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Max Payne 2 preview - trip to NYC

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Published on Monday, 13 October 2003 00:08

Written by biXen

This is in some part a preview of Max Payne 2, a little log of my trip to check it out, and a hands-on experience summary. For those of you not interested in my trip, skip to page 3, for those not interested in the trip or my impressions of Max Payne 2, skip to page 4, the Hands-on impressions. You might even want to skip to page 5, the conclusions and summary, but I think you'll want to read the whole thing, don't you?

How it all started

It was a rainy Sunday in Norway, hung over as usual I sat by my PC just chilling with some good melodic death metal. I proceeded to check my mail, and saw a mail from Richard, who's a site director at Rockstar. One of his responsibilities is handling contact with the fansites on Rockstar's side of things. Rockstar Games is as most of you will know, publisher of Max Payne 2 and owners of the Max Payne name and brand, and as I will tell you has a significant positive input on the process of making Max Payne 2.

Anyway, the point of this was what was in the mail. In short terms he asked if I'd be interested in coming to New York the weekend of the 3rd October and meeting some of the Rockstar guys, WhiteRabbit of Deep Six and Mika Reini of Remedy, and last but not least taking a look at Max Payne 2. I was pretty quick to reply I'd be _very_ interested, and proceeded to check out if my side of things was in order to travel to USA on such a short notice. Next day he called and we discussed how to arrange tickets and all, and in the morning on Friday the 3rd October 2003 I was on a plane headed for New York after running through our capitals airport to get to the plane in time.

New York - the first day

After an 8 hour flight sitting next to some brats with about 10 handheld devices each I was at New Ark in New York, USA. After telling them I wasn't a nazi, criminal, spy or smuggler in writing and telling them my reason for visiting USA I was in. Now that was easy, or maybe not :) I proceeded to go out of the Immigration area, through the baggage pickup area (had no luggage) and out of the customs area. There was a driver waiting for me with my name on a sign, I approached him and we proceeded to the parking lot where a Cadillac was parked. 40 minutes or so later I was in my room at the Holiday Inn in SoHo.

Pretty soon after that Richard from Rockstar called me, and we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I got some info about what was going to happen the next day and we talked about some general gaming stuff and NY stuff. Was a good start to my trip. After that he explained me the do and don't about the subways, so I got on one and headed for Ground Zero. Now I'm not gonna put much emphasis on this, but for me it was something I had to visit while I was there, considering the effect 9/11 had on me, I may not have felt the same way if I had been there before though. If any of you don't know, what's there now is mainly a construction site and a lot of signs in memory of the victims and heroes of 9/11. After looking around in that area, which has a lot of nice buildings, I walked around a bit, then got back to my hotel where I'd be meeting another guy from Rockstar and Mika Reini from Remedy and maybe WhiteRabbit from Deep Six if he got in from the airport.

After some relaxing in the Hotel Room I got a call from Ryan from Rockstar, he and Mika were downstairs. I went down into the bar and talked to them, later WhiteRabbit joined us after his nice 2 hour carride from JFK :) Me, WhiteRabbit and Ryan went to an Indian Restaurant to eat and Mika went to a meeting with some Rockstar guys. It was a nice evening, pretty quiet, I was dead-tired after being awake for about 20 hours. After watching some Seinfeld and Simpsons on Fox I fell asleep, and the excitement of a Saturday fully planned didn't wake me up until about 6am. I got some hours more sleep before starting my first full day on American soil, the Saturday of Payne.