/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9720858]

Can an oldfag shed some light on why Max Payne 2 flopped in terms of sales? I don't get it. The gameplay is better and it was reviewed well at the time, it's got the perfect aesthetic for the early 2000s, ending on a post-grunge song. What went wrong?

[Anonymous No.9720892]

>>9720858
I would say the pacing?
The first game just kept escalating from simple robbers to gangs, cults and corpoes. The second game just has two gangs and really tries to make them look serious. It also had some boring levels which just don't work, like stealth sequences, sniper sections and walking around (ok, the horror park was cool).
It is not bad, just worse than the first game.

[Anonymous No.9720948]

>>9720858
This is an interesting question. I got the game on release because I thought MP1 was amazing, but I think I would have ignored it if I hadn’t played the first game. The way it was marketed didn’t seem to have the same over-the-top action screens as the first game. Not to mention Max no longer had Sam Lake’s ridiculous constipation-face, which detracted from the intensity and campiness of the first game’s overall aesthetic.

Simply put, I think it just wasn’t effectively marketed to anyone who hadn’t already thoroughly enjoyed the first one.

[Anonymous No.9720994]

>>9720892
Maybe a hot take but the sniper section was a nice change of pace, and I would've liked to return to Mona later on if the game was a level or two longer. That being said, you're talking after the sale when the dust has settled and we can review the game based on merit alone, I'm more interested in the marketing failure.
>>9720948
This is an interesting answer! The way I see it is the first game was a smash hit with a miniscule budget. Expand the budget, add a sexy femme fatale character, and you should've doubled your original audience. In retrospect the goofy face is iconic yes but I think people not familiar with the first game would take it more seriously and this was a time when Wind Waker was mocked by kids older than me for not looking serious enough.

[Anonymous No.9721008]

>>9720994
>Expand the budget, add a sexy femme fatale character, and you should've doubled your original audience.
This sounds good on paper, but I’m referring strictly to the way the game was marketed in magazines. I can really only speak for myself, but I remember seeing screens for MP1 in magazines when I was 10 and thinking “holy shit, this looks nuts.” Game sales back in the early 2000’s we’re pretty heavily dependent on finding a way to reach the interest of children, and so an aesthetic that lends itself more towards a child’s sense of wonder rather than a more sophisticated style (which MP2 most certainly had) is more likely to intrigue a younger audience. The advertisements for MP2 in magazines weren’t nearly as eye-catching in that very basic, exciting way; or at least I didn’t think so. I was sold on it simply because it was a continuation of a game I already knew was gonna be great, but I don’t think I would have given it much attention otherwise.

Considering the fact that— despite MP2 being the better game overall IMO— it sold much less, I think many others probably felt the same way about the advertisements. The market was completely fucking saturated with realistic-looking shooters at that point, so MP2 was competing against a lot more contenders than it was during the release of MP1.

[Anonymous No.9721013]

Love stories are cringe. Simple as

[Anonymous No.9721023]

>>9721008
>children
More specifically, I meant younger teens.

[Anonymous No.9721046]

>>9721008
>despite MP2 being the better game overall IMO
2's gameplay can be summed up by its ragdoll animations, more fluid, more dynamic, but also a loose mess.

[Anonymous No.9721053]

The conclusion to 1 was so satisfying and it didn't really need more. I suppose Mona in MP1 really is just sequel bait though, she really doesn't do much other than be s typical femme fatale. Just a loose end for Max.

[Anonymous No.9721367]

>>9720858
Max Payne 1 had a unique presentation. The gameplay was fairly tight, bullet time was a new thing, the plot was good and the overall gritty feel of the whole game was really something special. It was a definite "must play" game for its generation.

Max Payne 2 isn't bad but it's also just.. Max Payne 2. Everyone kind of got their fix for what it was bringing from the first game.

[Anonymous No.9721393]

>>9720858
I bought it day 1 on PC. It was £35. Fuckin inflation eh? I went home, installed it, played through the whole thing in one sitting. Was like, eh, that was fun but it's too short. I then also realised that you didn't need the DVD inside the tray to play the game. It was, like, auto-cracked lmfao. Next day I went back to the shop and returned it but kept it installed on my PC. Perhaps... many such cases?

[Anonymous No.9721432]

>>9720858
Series was never a huge hit on consoles. Few people had PCs capable of presenting it well, and many of those who did had the savvy to pirate it too. Like many of Remedy's games its overreliant on a gimmick, and bullet time wasn't new or exclusive to it by 2003. I don't think the flaws with the game itself (short, repetitive, new bullet time implementation made it trivial, arguably worse premise/tone/Max Payne model) had anything to do with the sales.

[Anonymous No.9721436]

I may not have bought it but I liked it quite a lot in its day. Looked and ran fantastically on my 9700.

[Anonymous No.9721450]

>>9721046
In retrospect the havoc bodies were so fucking gay and stupid, haha. Guess fizzics were the in thing then, especially with Half-Life 2 coming up. It was neat for the environmental stuff, though. Maybe it would have been better if they gave the bodies a lot more weight and friction.

[Anonymous No.9721490]

>>9720858
It kinda felt like a downgrade

[Anonymous No.9721492]

>>9721432
that game ran on geforce 2

[Anonymous No.9721496]

>>9720858
Did it? I bought it on release and I thought it was popular

[Anonymous No.9721574]

>>9721492
>no dx9/reflections
>no 60fps @ 1024x768
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckyck1NjqyY
I guess, man.

[Anonymous No.9721618]

>a film noir love story
so cringe. the first game had the perfect vidya story. dead wife/kid, corrupt politicians, drugs, the mob. all cliche stuff but who cares? its a game where you go around shooting hundreds of bad guys. the dark and dingy atmosphere was great and it just worked. i guess the success of the first game went to their heads because mp2's story was completely overblown, full of itself, and retarded. no one cared about mona or wanted to play as her. the physics were comically retarded and the random slow motion reload was annoying. it was still a fun game but the first was way better. im surprised to hear mp2 didnt sell well though.

[Anonymous No.9721637]

There is no real answer. The next gen of consoles was at full swing, saw even greater adoption rates in PC gaming countries. The amount of action games on store shelves went through the roof. There are only so many games a kid can afford and it had to compete with Call of Duty, GTA, Jedi Academy.
Offtopic, thread made me think about Tron 2.0, Freedom Fighters, fun games that sold like shit. Never played Beyond Good and Evil nor XIII but they were well received and again, sold like shit I believe.
Maybe the shooter market reached saturation. More people got internet and with Halo, Unreal Tournament and especially Counter Strike, the FPS needs for Joe Schmoe are fulfilled, endless fun whereas MP2 was criticised for its legnth.

>>9721450
they are amazing shut up

>>9721574
It's been 20+ years, no idea what my settings were but I do remember that I played the game with acceptable graphics and working mirrors.
Now Unreal Tournament, that ran like utter shit. Did get a 5xxx soonish around that time which blew ass for Fary Cry and Vampire Bloodlines. Life was bad.

>>9721618
It's a Vladimir Lem story.

[Anonymous No.9721641]

>>9721637
Well ya remembered wrong, fucko. You needed a DX9 card for mirrors. The havoc bodies were neat technically and novelty-wise but come on they aged like shit. They are all inflatable mattress men.

[Anonymous No.9721663]

>>9721641
Guess my memory is fucked, sorry anon-sama. As I said around that time period I upgraded my PC although I do remember having a decent framerate on me GeForce 2.
Physics created a game within a game i had fun getting infinite ammo and just trying to launch enemies in silly ways, trying to blow them into containers, doing tricks sicker than tony hawk. Don't give a fuck about realism. Ragdolls 4 life cocksucker.

[Anonymous No.9721672]

>>9721663
I did a little self fact checking, and it looks like it used DX8.1 shaders, which GF4 didn't entirely implement, but Radeon 8500 did. So you needed a DX9 GF card or an 8.1 or 9 Radeon card, effectively. I didn't know anyone with an 8500 though. Radeon only really got gud with 9700 and I jumped on board then. I did notice at the time, that GF4s (nor the kinda-similar Xbox) didn't have mirrors, but my 9700 did. Looks like old forum discourse confirms all this.

[Anonymous No.9721674]

>>9721672
yeah i distinctly remember having a radeon 9800 pro w/ 256mb when this game came out

[Anonymous No.9721681]

>>9721674
fuck, the only 9800 pro i had was in my dreams

[Anonymous No.9721687]

>>9721681
kek i actually fell for the alienware meme so i overpaid by probably at least 50%. i was in high school and put the stupid computer on a credit card, so ended up paying interest on top of that too.

[Anonymous No.9721692]

>>9720858
the gameplay and story is worse to a sequel of a game that mostly got by on its presentation.

[Anonymous No.9721696]

>>9720858
Typically when a game reviews well but sells poorly it's the result of a failure on the part of marketing.

[Anonymous No.9721716]

>>9720858
I've played them both back to back very recently, several times each. I say MP2 has way weaker story and visual design. I don't know how to properly say it, but it has that feeling, that everything looks like the same warehouse over and over again. Gameplay is "better", but it's also so much easier, because you can just tank through everything, even on the highest difficulty, while in the first game 1-3 shots are guaranteed to drop you. To be fair, MP1 difficulty nosedives as soon as you discover that you are immune to bullets during dodge rolls and that it takes like a second or more for enemies to allign their weapons towards Max, so you can shoot, roll, shoot... and keep repeating it without getting shot back until everyone is dead, but MP2 is even more of a brain dead "charge everyone with your infinite slow-mo" type of thing.

Funny that I couldn't get into MP1 back in the day, but now I feel like overall it's a much better game then it's sequel.

[Anonymous No.9721742]

I’d say a lot of it had to do with a combination of cool bullet time physics and presentation w absolutely no competition sales wise for months w a July release. Even then , that fall was nothing like 2003. The releases 2 was up against not to mention a fall release flooded w M rated games and only weeks from GTA 3, probably lead to much lower than expected sales.

[Anonymous No.9721884]

>>9721641
>but come on they aged like shit
Disagree, but doom 3 did pure ragdolls best. They're weighty and they hit the ground solid.
Best solution was GTA4, where the physics aim for a pose a bit. Or L4D where they play a death animation half way through and carrythe momentum of the limbs onto the ragdoll.

[Anonymous No.9721887]

>>9721687
Did you keep it? Or at least the case?

[Anonymous No.9721916]

>>9721887
no its long gone. dont remember getting rid of it but i havent had it for a very long time

[Anonymous No.9721927]

>>9721637
>It's a Vladimir Lem story.

anon, basedest of all my friends

[Anonymous No.9721956]

My friends and I were captivated by MP1, while every single of us met MP2 with "meh" at best.
The first one starts at once, you have a gun, a filthy metro station and several bad guys to deal with. From the very beginning the story spins into a nightmarish abyss, but at the same time MP1 never tires of being ironic and sarcastic, subtly laughing at old movie tropes.

While MP2 starts with long boring takes of unarmed Max at hospital, then we proceed to a warehouse (and have a lot of those later), where we meet absolutely superfluous Mona. Seriously, MP2 is too serious about itself and its drama. And it's not as fun to play. Levels in MP1 are natural and the story doesn't try being something overblown.

Also ragdoll was a mistake in every single game it got implemented in the early 00s (dunno about later times, maybe it got fixed after all).

[Anonymous No.9721967]

>>9720858
It has the best bullet time in the series. Maybe Max Payne 1 is more memorable overall but it also had those fucking baby levels.
It's the last game remedy made before turning into faggots and started making shit nobody cares about, like the overhyped xbox game with CIA in it that I had to look up the title for because I couldn't remember (Quantum Break)
Max Payne 3 is still better than anything Remedy has put out since.

[Anonymous No.9721984]

I think the core premise of 2's story is decent but maybe that's an unpopular opinion, max trying to keep a woman he loves alive instead of avenging her gives it a desperate tone the first game doesn't really have, though the stuff surrounding it is pretty wonky I have to admit, biggest issue was what a lame anti-climax all the lamenting about detective winterson in the first half ended up being
>I killed a dirty cop that was about to off a prisoner and probably shoot me in the back the second I turned around *broods heavily*

[Anonymous No.9722034]

2's not as cuhrazy as 1 but it's still got atmosphere and soul out the ass. The levels are packed with so much little details and interactions. Dream levels in 1 fucking sucked but in 2 they're kino. 5 construction site levels in a row was a bad idea though yeah.

[Anonymous No.9722041]

>>9722034
I couldn't finish 1, I remember the levels feeling way too long and monotonous, finished two in one sitting I enjoyed it so much.

[Anonymous No.9722118]

>>9721641
>>9721884
the ragdolls looked stupid when they were being flung around as a gimmick or juggled with autofire, but actually shooting a guy dead still looks great. the way they blend from their animation into a ragdoll is really clean and they preserve their momentum so a running enemy will trip into a wall if you shoot him.

[Anonymous No.9722203]

The ragdoll is goofy looking sure but better than the same canned animations over and over.

[Anonymous No.9722212]

>>9722203
I respect them breaking in new tech but honestly boring canned animations would have just been better, mp2's ragdoll looks terrible 95% of the time.

[Anonymous No.9722363]

>>9721367
Level design in 1 was definitely much better than 2. 2 is more serious, it takes the goofy characters you know from one and do something deeper with them, but as a game it was a downgrade.

[Anonymous No.9722413]

>MP1 is a history about a man who seeks justice and revenge
>the man accomplish his revenge

There is no reason to make a sequel.

[Anonymous No.9722432]

>I'm fuckin telling ya Payne everybody knows Captain Baseball Bat Boy 2 took itself too seriously

[Anonymous No.9722743]

Sequels often do poorly compared to the original. A new IP often sells on hype, people see adverts and screenshots and reviews and think "this looks/sounds fucking amazing!" They buy it and don't really get the hype, don't come back for the sequel.
The original max payne wasn't a friendly game. In true Rockstar fashion the AI was dumb and you just took damage based on RNG. Slow and methodical got you slowly killed because health recharges were spaced in such a way that you'd mostly just accumulate damage and never really get a nice refill "checkpoint." You had to run and gun like you were John Woo, but the required precision aiming and bullet time being short lived and tricky to utilise meant that repeated deaths were on the cards until you figured out the trick through trial and error.
It was a game from the 90s really, where it rewarded players who learned to git gud and run and gun the levels. But it was released in the 2000s when gamers had become spoiled by generous checkpoints, low difficulties, auto-aim and slowly guiding the player through the missions until they pick up the skills.
The original sold to 2000s era player numbers, but the sequel was picked up only by those who would have been down for punishing 90s games.

[Anonymous No.9723216]

>>9722743
The sequel was a lot easier, but perhaps the damage had been done by that point.

[Anonymous No.9723232]

>>9722363
Counterpoint: never had that nightmare level bullshit in 2

[Anonymous No.9723240]

>>9720858
It wasn't very good.

[Anonymous No.9723285]

>>9722743
>uh shit that cool game I played was too hard, I'm gonna pass on the next one
I really think you're overestimating how much of a factor this is. If we're talking about contra and ninja gaiden sure, but max payne's difficulty I don't think would be offensive enough. It's less about difficulty and more so boring, opaque which I don't think applies to MP.

[Anonymous No.9723367]

>>9720858
Bullet Time third person shooters/action games was played out by the time this came out. Obi-Wan, Dead to Rights, Blood Rayne, True Crime, Matrix, Viewtiful Joe.
The PS2 crowd had already moved on to Vice City and Socom while Xbox dudes were busy with KOTOR and probably splinter cell (I was still playing LAN halo)

[Anonymous No.9723419]

>>9721053
>The conclusion to 1 was so satisfying and it didn't really need more. I suppose Mona in MP1 really is just sequel bait though, she really doesn't do much other than be s typical femme fatale. Just a loose end for Max.

Yeah, the story of 2 really doesn't hold the same punch. 1 is about constantly upping the stakes, starting with mobsters, then commandos, then men in blcak always going higher and higher in the criminal world until you're facing off against some kind of corporate Illuminati. You feel hardcore taking on these men in black figures. And there's a lot more memorable crazy sequences - the Occult guy made me genuinely think they were gonna add in vampires or something.

In 2 it's clealry just them making something up quick with the surviving cast - suddenly Vlad is the apprentice of Alfred Woden? And Woden goes from the Chessmaster carrying out a coup to some dupe? Strictly speaking I never gave a shit about Vlad.

Maybe making 2 from Mona's perspective with a few Max segments might have made it more fresh. And Maybe Mona would have some kind of fresher more interesting story to tell. Maybe she's the one on the run and Max is tasked with taking her down?

[Anonymous No.9723554]

>>9720858
It just feels like a tacked on unneeded sequel

[Anonymous No.9723753]

Love the PC versions.

[Anonymous No.9724041]

>>9723753
MP2’s box alone was a work of art. They put a lot of effort into making it cool as fuck.

[Anonymous No.9724060]

>>9721492
>that game ran on geforce 2

I use to play Max Payne 1 on a Geforce 256 and GeForce 2, as well. Max Payne 2 required DX9 card with 32MB RAM minimum. I'm pretty sure Max Payne 2 couldn't run on anything lower than a Geforce FX card. Pretty sure the first ATi Radeon card that supported DX9 was the 96xx, 97xx, and 98xx series. Max Payne on the PC uses an updated version of the MaxFX engine seen in the first PC version of Max Payne. The home console ports of MP2 use Criterion's Renderware engine. I'm not sure what version number Max Payne 2 uses of MaxFX, because MaxFX saw a lot of iterations in earliest versions of the Futuremark Banchmark scores. MP2 uses Havok Physics engine, add some DX9 shadder effects, but actually uses it very subtly. MP2 also ads real-time cinematic models, where it would swap to various models made for specific animations or camera angles. The first game would use the stock game models in cutscenes and, the characters would mostly stay in their idle animation positions.

[Anonymous No.9724063]

>>9724041
>>>9723753 (You)
>MP2’s box alone was a work of art. They put a lot of effort into making it cool as fuck.

I had the big box for the original PC game. It came with a sweet Max Payne cloth mouse pad that I used for like 5 years.

>>9721492
>that game ran on geforce 2

I use to play Max Payne 1 on a Geforce 256 and GeForce 2, as well. Max Payne 2 required DX9 card with 32MB RAM minimum. I'm pretty sure Max Payne 2 couldn't run on anything lower than a Geforce FX card. Pretty sure the first ATi Radeon card that supported DX9 was the 96xx, 97xx, and 98xx series. Max Payne 2 on the PC uses an updated version of the MaxFX engine seen in the first PC version of Max Payne. The home console ports of MP2 use Criterion's Renderware engine. I'm not sure what version number Max Payne 2 uses of MaxFX, because MaxFX saw a lot of iterations in earliest versions of the Futuremark Banchmark scores. MP2 uses Havok Physics engine, add some DX9 shadder effects, but actually uses it very subtly. MP2 also ads real-time cinematic models, where it would swap to various models made for specific animations or camera angles. The first game would use the stock game models in cutscenes and, the characters would mostly stay in their idle animation positions.

[Anonymous No.9724392]

the story is way better in MP2, adds a lot to replayability, but the gameplay is a downgrade because it´s too easy, add to the fact that it´s a shorter game (i´ve heard R* Games were putting pressure on Remedy on the release date)

if it was longer, with the same difficulty as MP1, i think a lot of players would´ve stay for the sequel

[Anonymous No.9724478]

>>9720858
MP2 is just bland, soulless and boring as fuck in comparison to the first game. Just look at the way it presents itself on the cover art, marketing materials, the new face for Max etc etc. Its so desperate to be "film noir" or whatever bullshit that it lost the vast majority of its appeal in the process.

MP1 resembles a graphic novel in all the best ways. It has elements of masterpieces like The Crow and obvious tonal similarities to shit like Sin City. Its the perfect gstory about nothing but an endless violent massacre/ revenge which is then perfect for a videogame. Stylistically its more striking and unique than the sequel which just looks like some generic monochrome bullshit in comparison, and feels like it too

[Anonymous No.9724485]

>>9721716
>To be fair, MP1 difficulty nosedives as soon as you discover that you are immune to bullets during dodge rolls
Damn, wish I had known that in my couple playthroughs. There I was, spamming dives like an idiot when I should have been rolling.

[Anonymous No.9724493]

>>9724478
>The Crow
And I'll add to this that I never even realized how similar these stories are (I'm mostly talking about the original graphic novel) until now that I started thinking about what makes MP1 so good in comparison to the sequel. I legitimately dont even fucking remember what MP2 is about because the premise must be so much less striking than the one in MP1, which has all the exact same elements that make The Crow what it is (man loses everything and becomes a literal/metaphorical reborn spirit of rage and vengeance to kill his way up the junkie foodchain to appease his own personal pain). Both wear oversized leather coats and use guns too but the Crow is obviously "goth" while Max Payne is something thats a bit hard to define. I dont think the first game is even that obsessed with being "noir", or it uses the elements sparingly enough that its just one piece in the black comedy puzzle of its tone and content

[Anonymous No.9724560]

>>9724478
>bland, soulless and boring as fuck
stfu

[Anonymous No.9724561]

Bullet time gimmick peaked with the first game. People bought it just to install Matrix mods and get that out of their systems.

[Anonymous No.9724581]

>>9724560
FEAR has bullet time too.

[Anonymous No.9724742]

I like all 3 games.

[Anonymous No.9724745]

[Anonymous No.9724749]

>>9724745
Quite nice shadows on the characters.

[Anonymous No.9724750]

[Anonymous No.9724758]

>>9724749
personally I think it's a timeless looking game. so clean and nice.

[Anonymous No.9724764]

story wasnt as good. didnt have the esclation of max payne 1 or the momemorable bosses/characters like jack lupino and billy the bat.

[Anonymous No.9724765]

[Anonymous No.9724770]

[Anonymous No.9724771]

[Anonymous No.9724773]

[Anonymous No.9724785]

>>9724758
I agree completely. Both games hold up very well.

[Anonymous No.9725089]

>>9724063
>I'm pretty sure Max Payne 2 couldn't run on anything lower than a Geforce FX card. Pretty sure the first ATi Radeon card that supported DX9 was the 96xx, 97xx, and 98xx series. Max Payne 2 on the PC uses an updated version of the MaxFX engine seen in the first PC version of Max Payne. The home console ports of MP2 use Criterion's Renderware engine.

I remeber trying to run MP2 on a geForce 4MX, and I don;t think the game was playable at all. Then I upgraded to a FX 5700 Ultra with 256MB RAM, and could run the game at 1280x1024 with some slowdown. Max Payne 2 needed a system with 1GB RAM. I remember playing it with a machine that had 512, and ,, loading times were a nightmare, game would continually stutter. The PC game isn't like the console game. Max Payne 1 and 2 for the PC are pretty easy to mod and there are DX9 and DX10 hacks for Max Payne 1. So, I don't know if Max Payne 2 could be downgraded to DX8, at least. Both games also came with modding tools. The first game, they were on the disc. The level editor, MaxED, and the character animator, the particle fx tools, the .ras unpacker tool, etc. The level editor is not to hard to figure out. Max Payne 2 also had the same tools, but they were released a month or so later for the PC. MaxED2 is a better editor and easier to use. Not hard to find the official Remedy tools for both games.

[Anonymous No.9725446]

>>9725089
>I remeber trying to run MP2 on a geForce 4MX, and I don;t think the game was playable at all. Then I upgraded to a FX 5700 Ultra with 256MB RAM, and could run the game at 1280x1024 with some slowdown. Max Payne 2 needed a system with 1GB RAM. I remember playing it with a machine that had 512, and ,, loading times were a nightmare
Eh, there was something seriously wrong with your system. I had a Geforce 4 MX440, 512MB RAM and MP2 ran amazingly well at 1024x768. It was one of the best optimised games I had ever played, at release its graphics looked amazing but it still ran buttersmooth.

[Anonymous No.9725503]

>>9724750
I like that little change if you kill Mike the Cowboy or not later in the game when you go after Vlad.

[Anonymous No.9725640]

>>9725446
>Eh, there was something seriously wrong with your system. I had a Geforce 4 MX440, 512MB RAM and MP2 ran amazingly well at 1024x768. It was one of the best optimised games I had ever played, at release its graphics looked amazing but it still ran buttersmooth.


Maybe I am wrong on the RAM. The first time I have played the game, was on an AMD Duron machine with 256MB RAm and an 440MX. It ran like garbage. Upgraded the RAM to 712MB and it did run noticeably better, but performance was still garbage. Upgraded the CPU to a Athlon XP 2700+ and a Geforce 5700 Ultra, and it was a huge difference, obviously.

[Anonymous No.9725810]

>>9725640
>712MB
768MB not 712MB.