Sony's PlayStation 2 is 15 years old today. Name your top 10 games.

[cleeg]

Nice thread; Softmodding and adding a HDD to my PS2 is my favourite mod of all. No soldering or tinkering, and I did it all myself using the programs, guides and other utilities made by some very clever folk. That now said, it means there are quite a few of my backburner list on this HDD, making my list below a little tricky to come up with! Here it is in no particular order...

Ico; maybe my favourite. I Love the theme.

Shadow Of The Colossus; See above, what a game.

GTA SA; I had to pick one, it was a close call between this and Vice City.

Ecco DOTF; I just really love this game.

Black; Not a massive FPS nut, but this a solid game and looks great.

Burnout 3; Not a big racing nut either, but I like the extreme cartoon realism vibe here.

Virtua Fighter 4; Better music than Evolution and the fighting is about as good.

Time Crisis 3; Great fun and plays well with EMS LCD TV Top Guns.

Fur Fighters; One of my earlier purchases, I had a lot of fun with this one.

Manhunt; Good sick fun and really well executed (pun not intended,but kept in anyway) game mechanic.

[Loggo]

Awesome console with an incredibly diverse library of games.

My Top-20 (in no particular order):

1. Shadow of the Colossus
2. Resident Evil 4
3. Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution
4. Metal Gear Solid 3
5. OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast
6. Burnout 3
7. Soul Calibur II
8. Okami
9. Final Fantasy XII
10. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
11. Silent Hill 2
12. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
13. ICO
14. Viewtiful Joe
15. Klonoa 2
16. Gradius V
17. Odin Sphere
18. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
19. SSX 3
20. TimeSplitters 3


* Played the XBOX version
* Played the GC version

[OverDrone]

As for the picture, I don't think it's letterboxed in NTSC, though I could check that. I don't know if it skips frames, though, and are the individual releases actually different there?

It could even have been a case of the PAL version of Metal Slug Anthology not having a 60 hz option or something stupid like that (it's been a long time), but it defo didn't feel right compared to the standalone versions. I got rid of it pretty much straight away because of this.

I keep hearing people from US region saying the PS2 Anthology is good so maybe that was the case...

EDIT: From the Metal Slug wiki: 'The Metal Slug Anthology received positive reviews but was criticized for its lack of Classic Controller support on the Wii version[7] and sluggish, "laggy" controls on the PAL PlayStation 2 version, which had a noticeable delay when entering button presses'. So there is that.

Regarding your opinion on the PS2's infamous jaggies, to be honest that only seemed to be a notable issue early on in the machine's lifespan. The image quality in later software, although still not as smooth as GC and XBOX, was much improved. Basically it didn't remain such a huge issue that would have made me consider switching platforms for or anything.

[Tripredacus]

GTA SA; I had to pick one, it was a close call between this and Vice City.

The ability to swim puts San Andreas above the other games for me.

[Mad Moham]

I'm surprised there's been no mention of Beyond Good & Evil, it nearly made my top ten, and I remember it got some good reviews at the time.

[stu]

I wasn't the biggest fan of the PS2 when it came out (quite surprising considering I loved the PS1) I think it was down to the fact that I was heavily in to PC gaming back then and I had pretty much lost interest in consoles, however my wife bought me one on sale Christmas 2006 and since then I have amassed a lot of PS2 games and it really is true that the PS2 has something for everyone. Yeah the graphics on some of early games weren't that great (looking at you Ridge Racer 5, among others) but over the 10 years or so that it was active developers really unlocked the potential of the system and they managed to get the system to shine. Have to say I prefer the look of the slim to the fat PS2, when it came out I wasn't really a fan of the fat PS2, it was quite a jarring change in design from the clean console looks of the PS1.

Anyway here are a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order.


God of War and God of War II - Absolutely loved both of these games, awesome graphics and great beat-em-up action, wasn't a huge fan of the QTE sections but luckily there wasn't so many that it ruined the game.

Wipeout Pulse - Europe only as far as I know but I play it through an emulator (since I have a NTSC PS2) and it plays a lot better than Wipeout Fusion imo.

Devil May Cry - This game was great fun, the controls work great and the game played very well.

BurnOut Revenge - The first game I played on my PS2 and the racing action is awesome, I find all the BurnOut games to be excellent games but I only have this one on PS2 (currently playing through BurnOut 3 on the Xbox)

Speed Racer The Game - Yeah i know its a movie tie-in but fans of Wipeout and F-Zero should really check this game out, a crazy combination of car racing and beat-em-up (maybe not ) excellent graphics and sensation of speed.

WRC: World Rally Championship - Excellent Rally game, very nice graphics considering it was probably an early PS2 game (2001), great handling and playability.

Ratchet & Clank : Going Commando - One of the few 3D platform type games that I've actually enjoyed, along with Jak and Daxter, excellent graphics and fun shooting action.

Jak and Daxter: Great 3D platform game, I must go back to playing this since I've not finished it yet.

You know what they say about "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"? Sure it outdoes the N64 by a lot, of course, but compared to the other consoles of its generation, the biggest problem with the PS2, in terms of graphics, is its terrible, super-jaggy image quality problems. The PS2 can put a lot of polygons on screen, as many as the GC or Xbox, and can do the most particle effects of any system that generation I believe, and such... but with hideously bad image quality for the time, it's often hard to see any of that behind the ugly picture. That kind of thing is excusable in a 5th-gen console, but none of the other 6th-gen systems have issues like the PS2 does! The DC may only be able to do like 1/8th the number of polygons as the PS2, but at least they look sharp and clear, while on PS2 that is uncommon. You get used to it after a while, but if you go back and forth between the PS2 and other 6th-gen or newer systems, it's noticeable.

Ya know, it really is quite amusing and ironic that you should say that since you're the one that always is bashing the PS1 and PS2 for having image quality problems, yet you rabidly defend the N64 which has some of the most blurry and washed out graphics ever. The main reason I posted that was because you could of acted like a grown up and simply stated that the PS2 isn't a favorite of yours but that it has a lot of great games, then listed your favorites and left it at that. BUT OH NO you couldn't do that, you had to childishly bash and shitpost by calling the PS2 the "one of worst consoles ever" and "certainly be the system I dislike the most".

Fact is, I doubt anyone gives a crap about what you think of the PS2, considering your childish and pathetic hatred of Sony I know I wasn't expecting you to actually like the system, so it surprises no-one that you don't like it. So instead you took a big stinky shit on the thread like you do with any thread dealing with the PS1 or PS2. Like Overdrone pointed out, the PS2 jaggy graphics issue was only really in the earlier games, they mostly had the issue solved after that, but you have to keep harping on about it in every thread.