The Finest PlayStation 2 Games of All Time

While PS2 launched with a brand new entry in gaming’s hottest mech go well with motion sequence, Armored Core, it was additionally host to at least one that, frankly, ought to’ve gotten far more consideration. Produced by Metal Gear Solid maestro Hideo Kojima, Zone of the Enders is an exciting third-person hack-and-slash motion recreation that aimed to be the gaming equal of Mobile Suit Gundam.

While Armored Core relished in labored participant alternative round every of its robots’ particular person elements, Zone of the Enders was extra involved with blazing quick motion, permitting gamers to defy gravity in mid-air mech-suit fight throughout all axes that felt revolutionary on the time. Its anime-inspired story was typically nonsensical, however aligned with the proclivities of the gonzo auteur Kojima, and imbued the bedlam with a dire sense of urgency. While many video games on this checklist may need seen a great deal of sequels and even present revivals, Zone of the Enders stays largely a reminiscence properly deserving of resurrection.

Following the loopy success of the Resident Evil sequence, Capcom determined that one of the best ways to ensure extra hits was to use the identical tanklike design and horror ethos to an entire slew of recent IP with video games like Parasite Eve (1998) and Dino Crisis (1999). But of all of the Resident Evil-likes, the samurai-themed Onimusha was the most effective effort at creating one thing that might stand alongside its acclaimed zombie sequence.

Although an entire trilogy of Onimusha video games had been launched in for the PS2 in fast succession, it was the primary recreation, Warlords, that is still most memorable. Set within the Sengoku interval, the story follows samurai Samanosuke Akechi in his battle in opposition to demonic forces which have aligned with the military of the late daimyō Oda Nobunaga. Trading in weapons for blades, Onimusha is a good interval tackle the Resident Evil method with a hack-and-slash mentality that offers the sequence its personal distinct identification.

Across 4 entries on the unique PlayStation, Twisted Metal grew to become one of many premier franchises for Sony, and helped bolster its portfolio of mature-themed titles throughout distinctive genres. Although the odd little subgenre of vehicular fight video games largely remained area of interest by the point the PS2 rolled round, the console delivered what might be thought-about the apex of that area of interest with Twisted Metal: Black.

Using the horsepower of its new platform, Black performed like a dream in comparison with its kin, with a wholesome frame-rate that remained steady regardless of how a lot mayhem ensued throughout its sprawling ranges. The story took on a noticeable darker tone, turning all its forged just like the serial killer clown Sweet Tooth, into tragic figures trapped inside an insane asylum. Easily the most effective recreation within the sequence, it ought to have been a springboard for future video games, however ended up being a excessive level for a franchise that largely drifted into obscurity, with only a handful of minor entries till it got here again into the zeitgeist with a live-action TV adaptation in 2023.

One of a number of Sony characters that leveraged to change into the model’s mascot, à la Nintendo’s Mario, Sly Cooper was in all probability the furthest from an actual contender, however his video games made for compelling third-person platformer experiences.

With a slick, cel-shaded aesthetic, Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper video games maintain up higher visually than most others of their period, however the third entry within the sequence actually stands out. Unlike its different Sony-produced cousins, the duo-centric Jak and Daxter and Rachet & Clank, Sly focuses on a singular protagonist and his cadre of thieving buddies for a stealth-based experiences predicated on excellent heists. Mascot platformers had been a dime a dozen throughout this period, however Sly’s explicit mix of sneaking gameplay and eye-popping aesthetics elevated the sequence from the pack, with the third entry perfecting the method earlier than its eventual sunsetting.

Another multiplatform recreation that ended up being important to any PS2 proprietor’s library, The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remains to be considered top-of-the-line action-adventure video games of its period. Reinventing the side-scrolling sequence as a fast-paced third-person platformer, the brand new tackle the Prince let gamers manipulate the stream of time with an modern mechanic that allow them rewind after making a miscalculated bounce or pratfall.

Subsequent entries would hue tonally darker and add new options, however the first recreation of this new continuity stays virtually excellent in its elegant controls and ease. With simply readable terrain that makes platforming puzzles really feel truthful, however completion well-earned, it’s nonetheless a pleasure to choose up and play The Sands of Time right now.

Despite not technically being a PlayStation unique, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a sequence that’s all the time related to Sony’s programs. In reality, the third entry mainly appeared on all the things — from the OG PS1 to the Game Boy Color — however it remained one among PS2’s most profitable and fondly remembered video games.

Although it’s largely identified for incremental enhancements, it’s arduous to complain about iteration when the bones of Tony Hawk Pro Skater are so good. A graphical bump on the PS2 over the earlier era of {hardware} give it simply sufficient of a brand new facelift to really feel contemporary, however this model of the sport additionally included a web-based mode using the console’s community adapter. Like its predecessors, the third Tony Hawk recreation can be well-known for its banger of a soundtrack, that includes tracks from The Ramones, Motörhead, and CKY.

The level of most racing video games is to remain on the course, neatly taking turns and customarily avoiding smooth bumps and errors that can eat away on the clock. Burnout desires you to complete, too, but additionally actually relishes within the mayhem of a head-on collision. EA’s hyper-paced racing sequence rewards gamers for pushing their automobiles to limits of velocity and management, with every near-crash including to the rating and offering just a bit extra juice to entice riskier and extra reckless gameplay.

The better of the batch is Burnout 3, subtitled “Takedown” for good cause. The new central mechanic of this entry is the power to ram into opponents till they violently crash, turning an already hectic racer right into a preventing recreation on wheels. Provoking the competitors will trigger them to behave extra aggressively and erratically, including one other layer to the danger/reward dynamics of psychotic fantasy driving.

There was some extent in gaming the place nearly each sport below the solar was represented recurrently as a part of EA’s portfolio. The PS2 launched with the beloved snowboarding title SSX, however its sequel is the one which most individuals keep in mind. Leaning into the “extreme” a part of X-Games, SSX Tricky turned a largely cartoonish downhill racer right into a lavishly over-the-top spectacle.

From the opening moments, the sport hits arduous and quick with a bombastic demo scene paired with Run-DMC’s rap traditional “It’s Tricky,” which immediately units the tone. The premise of Tricky is mainly a downhill derby on steroids, the place gamers can catch ludicrous air and string collectively physics-defying combos of strikes that might make Tony Hawk blush. Its colourful forged of characters and crunchy controls make Tricky a riot, and it tops the checklist of older franchises that followers desperately need to see make a contemporary comeback.

After pulling off a hat trick with the very good Crash Bandicoot trilogy (and a kart racer!) on the PS1, Naughty Dog went full Nineties-era Chicago Bulls to do it once more. Their second threepeat got here within the type of the Jak and Daxter sequence for PS2 (which as soon as once more punctuated with its personal racing recreation), which kicked off early within the console’s North American run shortly after its 2001 debut.

An open-world 3D platformer, the primary Jack and Daxter recreation, The Precursor Legacy, feels in some ways just like the pure evolution of mascot franchises like Mario and Spyro, all whereas creating its personal comedic voice. With a crew of Hollywood animators engaged on the sport, it helped quickly evolve the expertise of cartoonish recreation visuals for the subsequent era of PlayStation, and whereas its successors would veer in very completely different instructions tonally, the unique stays an exquisite platformer, and top-of-the-line of its form from the time. Although Naughty Dog went on to push gaming into new cinematic heights with Uncharted and The Last of Us, you’ll be able to’t assist however hope that they’ll sometime revisit extra whimsical materials like Jak and Daxter.

Rhythm video games maintain a particular place within the hearts of many avid gamers. Arcade favorites like Dance Dance Revolution and the drum-based Taiko no Tatsujin had profound cult followings, constructing IRL communities the place gamers might be swept up by musicality over gunplay. Harmonix’s Guitar Hero begged the query of how properly a communal music recreation might do when each lounge and dorm abruptly turns into a rock present.

Using a plastic guitar peripheral, gamers can strum alongside, urgent fret buttons and pulling the whammy bar to carry out fairly respectable covers of traditional rock hits like Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” and Kiss’ “Strutter.” It’s largely iterative of the primary recreation, however Guitar Hero II constructed on all the things that labored the primary time round to create a microcosm in time when nearly everybody was enjoying this recreation, all getting a fast training in music historical past so as to add to their LimeWire queue. A model of Guitar Hero lives on right now in Fortnite Festival, however within the outdated days, with out the ubiquity and abundance of streaming music and saturation, getting along with buddies for jam session had a particular novelty.

Every nice recreation platform wants its definitive racer, and for PlayStation, that’s virtually all the time going to be Gran Turismo. Unlike breezier, extra arcadey franchises of the time, Gran Turismo has all the time been billed as “the real driving sim,” with an emphasis on hyper accuracy round all its automobiles and tracks, that are distinctively modeled after real-life counterparts to a tee.

After a robust begin on the PS2 with Gran Turismo 3, the fourth entry upped the ante with extraordinarily upgraded graphics and a posh physics system that impacted all the things from the load of every automobile to how the wheels pitch whereas braking. Pushing the PS2 to its technical limits, it’s astonishing how good this recreation seems to be on the {hardware} it’s grinding.

The product of some of the unlikely team-ups in gaming historical past, Kingdom Hearts introduced collectively two obsessive fan bases — JRPG followers and Disney acolytes — for a bonkers multiversal crossover. On paper, nothing concerning the recreation ought to work: a gaggle of Final Fantasy-coded youngsters are sucked into the varied worlds of Disney properties to assist root out some form of magical rot. The plot will get extensively extra convoluted with every entry, however within the unique recreation, it was largely a gibberish excuse to ship gamers headfirst into the animated realities of Mickey Mouse, Hercules, and Aladdin.

Outside of the infectious novelty of assembly and preventing alongside a number of generations’ price of beloved youngsters’s characters, Kingdom Hearts additionally launched a groundbreaking real-time fight system that’s now normal in Square Enix’s RPGs. Directed by Tetsuya Nomura, who’s now mainly the torchbearer for all issues Final Fantasy, it was a evident look into the crystal ball for a way right now’s greatest RPGs would look and play.

It’s form of humorous that, regardless of being the most important console of all time, the PS2 was extraordinarily mild on first-person shooters. But what it lacked in video games like Halo, it greater than made up for with whip quick third-person motion video games like Devil May Cry, which gave its white-haired hero Dante an limitless stream of bullets to plug into demons at a clip.

A prequel to the primary recreation, Dante’s Awakening tells the story of the younger demon hunter and his race to stop his twin brother, Vergil, from erecting a cataclysmic portal to a different world. A 2006 re-release let gamers management Vergil, too, however each variations expertly make the most of Dante’s wry, flippant angle that’s involved juxtaposition to how critical the proceedings ought to be. Devil May Cry is without doubt one of the most celebrated motion sequence ever, standing alongside the likes of Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta as experiences which might be meant to be profoundly silly, but endlessly entertaining.

One of Sony’s best strengths as a frontrunner within the video games trade has lengthy been its willingness to let extra outlandish creative visions slip by in between its blockbuster releases designed for broad attraction. Ico is a kind of video games; developed over the course of 4 years at a time when gamers might anticipate a brand new gargantuan-sized Grand Theft Auto every Christmas, the truth that it exists in any respect seems like a blessing.

Ico facilities on the straightforward premise of a full-length escort mission (gaming’s most notoriously maligned idea). Players management an outcast boy with horns named Ico, who should assist the princess Yorda escape her confinement in a fortress. It’s largely a gradual and regular litany of puzzles to resolve, however the recreation’s minimalist aesthetic and cinematic results like bloom lighting give each body an ethereal really feel. Ico makes use of the PS2 {hardware} to point out that not each recreation must be maximalist, and seems like an early instance of how inventive design and modest ambition would later thrive within the indie scene.

The 2000s was a decade the place the final vestige of outdated recreation design meant that studios might efficiently churn sequel after sequel practically yearly with out ever actually taking any dips in high quality. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal is the third recreation within the cartoon shooter sequence, though it’d be simple to neglect; there have been 10 installments of Ratchet & Clank from 2002 to 2009 alone.

But for the PS2 period of the franchise, Up Your Arsenal is a transparent pinnacle, with the most important assortment of ridiculous devices, drivable automobiles, and even a newly launched on-line multiplayer mode. The race to be the face of Sony’s system led to many potential mascots popping up throughout this era, however of the lot solely the duo of Ratchet & Clank stays, having simply reappeared lately with one of many best PS5 games currently available. Trekking again to this older entry makes it simple to see why the sequence has such endurance.

Although the PS2 had an outsized share of blockbuster sequence, it wasn’t missing for bizarre little video games for freaks. Katamari Damacy is the final word instance of an thought so bizarrely surreal that its mere existence seems like some form of company prank.

The premise sees a god-like being, the King of All Cosmos, unintentionally destroying all the celebrities and moons whereas drunk; it’s as much as his son, the diminutive Prince, to assemble sufficient assets to rebuild the celestial our bodies. Those assets encompass actually all the things on Earth, with gamers rolling a really sticky magical ball round every stage, sucking up no matter’s of their path because the junk heap grows. It begins with small issues like paper clips and crayons, however earlier than lengthy, the prince is steamrolling homes and cities to deliver again the moon. Katamari Damacy by no means actually begins to make sense, and that’s to its credit score. The cult favourite doesn’t must concede to normalcy when its grip is greater than sturdy sufficient to suck in even probably the most unwilling observers.

Everyone’s obtained their favourite preventing recreation. For arcade heads and Super Nintendo aficionados, it was some model of Street Fighter II; for early adopters of Sega’s doomed platforms Saturn and Dreamcast (and later Xbox), it may be Dead or Alive. For PlayStation followers, it virtually definitely Tekken.

Namco’s 3D motion sequence has all the time been a technological showstopper, normally showing first in arcades earlier than being ported to PlayStation, the place the facility of the disc-based system shined with all its polygonal glory. Tekken 5 was the second mainline entry for PS2, and cranked all the things nice concerning the franchise to the max. With 32 characters from throughout the martial arts spectrum and one of many soapiest tales in gaming, it’s pound-for-pound the most effective preventing recreation on PlayStation 2, and top-of-the-line of all time.

After making what would possibly’ve been the only finest recreation for the primary PlayStation with Metal Gear Solid, creator Hideo Kojima aimed to up the ante and cinematic flourish of his subsequent sequels — every in a roundabout way meant (however failing) to be his final. While Metal Gear Solid 2 largely rehashed the story and controls of its predecessor, the prequel Snake Eater reinvented what a Metal Gear recreation might be.

Following Naked Snake, the mentor and genetic father of the sequence’ unique protagonist Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3 forces gamers right into a jungle-bound espionage mission the place survival is paramount. Eating rations and wildlife replenishes stamina, and all the things from bullet wounds to scorpion stings demand medical therapy in-menu. Long thought-about a favourite amongst followers, the sport pared down a few of the philosophical navel-gazing of its predecessor, however solely simply so. It stays a Kojima recreation by and thru, the place cleaning soap field pontificating concerning the nature of struggle brushes in opposition to villains who spit hornets and scantily clad spies flaunt their our bodies to entice teenage appetites. But 20 years later, it’s an expertise that’s nonetheless influencing how cinematic storytelling can be utilized in interactive media.

The origins of Resident Evil 4 are considerably humorous. After Sony emerged as the subsequent huge factor in gaming, pilfering Nintendo’s greatest franchises and third-party partnerships from below their nostril, you’d assume that Capcom’s horror franchise would make its huge next-gen debut on the PS2. Except, it didn’t; Resident Evil 4 was one among a really choose handful of mature-themed titles that discovered a house on Nintendo’s GameDice as a part of a short-lived exclusivity deal — no less than initially. About six months later, it arrived on PlayStation, the place its gross sales vastly outpaced its maiden run due to the platform’s bigger set up base.

Resident Evil 4 is seminal for a lot of causes. The first of the sequence to eschew the clunky, tanklike controls of the older entries, it helped popularized the over-the-shoulder, third-person capturing mechanics that at the moment are normal in just about each motion recreation of its ilk. It additionally moved away from zombies and claustrophobic city environments in lieu of an eerie rural city in Spain. Destined to be endlessly remade and re-released, it’s usually thought-about a franchise peak, however its preliminary reputation was partially because of its arrival on PS2.

At the time of its launch, there hadn’t been a recreation as terrifying as Silent Hill 2. While the massive horror sequence of the time, Resident Evil, was trafficking in zombie-laden bounce scares, Konami’s eerie opus invested extra in an oppressive, somber environment that left gamers feeling remoted and questioning each inch of their pixelated display screen. Within the dense fog of the streets and alleys of Silent Hill, solely the mangled flesh of Eldritch frights loomed, perpetually creeping from the borders of the thoughts to the display screen itself.

Set within the epicenter of American horror — rural Maine — the story follows James Sunderland, a person drawn to the idyllic city by a letter from his deceased spouse. Hoping to seek out closure of their once-lakeside getaway, James’ story devolves into insanity as aberrations start creating bodily manifestations of his private trauma. Armed with only a flashlight and an unrelenting will, it’s as much as the participant to discover a approach to free themselves from the torment. Silent Hill 2 arrived at some extent the place horror video games had been evolving past the novelty of straightforward scares, weaving a extra humanistic form of horror, and nonetheless stands as one of many crown jewels of the style — with a recently-released fashionable remake giving the sport a contemporary coat of paint. But the unique holds up properly, and stays a seminal instance of how the immersive facet of horror works simply as properly, if not higher, in gaming than some other medium.

Although PlayStation is the form of ecosystem that has all of it, there are areas the place it’s traditionally fallen wanting the competitors. Despite nailing its personal takes on mascot platformers and RPGs, the particular expertise of a fantasy journey within the vein of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda eluded the primary era of Sony {hardware}, and far of the second. That is, till Ōkami arrived on the tail finish of the PS2 era.

Steeped in Japanese mythology and folklore, Ōkami aimed to present non-Nintendo gamers their very own model of a sweeping fantasy epic the place exploration presents rewards within the type of new skills and refined storytelling beats. Its cel-shaded visuals give the sport a vivid aesthetic that’s held up extraordinarily properly in comparison with extra practical video games of the period, with the flourish of sumi-e ink portray that endemic to Ōkami’s Japanese roots.

The religious successor to Ico, Shadow of the Colossus took the ethereal tone and minimalist setting of Sony’s experimental puzzle journey and imbued the journey with exponentially better scope. Rather than escorting a damsel by the hallows of an deserted fortress, the sport lets gamers tackle the position of Wander, a stripped-down hero whose objective to slay the towering colossi feels insurmountable.

While sequence like God of War would make an motion spectacle out of ascending titanic our bodies and slaying deities of the outdated world, Shadow of the Colossus bathes its violence in melancholy. The sixteen colossi roaming the atmosphere don’t really feel inherently evil or deserving of dying, and their terrifying majesty feels in tune with the sport’s pure world. Each behemoth requires a multi-part gauntlet to scale and slay; it’s an expertise one might name a boss-rush, however there’s no urgency to race by its challenges. It’s an esoteric recreation the place taking within the magnificence is a part of the enjoyable, and felling every large makes you’re feeling equally unhealthy as you do triumphant.

Final Fantasy might have gotten its begin on Nintendo, however its greatest and most profitable eras, from VII to X, had been all unique crown jewels for PlayStation’s library. After a rapid-fire sequence of three formidable video games for PS1, the tenth essential installment of Square’s legendary RPG franchise arrived within the very first yr of the PS2, immediately cementing the platform as yet one more must-have console for followers of role-playing video games.

The technological leap from IX to X was jaw-dropping, turning the once-text primarily based narrative into a totally voiced cinematic epic. Each Final Fantasy has its personal self-contained story and world, and the intense, colourful realm of Spira felt like an enormous shift away from earlier entries, which bounced between medieval settings and elevated sci-fi. With the power to swap in all the forged of characters at will into the expanded occasion throughout battle, its gameplay felt greater and extra strategic than ever; it’s turn-based programs representing a high-point for traditional RPG requirements proper on the fulcrum of the style the place action-oriented types started to take over.

It’s completely wild to assume that Rockstar Games was capable of develop not one, or two, however three full-length Grand Theft Auto video games from 2001 to 2004, every exponentially extra formidable than the final. Compare that to right now, the place followers have waited 12 years for the newest installment, and it exhibits how the enterprise of recreation growth has modified fully.

The third PS2 entry, San Andreas, is in some ways the perfect Grand Theft Auto has ever been. Taking its crime-movie trappings away from the mafioso world of earlier video games and positioning its story in a fictional facsimile of South Central LA, it opened the storytelling potential in unimaginable methods. The world of San Andreas is sprawling — seemingly not possible so for the time. With so many missions, side-quests, and mini-games to take pleasure in, exterior of simply cruising round listening to the radio, it feels endlessly playable. How a lot content material and artistry had been packed into only a single recreation from 2004 stays a technical marvel. For many PlayStation 2 homeowners, Grand Theft Auto is the definitive recreation of the period — the one which’s soaked up the lion’s share of their time and reminiscences sitting in entrance of the TV earlier than the tasks of maturity set in.

When you look again in any respect that the PlayStation 2 was capable of accomplish, from internet hosting generational RPGs and motion video games to squeezing out logic-defying open worlds with {hardware} weaker than an iPhone 6, it’s a tall process to choose one recreation that exemplifies all the things that made the console nice. But, in actual fact, there’s one recreation that not simply exhibits what Sony was able to then (and now), however seems like an ideal encapsulation of gaming tradition of the 2000s. Santa Monica Studio’s God of War is that recreation, a product of its time that might’ve solely existed at this distinct juncture.

God of War is all the things that defines the trendy idea of a first-party PlayStation recreation. It’s heavy on cinematic storytelling, with cutscenes that play out like prolonged motion pictures. Its motion is top-notch, breathlessly weaving gamers by scripted set items with the scope that Hollywood execs might solely dream of. But regardless of its film-like qualities, it stays definitively a online game — an expertise that’s outlined by verbs like run, bounce, and punch. And, oh, what verbs they’re.

God of War II picks up after the primary recreation the place the disgraced Greek normal Kratos has killed the titular god, Ares, and brought up his mantle regardless of his standing as a non-deity. Betrayed and killed by Zeus, Kratos should combat his manner out of the Underworld and switch again time, slaughtering his manner by the Greek pantheon alongside the way in which. The story is profoundly juvenile; Kratos is the final word edgelord — pushed fully by hatred and rage, talking solely in grunts and menacing one-liners. Using the Chains of Chaos, his violent tendencies empower gamers to tear by swaths of foes and cinematically eviscerate mythological figures with excessive prejudice.

What it lacks in maturity (however not mature content material), it makes up for with a few of the finest motion gameplay ever designed. Kratos’ story is foolish, however works wonders as gas for dynamic fight with a perpetually self-sustaining sense of urgency. Each motion is punctuated by trendy glory kills, and the boss encounters stretch the bounds of what gamers assume will likely be potential in a recreation. These days, a lot of this in commonplace, however the scope and sheer leisure worth of God of War is the blueprint. As video games inch ever nearer towards changing into playable motion pictures, its best instructing is that, regardless of how showy issues get, all of it must be in service of the interactive expertise. That’s why it’s a online game.