but it added so little beyond the original that it was a disappointment.

See, this didn't bother me at all. I mean, in truth I probably won't play it through as many times as I did the first one, but I figure they pretty much nailed it the first time around, why mess with a good thing? Oh, and the Dead Man Walking part is great fun, though I'm not sure how long it will last.

In the first Max Payne, they were very tongue-in-cheek, and that seemed to have been lost in the second one where they became kind of dry and boring.

Yes, did you get the impression they started taking it seriously?