Max Payne is back in a cinematic film noir love story with a violent streak. New guns and combat abilities lift the intensity. Minutely detailed environments, cellular graphics and lip synchronization kick up the reality factor. Detective Payne is in love with beautiful murder suspect Mona Sax. The web he finds himself entangled in on her behalf takes him back to his own dark past. The story unfolds via graphic novel sequences interspersed throughout game play with some very funny additional sequences and flashbacks to game one, to help the uninitiated.