Since I was ask by name I will cut an paste a mini-review that I did:
<< Update: Well on the way home I felt the need to swing by the mall and see if my local EB had a copy...or at least look at the trashy women at the mall $52.00 later and I was walking out with a copy of Payne and a Orange Julis (game was prices at $49.99). Dam I just love paying $20.00 for SS and hated that I spent $50.00 on Tribes2 that still after 20 patches dose not run right Anyhows, I get home, feed the cats, and have an hour before the woman gets home so it was time to BRING ON DA PAYNE! It crashed right at the end of the full install (which eats up about 820mb of your HDD space). Oh no. A re-boot later and I was back setting up my video options. It did a good job of detecting my video card and I was able to tweak the controls.
So the game starts. Not a great into, but still ok. The story is very involved in the game. In fact you can not escape it. You play an undercover cop who family has just been murdered. You are soon wrongly accused and the police are after you as well as the mob bosses who set you up. So Max has to clear his name. Ok so the plot is not ordinal, but as the game plays it gives it some substance. I kind of liked that. I got to the second level only to have another crash. Oh no, strike #2. Rebooted again and figured to go to the Training part of it. This was kind of boring but thought me a few things that I overlooked. Yea I could have read that manual...but who has time for that? The controls are your typical setup and very easy to change. The graphics set up you have to change before the game starts. Lots of options here for your video card (filtering, AA, texture size, shadows, ect). There was not multiplayer support (but that could come later) and you only have one style of game to play. I hear the others are unlocked once you complete the game (or download the crack which I am sure you will find soon). The game is suppose to auto adjust the difficulty. So if your are still sucking, the game makes the baddies "worse". But if your like me, and just walking on water, hehehehehe, then the game makes the baddies tougher.
Ok so what did I see in 2 hrs of playing? First of all the game is ALL 3RD person perspective. I hate games like this. But I can live through Payne's for now. The gun sights appear as a small white dot which is easy to loose track of in a frantic gun fight. Maybe you can change that....have not found where that setting is. If you have never played like that, it dose take some time to get use to and it can be hard to judge distances and I keep falling to my death a few times. However once you can get the hang of it you can have Max, ducking, rolling and moving around. The sound is very good. You can use it to get an idea of what is behind the doors or hallways that you have to go slinking around in. There is a lot of interactivity with the environment. I was able to take a shower, turn on/off facets, make 1-800 CALLATT, buy snacks out of vending machines, open locker doors, turn on/off TVs, ect. When the game needs you to something a white "!" will show up on your screen. This helps to make sure your not too far off what your going to be doing.
Graphics & Game play? Yea, here is where Payne shines! There are lots of polygon's used in this game and you see the detail in the characters you face. Good attention to detail and very pleasing effects. However on non-TnL cards, you will need a faster CPU to run. On my k2 with a 1.4 Ghz AMD, I ran at 1024x768x32 max everything, only used bi-linear filtering and x4 AA, I saw no noticeable slowdowns. I have not found a way to bench it yet, so I have no clue of the FPS. The special effects are amazing, when you get the sniper rifle and snipe with it, you see you bullet traveling and impact your target. Head shots are so cool and eerie now Lots of time when you kill someone, the game goose into slow-mo mode where you see the bad guy (or when you die) fall or be blown back a few feet and fall slowly to the ground. Very cool. Each bullet has its own model and you can see them fly through the air. Impacting with the wall which will cause parts to fly off.
Finally Bullet Time is way to cool to describe. Here is where some how Max and slow down time, don't ask how, he just dose, and you can do about 80% of the stuff you saw in Matrix. In one case, I had two bad guys that had me hurting pined in a hall way. So Jb low on ammo pulls out the DE, runs forward, hits the Bullet Time key, now I press forward and the jump button which launch Max into a slow mo forward dive, in the Bullet Time mode, I can easily spot where the baddies are and at the end of my dive have one lined up for a head shot, fire once, dead bad guy, and roll to my left to come right up to the next one, I got out of bullet time, and I am now standing point blank to the bad guy, I say to myself, "doge this" and proceed to pull the trigger, which send his dead corpse flying back in slow-mo fashion. Way too cool. Too bad this was the only time Jb who still has to get the hang of it, got it to work right. The other times, I just messed it up You have only a short amount of time that you can enter this Bullet Time. And when you use it up, you go back into normal mode. Bullet Time dose replenish, but it is very slow. This is good, other wise we would whore it like no tomorrow.
So to sum this up, Payne has some neat things to offer. Yea I know it sounds like a cheap Matrix rip-off. But the Bullet Time really dose add a lot that we never have had to experience before. The graphics themselves are not bad. The colors are not as vivid as SS, but the detail is amazing. And Bullet Time just adds another totally cool way to play. Its not with out some issues (there is an issue with GF3/Win2k/AMD systems that they are working on). But you have to be use to 3rd person. This alone is one point that I really don't like. I think Payne will go well, and its story will add something back to the single player game. Look for a full review when I get the game done. So far, Payne is pretty good. >>
Now as far as the K2 goes, its not soo bad. A few times the game felt sluggish. But still playable. I have no idea (still) how to bench it so I can not go there at this point. I have only had 2 crashes so far. Its not that bad of a game...worth $50.00 maybe....