Some of my favourite slow-burn adventures that no one’s mentioned yet:
- Project Zero/Fatal Frame (1, 2, and 3)
- Shadow of Memories/Shadow of Destiny
- Echo Night: Beyond
- Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 1 and 2 (a.k.a. S.O.S. The Final Escape/Disaster Report, and Raw Danger)
- Killer7
- Siren (1 and 2)
- Chulip
And some action-adventure-RPGs that have a place in my heart but aren’t generally considered to be anything special:
- EverGrace (there’s also a sequel which I haven’t played yet)
- Eternal Ring
Currently playing through Grand Turismo 3 A-Spec again (working through the rally stages, my favorite) and occasionally swapping out for GTA San Andreas. Love the PS2
Lost many hours of my life to Gran Turismo 3 and 4!
Shadow of the Colossus.
The scale of the game was just massive for a PS2 title. Amazing hard hitting ending and challenging battles.
Sly Cooper Jak and Dexter Ratchet and Clank Suikoden III and IV God of War Tony Hawk
I remember renting God of War and my little brother wanting to watch me play. Then scrambling to turn the TV off as the opening cut scene played. Had to explain to my parents why he couldn’t watch me play.
At some point I need to get back to Deadlocked. I didn’t get super far in, but definitely a fun entry in the series in my opinion.
Metal gear Solid 3, Kingdom hearts 2 and Ape Escape 3
I ❤️ Katamari
KATAMARI DAMACYYYYYY BUM BUM BUM BUM
Game still goes hard in the paint
Just for some of the quality of life features included, Sonic Mega Collection Plus. The gamecube version may have been my first foray into classic Sonic, but eh PS2 is in my opinion the better version if you’re a more casual player like me because savestates.
Also, I need to get onto actually playing them, but I recently got all 3 of the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger games on PS2. I played enough on Dolphin that I knew I had to pick it up on PS2 (since I don’t have a gamecube). From the couple levels I played in the first game, definitely a fun game and one I personally have enjoyed.
Also, big shout-out to the only Star Wars Battlefront games I acknowledge existing.
Metal gear solid 3. Final fantasy 10, 11, 12. Freedom fighters. Kingdom hearts. Xenosaga. Battlefield modern combat. Metal gear solid 2. RAD. NFS underground. NBA street. Shadow of the colossus. Sax on tour. Burnout 3. God of war 1 and 2. Silent Hill the room. Ōkami. Metal arms.
Idk some others I’m sure. It’s THE goated console for a reason. I also enjoy RPGs and the PS2 just had banger after banger.
For some reason I kept losing interest in xenosaga 3. I really need to finish that series
It’s a good watch that’s for sure. I just started xeno blade 3. Going to play them backwards I think lol. But I knew 3 had ff12 combat style. And I love that style
i don’t have nintendo so i haven’t played xenoblades but yo ho one of these days
Do you miss how weird and liminal some of the games on this system were? Maybe it’s because of the magical thinking of a child (I was like two when this came out but played mine every day until I was fourteen, loved that thing like a religion lol) but even the startup screen and disc read failed screen were so… Weird? Freaky? I don’t know, I know there’s plenty of indie games now and plenty of shovel ware on current gen but it feels different, there was a strange magic to some games on the PS2 that seems to be sort of inimical
When watching some videos from retro game youtube channels, they tend to point to how much more daring they were back then, and all new games will just safe it. New aaa games cost so much they cant fail, but then a flop was to a larger extend “meh” and move on for the studio. Guess that made some of these games feel more freaky as you say
oh definitely. Games just felt differently back then. It was rarer for games to hold your hand, too. Not to say that that was always a good thing, sometimes it was quite annoying I guess, but maybe it was part of the reason games felt different. Combined with having to find stuff out on your own, you literally were on your own, yeah.
There are many things though that make this era of gaming special, this one is just something I often think of.
Omg absolutely! With the “not holding your hand” thing, I think a lot of the magic and enigmatic feeling of the PS2 games catalogue is that you’d only hear about Easter eggs, rather than knowing theyre in the game via dlc listings in storefronts or anything. They felt weird and slightly messed with understanding how big games were. Even up to Halo 3 with that weird developer monkey family and Black and White 2 where it would whisper your windows account name if you played after 10pm?
Games were just slightly hostile back then, or at least had the developer’s agenda in mind rather than the marketing algorithm’s
Wow…I remember the PS2 as the console that you smoked weed when you played. I was 16 when it came out. And it was my first ever dvd player.
Weirdly enough, I am currently smoking weed and playing Airblade on my first PS2 lol
Hitman 2! First game I 100%’d the trophy’s
Twisted metal
Metal gear
Toiny hawk
Resident evil
I don’t remember what number it was but soul caliber was good! maybe it was 2? after the glorious dreamcast soul caliber.
I love soulcalibur 2! I played it (and still play sometimes) on gamecube tho, but apart from a different special character (link from zelda in the gc version), its the same game. Tried soulcalibur 3 as well, but didnt really get into it - cant put my finger on why, but it was ages since i tried 3
honestly I completely agree with my feed
After setting up emulators for both the PS2 and PS1, I’m amazed at how little I actually turn on my xbox one S anymore.
Games from that generation just hit differently for me. Especially my favourites like Final Fantasy X and XII. It took me a while to get why I felt that way, but it’s the combat systems in modern games have become to frenetic and button-mashy. How am I supposed to strategize what my team mates are doing at the speed that the combat now wants to take place at.
And that’s not just with the Final Fantasy series. God of War both went down that “let’s make combat as fast and frenetic as possible” route after the PS2 generation.
I’m also going to give an honourable mention on PS2 to the last Stalwart alternative to the EA NHL series; that being NHL 2K10. I really enjoyed the things that it did differently to EA Sports, like the ability to set two of your team-mates to hassle an opposing player. I wish 2K had kept it up. But it seems they gave up the NHL and EA gave up the NBA. Fair trade I guess.
