back.
Max Payne 2 is a third person shooter where the main character is able to slow down time around him. Every time Max Payne kills someone while time's slowed down then the effect is increased further, making the world around you move even slower, while you blaze through your enemies. It works pretty well and you defiantly have to rely on it to get through the game. This forces you to use your time bar wisely since running out of power at the inopportune time will cause you to rely on your slow mo side jumps (they don't take up the bar).
Most importantly the shooting and guns feel great. This is good because there's a lot of it. Getting headshots and wicked kills will even slow down the game and the camera will focus on the kill. This is kinda cool at first but loses its charm halfway through the game when it kicks it while you're in the middle of being shot at. A slight annoyance was that Max Payne dies rather easily from falling; even smallish falls will take out nearly all your health or kill you.
I found the biggest problem being the levels themselves in certain areas. One of my biggest pet peeves in video games is not knowing where to go next which I found happening a bit too often in Max Payne. Not very often but in an action oriented game like this, it gets frustrating. Also I found that I had to rely heavily on the quick save system for some parts since enemies sneak up on you or when you turn a corner in a staircase, 3 guys are staring right at you. Personally I think more difficulty settings should have been unlocked when you start the game (there's only one in the beginning) and there should have been an easier difficulty setting, it was fine with me for the most part but the game isn't exactly newbie friendly.
Speaking about newbie friendly, the story isn't very friendly to people who haven't played the first Max Payne like me. I found it a bit confusing at first but then I got into the story. Eventually though, I found the comic noir strips being way too cheesy. In the beginning he starts saying all these far-fetched metaphors and sayings which consist of half his lines in the first chapter (this dies out as the game progresses). I really enjoyed some of the lines but it got over the top way too quick and the story just seemed too clichéd and not well flushed out. Personally, I like games that focus on stories and it's one of the things I look forward to if a game has one, so this got in the way for me quite a bit in the beginning of the game where it's very obscure.
The dream sequences and other sequences that didn't focus on the action and instead were to move the story forward frustrated me further. I found not knowing what the hell to do in these parts, whether I was supposed to answer a random phone in the room or go through a specific door that I passed by in the beginning of the level, it really killed the story even more.
Despite these problems and some frustrating levels like the sniper level where Mona is covering Max (I swear games just shouldn't have "protect this person" missions) it's still a solid shooter. I just would have liked it so much more if some of the levels weren't irritating or had minor confusing problems like not knowing where to continue next. Luckily the levels pick up in the third chapter which is for the most part, by the far the best one with very solid straight forward shooting action. If you are a fan of action oriented games then this is defiantly a good shooter and maybe you'll like the story unlike me. It's not that it's a bad story; it's just not a story that would appeal to everybody.