What are some good Playstation 2 games? (preferably action, but any genre is fine)

Matthew on 26/9/2008 at 14:30

Chaos Legion is absolutely dire, by the way.

At least, for those of us stupid enough to buy the PC version.

io organic industrialism on 26/9/2008 at 14:32

Quote Posted by Koki

Oh, and I don't know why you picked PS2 to play bullet hell games, I'm pretty sure they're spread evenly on all (japanese)systems, few emulators would probably grant you more than what PS2 alone can. Of course now you can play both the PS2 ones and the emu ones.

I played the crap out of ones in MAME, Dreamcast, free ones on PC, and I craved more, especially wanting to be able to play the more modern ones which, unless you go to a japanese arcade, cannot be played except for the few on PS2. It's unfortunate that Cave doesn't port all of their new releases though. Ketsui is just now getting ported to 360 and it came out in 2002 :( It will likely be 10 years before I can play stuff like Futari and Muchi Muchi pork :(

P.S. The rest of this thread succeeded in posting the derivative and predictable stuff I was (hopefully not) expecting. For the best selling games system of all time, there has GOT to be some quirky, obscure games that are really fun. Come on !!! Somebody here has to know something... So out with it!!

Jason Moyer on 26/9/2008 at 14:35

If you don't have Rez for the Dreamcast, I don't remember there being anything horrible about the port and it's much easier to come by the PS2 version. Fatal Frame 1 and 2 are both excellent as well if you don't have the xbox versions.

io organic industrialism on 26/9/2008 at 14:44

Quote Posted by Jason Moyer

Fatal Frame 1 and 2 are both excellent as well if you don't have the xbox versions.

That's what I've heard too, supposed to be scary, right? I'll have to track em down. I did enjoy Silent Hill 1 & 2, played part 2 on PC with my girlfriend, a good time :D

Sulphur on 26/9/2008 at 16:03

Quirky and obscure, eh? Doesn't always equate to fun, though. But let's see...

Shadow of Destiny: An adventure game where you die in the beginning. Fortunately, your dead self strikes a deal with some... thing beyond, and you get to a gadget that allows you to rewind time. Work out why and how you died before it happens to you again.

Caveats: The graphics can be woefully bad, especially in terms of texture resolution. Oh, and did I mention it's an adventure game? Yeah, so there isn't much in the way of action.

Forbidden Siren: A game from the director of Silent Hill, and apparently, made with half of Team Silent in tow. Scary, difficult, and a little different: the characters you play have the ability to sight-jack, which means they can see through the eyes of the lurking dead horrors that roam around. You use this ability to avoid said horrors.

Caveats: Difficult, difficult, difficult. Note the word 'avoid' up there. Don't expect to pick off the monsters here like in Silent Hill - once spotted, you're more or less dead.

Not obscure, but quirky: Katamari Damacy, like Aja said, is original. And fun. It's all about rolling things up. It's addictive. And utterly unlike anything up there, because, at its core, Katamari Damacy is pretty much the sunniest, happiest game ever made.

Caveats: Short, you might not like the time limits, and while it used to be obscure, the fact that it has a bunch of sequels means it's pretty much mainstream now.

EvaUnit02 on 26/9/2008 at 16:36

Michigan: Report from Hell

Produced by Suda51 (Goichi Suda) and developed by Grasshopper Design. It's a quirky horror game. All sorts of bizarre shit is happening in the city of Michigan, Illinois (gotta love Japanese interpretations of Western world settings). You play a cameraman for a network news programme, the game is entirely in first person. The key aspect to the gameplay is making moral decisions. I.e. your reporter is going to be eaten by a monster, do you save her or capture the primo footage to score higher ratings? The lady reporter is about to trip over, do you warn her or get an up-skirt shot?

There's a conveyor belt of lady reporters. If one dies, you'll obtain another.

Warning: The English release was only released in Europe and Australia. Quite rare I'd imagine.

The Red Star

One kick arse shoot/beat 'em up, in the vain of Contra. I can't recommend this game enough. The balance between the three playable characters is perfect. The boss battles in particular are superbly designed.

Fragony on 26/9/2008 at 16:39

Quote Posted by io organic industrialism

Edit: I just noticed all the games I listed have 2d gameplay. I think I'm going through a major 2d kick right now but I want to get back into some 3d games, they just have to be the right games I guess..

Sounds like you are going to simply adore Viewtifull Joe, 2D-gameplay at it's finest with simply amazing graphics.

Oh, and if quirky means unconventional, you really should take a look at Killer7, there isn't really anything like it, strange but good, very disturbing.

Oh, and Okami.

io organic industrialism on 26/9/2008 at 17:18

Quote Posted by Sulphur

Shadow of Destiny

Played that on PC a while back. I thought it was quite neat in fact.

You all can certainly post non-quirky games too.

Regarding the Red Star. I read all the hype about this, "oh, it's so awesome, oh it's such a great game with oldschool gameplay but beatiful new graphics". So I tried it & didn't like it at all. It plays like Double dragon, which as I said -- I am not interested in beat em up games. Same as I didn't care for Astroy Boy- Omega factor on GBA, although everybody cites it as the most awesome game of awesomeness ever. :weird:

june gloom on 26/9/2008 at 18:19

Quote Posted by Koki

MGS2 - It's MGS. If you thought LOST was awesome, this is a game for you.

I was going to say something about how that's really quite off the mark but then I noticed who I was replying to, so I'll just say this: MGS2 is basically Neil Stephenson without the boring suck. But you'd better play MGS1 first or you're going to have no fucking clue what's happening.

Aja on 26/9/2008 at 20:32

Quote Posted by Koki

The only game I could honestly say nothing bad about would be ICO, but I won't go and write psalms about it, because it's not that great either. SOTC is a lot of boredom and nothing happening combined with short, fun moments of actually fighting the Colossi(sp?), and the ratio was so unfavourable that I gave up exactly in the middle and never cared to come back to it.

Okami, other than having so high-pitched music it can drive you insane, is a typical 3D platformer, you played one you played all of them. And no, interesting graphics style does not make it any better.

Man I'm on a (hate)roll, let me dig out my other PS2 games...

Jak and Daxter, another 3D platformer, see above.

You're kinda right about Shadow of the Colossus, but Okami... high-pitched music? More like meticulously composed and arranged, and masterfully utilized within the game. And Okami isn't a even a platformer, and I can't think of any other game that uses a paintbrush to draw your attacks, and seriously man if you're going to criticise something at least criticise it coherently.

As for Jak and Daxter, well, I suppose it begs the question!