Played the PS2 version but nobody reads that page so I'm reviewing it here.

I loved this game a lot. At first I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it with how rough Liberty Island was (nearly got filtered by the guards) but when I got to UNATCO, I spent 95% of the time fucking around, reading random books and newspapers about the state of the world, I really fell in love with it. Sci-fi that's just futuristic/biological word vomit is the most interesting type of sci-fi to me. I enjoyed being handsomely rewarded even if I went a no-kill route one level or slaughtered everybody in my wake the next. I didn't feel pressured to play any specific way and that's what made it so satisfying. Of course, I saved hostages when I could and actively tried not to kill civilians when in the middle of a (considerably laggy) firefight. I blew shit up when I was too lazy to deal with it and I tried to save people when I could. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack is incredible.
One of my gripes with it, though, was how boss fights weren't really bossfights. The GEP gun basically steamrolls every single fight save for Simons who eats two missiles before exploding into meat, but even then every fight lasts two seconds if you just whip out the GEP gun. Even though Walton was hovering over your shoulder and bragging about his augs the entire game, I blew him to bits with two rockets, so the fights being so mechanically simple was disappointing. Another criticism I had was how Gunther was written. He's meant to be viewed as a tragic character due to the circumstances of his outdated augmentations, his usefulness to UNATCO, and self-esteem issues stemming from that, but the writers make him out to be a bumbling dumbass instead. I also wasn't a huge fan of how Paul just disappears from the game after Hong Kong, permanently glued to his chair, but I guess it makes sense from a branching narrative/development standpoint if he dies in New York.
JC is a new favorite character of mine. He definitely reads as autistic. Simons was a cool villain and his coat was even cooler though he walks like he's severely constipated. Anyway, this game was fun as hell and it truly does break my heart that this series is more or less dead in the water. I'm sick to death of remakes but I'm not gonna lie and say I wouldn't enjoy a potential remake of this game. Not sure if I want to play the sequel though as apparently the writing takes a complete nosedive and it shits itself even on the platforms it was made for. Everyone also looks 10x fuglier in Invisible War than they do in this game which is a feat in itself, since most of them look like cats with their faces pulled back.

Played this almost 7 years ago now, don't know why Xbox isn't a release platform option but whatever. This game is just intro to philosophy 101, the themes are not as deep as everyone thinks they are. Gameplay was cool at first but got extremely repetitive by the end of the game, it's basically just Bayonetta 2 gameplay but dumbed down even further. Quest design sucked, please stop this belief that making enemies spongey=higher difficulty. It's just unnecessary padding. 95% of the people who make 2B ass jokes have not actually played this game, because they would realize that A2 is the better and more interesting character. Soundtrack is great though.

Really good. Love the noir writing, even if it does get cheesy at points. The comic-book style for cutscenes added a ton to the atmosphere, and the loading screens are beautiful. The spattering of white paint/filter to look like snowflakes was a genius idea. Movement is kind of janky though, it's difficult to keep running in a totally straight line. Whenever I walked on a narrow pathway, Max seemed to like tripping on his shoelaces and plummeting to his death. The first baby maze turned from "oh sweet cool set-piece" to "this fucking sucks" because of the movement and constant lag. The sight of him flopping around on the ground after a shoddy bullet time is pretty funny though.

The PS2 port, however, is a piece of garbage. I am not a 69 terashits per megafart type of gamer, but man does this game turn into a powerpoint presentation sometimes. It runs at 30 fps except when you're around fancy lighting or whenever you're in a fight, the latter being nearly every 10 seconds. The Lupino fight nearly made me nauseous because of how laggy it got and I was incredibly worried my 23 year old PS2 was going to shit the bed right then. I couldn't be bothered to keep restarting the final level because of the combination of terrible lag, console aiming, and the adaptive difficulty not adapting so I just turned on infinite health and blasted through it.

Besides that though, I enjoyed this game and I now understand why people love Remedy's games. Not sure if I'll play 3 though because I reallyyyyy do not like Rockstar's games. 1 star off for the horrendous PS2 port and wonky movement.