The PS2 version is practically ruined by poor performance, quaint controls, long loading times and a weird save system. Honestly, one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a game in recent memory. It was a mistake to play that version, but I'd had it in my backlog for years, so I figured what the hell.
The game by itself is not perfect, but it has some redeeming qualities. Namely, the atmosphere. The music is quite good and can be enjoyed on its own - it reminds me of KMFDM. The art style is very reminiscent of Total Recall (and other Verhoeven movies). They're are a few interesting weapons. And there's also the geo-mod tech, of course, which is underutilized, but still fun to mess around with. The game as a whole has always had a bit of a Half-Life vibe for me, but there're probably a lot of games from this period which tried to imitate Valve's work to some degree.
Unfortunately, Half-Life this is not. The gameplay is just not on that level. The AI is kinda funny for the first 15 minutes, until it gets annoying and every single human enemy behaves the exact same way throughout the game. Non-human enemies are even less enjoyable to engage with. There are nasty difficulty spikes during the last third of the game, including enemies who can one-shot kill you through walls. Yup.
Anyway, I understand that there's a community patch for the PC version which fixes up the game nicely for modern systems. I think if you play it that way, you can probably overlook a lot of it's fundamental flaws and enjoy the good parts. In the PS2 version the issues are just amplified tenfold. I'd stay clear of it, even if emulated on PS4/5.
The game by itself is not perfect, but it has some redeeming qualities. Namely, the atmosphere. The music is quite good and can be enjoyed on its own - it reminds me of KMFDM. The art style is very reminiscent of Total Recall (and other Verhoeven movies). They're are a few interesting weapons. And there's also the geo-mod tech, of course, which is underutilized, but still fun to mess around with. The game as a whole has always had a bit of a Half-Life vibe for me, but there're probably a lot of games from this period which tried to imitate Valve's work to some degree.
Unfortunately, Half-Life this is not. The gameplay is just not on that level. The AI is kinda funny for the first 15 minutes, until it gets annoying and every single human enemy behaves the exact same way throughout the game. Non-human enemies are even less enjoyable to engage with. There are nasty difficulty spikes during the last third of the game, including enemies who can one-shot kill you through walls. Yup.
Anyway, I understand that there's a community patch for the PC version which fixes up the game nicely for modern systems. I think if you play it that way, you can probably overlook a lot of it's fundamental flaws and enjoy the good parts. In the PS2 version the issues are just amplified tenfold. I'd stay clear of it, even if emulated on PS4/5.