PS2 games worth a revisitng

King of Posters
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I don’t know about you blokes and bloke-esses but overall my favorite console of all time and forever will be the PS2. It was a last stand in letting games having to be of a bar to even be released, and not followed by an endless string of DLC and patches, ect. While I love online play the cost seemingly has been too high for most games that don’t even attempt to use.

So I wanna talk about some of my favorites on the PS2 and hear some of yours.

The Bouncer- Look there’s few beat em ups that play like this one along with a stupid short lived squaresoft plot. The action movie that you can play through is my go to favorite game ever. It’s tightly paced, always has action, always advances, and has some iconic designs. It’s just damn fun, and it rewards multiple play troughs.

MSG2 & 3 - These are so classic I don’t think I need to go into why. But MGS2 in particular is my favorite MGS game of all time.

Samurai Western- just a dang cool overlooked action game.

GodHand- the game SB turned me onto first

ZOE 1 &2- I love both of these games for giving such a unique take mech games that make them fun and punchy, and anime as hell rather than cold make believe simulation like armored core. Follow Jehuty to the bitter End.

The Punisher- a hilarious B game through the gritter parts of the Marvel Universe, this Max Payne wannabe game is just delightful shooter cheese.

Spider-Man 2- one of the best games to swing around for hours in.

Kingdom Hearts 2- I am a huge nerd

DMC3 sexy edition- Capcom’s best from the era. This was THE high octane action game in it’s day.

SSX Tricky- the best snowboarding game of all time. There’s actual courses and the sickest tricks. It doesn’t get better.

SoulCal2- ok i’m cheating here because I think the GameCube version is best, but PS2’s was probably more fair. This is the best fighting game of all time ever period.

THUG- This was a Tony Hawk game with a plot. I know a lot of weirdos didnt’ like it. But I appreciated a game to play through with low stakes, and skateboarding action, I wish this was more of a thing that caught on, but as it is this is a fun one to run through. Also be sure to dark slide.

Jak2- opening on one of the most shocking moments in games if you played through the first one, Jak 2 is a dang cool platformer that really pushed games in some great ways.

GTA3- just… a moment in gaming.

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i made this thread: HELP me decide which PS2 game to play!!
awhile back while i was attempting to clear up my ps2 backlog (which is still ongoing). There’s some great suggestions and discussions in there.

Some related SB PS2 threads:

it’s one of my fav consoles too, as well!
Still vividly remember getting a PS2, Dark Cloud and Kingdom Hearts for christmas as a 12 year old. i think that was my last big christmas videogame surprise (until this most recent one where my awesome parents bought me, a dirtbag 26-year old, a new3ds)

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the original Katamari Damacy is a legitimate piece of pop art that should be shared and enjoyed by everyone and the only way to play it is with an original PS2 or a PS3 download and they should just put it on the PS4 already jesus

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the ps2 is my favorite system

i just pared down my ps2 collection to what are (for me) the bare essentials. couple of ps1 games too.

from fb chat with a friend:

but yeah as far as what i kept…hm

the ace combat games are rly cool to me bc you fly over this pretty realistic terrain and you can just kinda zone out and shoot stuff and experience this artificial world

silent hill is the only game i’ve ever played that filled me w dread so i wanna keep it so i can have that experience every couple of years

and i have the sequel bc that one’s supposedly rly good too!

boku no natsuyasumi is nostalgia for a life i never lived…i just love so much that it exists

iidx is self-explanatory, i still need to pick up iidx 14 and 16 as well

gran turismo 3/4 are some of my favorite childhood games and i just like…rly love ps2-era racing games? when they were realistic, but not so realistic they were boring. i just rly love those games, and they’re both rly different from each other so i rly feel it’s worth having both of them

ico + shadow of the colossus are literal works of art, and i feel that way about rez too. those three games rly stand out to me in terms of how good the ps2 was

siren is a game i’m rly interested in playing bc it’s by the silent hill team after they stopped making silent hill…and everything i’ve ever read about it says it’s rly scary and good and also difficult so it’s like, something i’m interested in enough to want to rly work through and experience

sky odyssey is prob the most just pure fun game and i love it forever

i wrote a thing about it on selectbutton once

lemme find it

actually nm i’m not gonna find it

just know that i love it

and then all the genki racing project ps2 games are just…idk. i love the world of those games. those are the ones where you just chill on the japanese highway system and drive around and race people

theres a spin-off series that’s all mountain racing that i rly love! and then the final ps2 game they made in that project is more like, circuit racing? but idk all the games are so dorky and intricate and detailed and i love getting into them

so yeah that’s like…my reasoning behind everything i kept

i also ended up keeping eternal ring, and i’m debating keeping zettai zetsumei toshi. would love to track down king’s field iv at some point. also yeah i’d love to get the original katamari again, i had we <3 katamari and it’s really good but not quite as nostalgic for me

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I never got the appeal of ICO or Shadow of the Colossus. They just seemed so clunky and morose.

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i’m a clunky and morose person, so they just resonate with me! they put me in a good state of mind when i play them and i like existing in their worlds for a while

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You really should play the rest of the classic Silent Hills, yarusenai

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yeah, i want to! i’ve gotten the general impression that they decline in quality after 2, so whenever i get around to beating 2 i’ll see how i feel from there

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HAHAHA. I mean I know they’re good games. They explore some territory basically nothing else has. Just not to my tastes.

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‘Decline’ is maybe a strong word.

Well, 4 can be a bit of a slog to get through but it’s maybe my favorite premise of anything

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it’s a real game out of time, when you think about it. that it was fairly popular in 2004 or whenever it came out is a miracle. could you imagine if it came out, say, in 2010? it already feels like it did. it’s a perfect work. if I had to pick one PS2 game that will never be out of style, that’s probably it.

my favorite ps2 game is still probably Ico. the game most if its time period that will never be replicated is Silent Hill 2

I still haven’t played god hand fight me select button

ps2 games that haven’t played or have barely played that I would like to one day: Kings Field 4, DQVIII, Raw Danger, maybe Digital Devil Saga? EDIT: OH YEAH I NEED TO PLAY STEAMBOT CHRONICLES

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I guess it’s an illustration of just how large the PS2’s library was that I’ve played a ton of PS2 games but not a single one from this thread’s original post.

I could talk about good PS2 games all day, but these are a few of my favorites that I think would still be absolutely worth playing today:

Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4

I probably don't need to say much about these. I didn't think I was interested in horror games other than Eternal Darkness until DaleNixon gave me a Konami demo disc that included the first 15 minutes-or-so of Silent Hill 4. I was hooked.

ICO

My favorite game of its generation (though I've never been entirely clear on where to draw the dividing lines on the console generations). At the time, I was impressed with technical aspects of the game, such as the lighting, water, and distant vistas that you'd later visit. But the minimalist storytelling was and remains the game's biggest strength.

Shadow of the Colossus

This one was also great. I don't know that anything before or since in video games has been quite as exhilarating as the fifth colossus. It was like being in The Neverending Story.

Steambot Chronicles

Everything Irem produced for the PS2 is worth revisiting, but I am especially fond of Bumpy Trot. I still like to listen to the background music from that game. I never did try being "a bad guy."

Shadow of Destiny

When a video game has multiple endings, I normally reach one of them and then maybe watch others on the Internet (or not even bother). But this game had branches that were actually worth exploring. Okay, to be honest, this was one of very few games that my wife liked and she was the one who got some of the endings while I just watched. But they were all worth seeing.

Katamari Damacy

I'd been looking forward to this game, but I hadn't been keeping track of the release date. My sister called me to tell me that it was a bargain title and pretty much the best video game there is. Within the past year (since I got a PS4), I think this might be the game I've played the most on my PS3. (Yes, I re-bought it.)

Phantom Brave

Easily my favorite NIS tactical RPG. In general, they seemed to be actively trying to dissuade me from playing their games despite some great mechanics with the irritating characters and throwaway story. I think Phantom Brave was their only attempt at a somewhat-serious narrative, and I appreciated not having to merely tolerate it. I liked the gridless mechanics as well. (Soul Nomad was also decent despite some grating dialogue.)

That’s probably enough for one post.

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lots of people finally seem to like gradius V as much as me

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all those rpgs baby give me those dumb things

i guess og monster hunter was on ps2. it occurs to me i’ve never heard anyone really talk about og monster hunter

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og mh was my first mh experience when i was younger. i never got past the mission where you had to kill yian kut-ku. also so much of the game is gutted because online was a major component of it and the servers have been down forever. good thing there’s monster hunter freedom

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breath of fire dragon quarter is one of the finest games ever made

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I don’t really see the PS2 as a system that demanded a level of quality, considering the incredible amount of B or lower grade titles. A loosely defined “bar” would, if anything, be counter productive to the crazy amount of experimentation in that era. Whether it was due to an economic boom, or just hitting a very specific advent in technological development, I’m not sure. I’m too lazy to crunch numbers. The “bar of quality” only started to wane here because around this time was a huge indie boom, which naturally is going to have drastically different budgets.

PS2’s library was good because it got fucking weird. A lot of system libraries did (Famicom, PS1, arguably Mega Drive, etc), but PS2’s library was massive enough to hold lots of oddities.

I guess here’s some games that I only tried or saw some of but want to revisit:

Baroque

Road Trip

Colosseum: Road to Freedom

Dual Hearts

Ephemeral Fantasia

Everblue 2

Gregory Horror Show

Under the Skin

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Burnout 3 Takedown probably is the pinnacle of punk rock racing.

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it’s such a forgotten game, too. feels bad :frowning:

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Finally? You say this like I wasn’t on board with that game from launch. You wound me, Felix.

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