The most notable occasions when things get a bit jarring are when the many cinematic sequence fires up - there'll always be a jarring pause before the animation gets underway, but other than that the game stays as faithful to the PC original as anyone could have reasonably expected. Initially, the only real irritation is waiting for the next area to load, and if you just keep seamlessly moving from one area to the next without dying you'll be aware that the game has to stop to load a lot, but not so much that it's particularly annoying. You can always hear it grunting in pain as yet another elaborately rendered area is spooled off the disk and into its tiny memory banks. Not since Stuntman creaked out onto the PS2 last summer have we encountered a game that the PS2's creaking DVD drive struggles so hard to cope with. If games came with cigarette-style health warnings on them, Rockstar's latest would state boldly: SLOW LOADING TIMES IMPAIR YOUR ENJOYMENT.
It's usually pretty pointless looking at the same game across multiple formats most of the time it's a uniform experience no matter which platform you're reviewing the game on - but not so with the PS2 version of Max Payne 2.
