My
trip to New York - the city of Payne
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.
On to
Page 2 - New York - the day of Payne
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