My
trip to New York - the city of Payne
New York
- the day of the Payne
Me and WhiteRabbit were picked up at the hotel
by Richard, Mika was waiting in the car, it didn't
take long to get where we were headed, the W hotel
by the Union Square, one of the nicer hotels I've
personally been in, not that that's saying much,
but it was very nice. We took the elevator up
to the 18th floor, annoyed by the loud elevator
music already when we passed the 4th floor, and
stepped out into the hallway, which was dark and
gloomy, like it was taken directly out of Max
Payne. Some knocks on the door and we were in.
Now to explain the room we entered I'll just say
a couple of things first. This is the kind of
room Michael Jordan, Marilyn Manson and so on
orders when they are in a hotel. Rockstars, celebrities
etc. Looked extremely nice, I was almost afraid
to use the bathroom.
The setup for the demo was a Falcon Northwest
PC decorated in the Max Payne 2 theme (see picture,
don't know if this is exactly the same, but you
get the picture), a big screen with a projector,
a fairly big sound setup feat. 5.1 surround, and
a comfy couch me and WhiteRabbit got seated on.
I'll get more into the details about the game
later, while keeping it pretty spoiler free, just
giving you my impressions of the game and what's
new compared to Max Payne. We first got one demo
based on an older build. The level was basically
the same, it had no physics, the graphics were
improved, Max looked as good as he did now, there
were some more reflections, general details, fresh
bullet-time stuff and so on.
Overall it looked like an improved Max Payne,
and here is the point that I think divides Remedy
from many other companies developing a sequel.
They could have left it at that and still released
a fairly good game. But they went along and added
physics, which gave the game a whole new dimension,
the music we heard in other levels ,that also
kicked an amazing amount of ass and it seemed
a lot more polished in the second build. Before
we got that demo we had lunch at an Italian restaurant.
Me, Mika, WhiteRabbit and Corey from Rockstar.
I'm starting to wonder where Rockstar digs up
all these cool talented guys. The food was good
too, no bad meals in New York it seems.
Intermission before our hands got Payneful
After the second demo we got some time to go around
shopping and checking out the city. Me and WhiteRabbit
walked around for quite some time, and my legs
got pretty tired. We visited some bookstores,
comicbook stores, dvd stores and picked up some
dvds, and so on. When the time was set to head
back to the Rockstar demo we had refreshed ourself
with some Starbucks coffee. This demo would show
off some of the new stuff, mostly physics, but
also partly the new bullet-time which we also
saw some of in our second demo of the game. They
had a special room set up, where they sniped some
spray cans which bounced away, threw a grenade
at a stack of tires which bounced around convincingly
and so on. All in all very impressive. As many
of you will know Remedy decided to add Havok physics
at a very low level in the engine, so any object
you want can basically have physics and behave
according to a set of rules. More on that later,
the highlight of the demo was when we got some
30-40 minutes of trying out the new Gamemode "Dead
Man Walking". It's basically about staying
alive, kinda reminds me of the scene in the newest
Matrix where Neo meets all the agents, only this
is less boring. Some more info on the Dead Man
Walking mode in the Hands-On part of this preview.
 After
this we parked a while in the bar at the W hotel
and had a couple of Coronas or whatever we fancied.
I stuck to the beer (figured I make an ass out
of myself enough while I'm NOT drunk). Reservations
had been made at a nice Korean restaurant. We
arrived there around 8pm, had a drink in the bar
(I had a Gin and tonic), and got seated not much
later. This place had a grill in the middle of
the table where you put different meat and stuff
you wanted to eat. We had some beef, pork, ostrich,
shrimps, scallop, and a lot of other stuff. On
the side were some rice we put some delicious
spicy soy sauce and the drinks and extra water.
(I think Mika wanted to bring a crate of this
Soy Sauce back to Finland, he loved it even more
than me :) )
This was me, WhiteRabbit, Mika from Remedy, Richard
from Rockstar and another guy from Rockstar whose
name has magically disappeared from my memory
for the moment. Can't describe how annoying that
is. Anyway, it was a really pleasant dinner. We
left the place some 1 1/2 hour later or so, saw
Madonna go into the hotel over the street, at
least one of the Rockstar guys was certain it
was her, was some bodyguards there and all so
could well be :) My hotel was in walking distance
and both me, WhiteRabbit and the other Rockstar
guy were in the same hotel so we walked back.
I was pretty tired again, so not much of a New
York nightlife discovery this trip, but at least
I managed to keep my health during the whole trip.
The Sunday mostly consisted of walking around
for 3 and a half hours before the car picked me
up to go to the airport. I walked from the hotel
in SoHo around Chinatown, through Little Italy,
down to the Financial District, down to the dockarea,
damn this town is really ripped off in GTA was
my thoughts all the time, although I already knew
it was inspired by New York I had no idea how
much. Even the location of Brooklyn Bridge and
how it was situated in the city was pretty similar.
I also walked through the Brooklyn area and further
uptown, found a guitar store so I could pick up
some guitar picks and all. Not much later I was
on the plane home, 6 hours to Oslo, then another
40 minutes to Stavanger and I was home.
Trip home was kinda bad. Was this greatlooking
girl beside me and I had just been walking for
3 hours, well I guess it was okay. Worst problem
was everyone was sleeping and I couldn't sleep,
actually she couldn't either. I ditched the idea
of writing Mile High? on a note anyway though.
Thank God for iPods. After getting home I just
dumped right into the bed, that was that. Now
you must be eager to learn of my impressions of
Max Payne 2? Jump right to the next page and you
will be told what you want to know, and not much
more. But first, check out these pics, Max Payne
2 ads in SoHo, a store in Chinatown, and a movie
cover I walked past and just had to take a pic
of, some artsy movie I guess :P
On to
Page 3 - Max Payne 2 - My impressions
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