Generally less windows (sometimes as the outside would be in another load zone), reflections.
Some niggles have been fixed, such as the pistol skill level bug and if you don't have room for a body's items when trying to pick it up, the items just get dropped to the floor (on PC you had to make room to be able to pick them up, before being able to move the body).Īll in all the PC version is superior for obvious reasons, but if you're a DX fan the PS2 version's worth playing: it's nice a remix and interesting to play and compare. On the other hand, the healing augmentation uses much, much less energy than on PC. Regeneration and Ballistic Protection now share an augmentation canister although it's still possible to take both augs this requires waiting until you come across a second instance. However, the Tooth does seem more powerful than the PC's normal sword, which does 10 too. Other melee weapons are weaker to compensate. For example, the Dragon's Tooth sword only does 10 damage compared to the PC's 100. Had DX been a PS2 game from the start, it would probably have performed better.īesides the level design changes, there are a few other gameplay tweaks too. In comparison, PS2 games with relatively impressive graphics are designed to have little on screen, have levels that aren't as open, etc. The technical weaknesses of DX are probably due to its ported Unreal engine and its level design. There are PS2 games that look and run much better than DX some offer larger areas too. Other areas with major changes are the Hong-Kong hub area, the NYC MJ12 base and the Paris streets.ĭespite all the changes, the frame rate sometimes bogs down to neigh unplayable levels, especially when there's heavy combat going on.
Hell's Kitchen, for instance, has a different layout with the Free Clinic near the subway, a large street connecting the 'Ton to Osgood's, and a completely different park. Finally, some levels are just completely different. An example of the former is a ventilation shaft that ends in the roof of the room in front of Gunther's cell on Libery Island as for the second case, an example is the 747 hangar on LaGuardia having a one-way door connecting it to the helipad, so that on his way back the player can skip a few outside loads. In other instances, levels have been tweaked either to improve gameplay or to allow the player to circumvent loads.
For example, the upper level of the Mole People subway station is separate but much larger on PS2. In fact, sometimes individual areas have been enlarged to compensate for the fact that they've been separated. Some levels are rather different from the PC versions in ways other than the extra load zones, which is the main attraction of playing this. The starting dock leads into an entryway after that, this road leading to either UNATCO or the island proper (separate map). Some levels survived the transition better: Vandenberg, for example, has simply been split into an inside and outside area. Furthermore, there are no windows and the upper statue levels, and they're surrounded by high walls there's no outside to see anymore as this is another map. This means that there's a few changes to accommodate this, such as UNATCO hq being shifted towards the dock and the addition of an entrance booth (see the screenshots below). The load times between these chunks are rather long, although I guess the load times on PCs of the time might have been pretty significant too.įor example, Liberty Island is split up into a number of parts such as the dock and Unatco, a few parts outside the statue, the inside of the statue, etc. However, the most significant change is how the maps have been split up into small chunks, akin to what was the case for Invisible War. Textures are blurrier than on PC, the character models are different (not strictly worse though). The yellow ticks indicate the item's part of the next/previous item rotation accessible from the D-pad.Īs the PS2's specs are meager compared even to those of period PCs, there's quite some technical changes. Apart from that, the only limit is the amount of one item you can carry, such as 20 multitools. Note the slot-based inventory menu: everything is categorized (lockpicks/multitools, low-tech weapons, etc), except firearms of which you're limited to four.