MOD CORNER – 7th Serpent: Crossfire & Genesis (Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne)

The Max Payne games might have a smaller modding community than most games, but they are definitely a dedicated bunch, still releasing some pretty good stuff every now and again. Two of some of the best mods are 7th Serpent: Crossfire, released in 2006, and 7th Serpent: Genesis, released in 2008, both of which are for Max Payne 2

The story for both mods are actually fairly lengthy, since there is a bit of backstory going on. I’ll try to summarize whats necessary to understand for both mods, but if you want to go check it out, it does come in the manual for both mods.

In the first mod, Crossfire, you play Damon, the first prototype of the Serpent Industries serpent agent program, and your first assignment was the assassination of the CEO of a company called Hryfter Armament Technologies. The mod begins right after the assassination, right when you are making your escape. The rest of the mod is you escaping through the city, trying to get to the extraction point, as a city-wide emergency alert has been issued and the local authorities have promptly deployed.

Back when Alan Wake was so close to being vaporware that people didn’t think they’d get it until the far off future.

Crossfire is a good looking mod considering that the team behind it was pretty small, definitely pushing what the mod tools were possible of. Most of the game is going through the streets of a futuristic sci-fi city, but the mod does have a larger scale to it, making the fact that it’s fairly detailed more impressive.

Gameplay wise, it’s pretty much the base game from Max Payne 2, nothing has really changed. But when the gameplay is as solid as Max Payne 2’s was, there isn’t really a need to change it.

The game is on the shorter side, being about 45 minutes long, but that isn’t really a complaint since it’s free and has a lot of effort put into it. My only real complaint is that it’s a tad too hard, which might cause some people to struggle with it, but it’s not unreasonable, and it’s nothing that a bit of quicksaving couldn’t help.

At some point after Crossfire’s development, the team meant to release a second episode for Seventh Serpent, but life got in the way and people got busy, and what the team was working on couldn’t be finished. So the series was giving to another team. Just over 2 years later, that team released the second mod, Genesis

I guess the mod DOES have explosive action in it.

In the second Mod, Genesis, you play as Vincent Pretro, the 7th prototype of the Serpent Industries serpent agent program, on a mission with Abraham O’Conner, the 3rd prototype, as they infiltrate the H.A.B.I.T. Conference center to assassinate the Chairman of the H.A.B.I.T. Organization at their meeting, after destroying the security server to make sure you’re not identified.

Like the first mod, Genesis is pretty short. It doesn’t have the larger scale of the first game or the length, being only about 30 minutes long, but what’s there is still pretty solid highly polished level design. There isn’t much to elaborate on since it’s so short and talking about anything would spoil it, but it is worth checking out like the first mod.

Just like the first one, the second team couldn’t get everything they wanted into the mod, so they just released what they had. It seems a bit unfortunate, since the team behind the 7th Serpent mods clearly had a universe in mind, but just couldn’t fully realize it, considering how much backstory there was in the manuals.

Both mods are great glimpse into what could have been, and you can complete both of them in an afternoon too. 7th Serpent and 7th Serpent: Genesis are both worth checking out.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/7th-serpent

http://www.moddb.com/mods/7th-serpent-genesis

http://7thserpent.clement-melendez.com/