The Playstation 3 has been out for nearly 2 years now, but the Playstation 2 shows little signs of slowing down yet. Sure the exclusive titles have all dried up, but titles are still showing up on that crazy black box and look to be for at least another year.
Last week Alex and me chose our favorite games from the PS2’s launch. As a result, I wound up thinking a lot about that first year of owning a PS2- a year that was as exciting as it was ultimately disappointing.
Having been out for close to 8 years, few people seem to talk about the year between the system’s launch and the debut of the AAA titles. SO that’s why I’m going to review all of the games that I owned that first year of PS2*.
Armored Core 2 – 8/10
Building robots and fighting against your friends is great, especially when they’re named “Turok’s Dick” and “BANTA CLAUS”.
Ace Combat 4 – 8/10
I’ve played every Ace Combat game, and 4 is one of the first games I claimed was “almost photo realistic”. Ace Combat 5 is in every way superior, though by then you realize every Ace Combat mission is exactly the same.
Dark Cloud – Ted/10
I had this, played it a little, but quickly it came to be in unofficial and alternating possession of Ted and Alex. They loved it.
Extermination – 4/10
No one cares about this game, a Resident Evil rip-off from Sony. It was pretty lame, with a fairly gay main hero, but it did feature better action than Resident Evil games of that time, and you could customize your one game with all sorts of cool shit. That’s at least a little “next gen”.
Final Fantasy X – 3/10
I hate this game. It is so incredibly gay and sounded the death knell for Square games as I knew (and loved) them.
Gungriffon Blaze – 8/10
This game is so much fun- you can and do blow everything up. The fuel-air bomb made up for the shitty controls and only 6 levels.
Grand Theft Auto III – 9/10
I hate organized crime stories, but this is the first game where you can do whatever you want and it is super satisfying.
Jak & Daxter – 7/10
This game was a lot of fun and technically marvelous with no load times and constant motion, but was, I dunno, too kiddy.
Klonoa 2 – 8/10
This feels so much like a PS1 game in terms of its weirdness and music and levels and everything. Really pleasant and fun.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty – 8/10
By the time MGS2 came out, the PS2 was established, and while it failed to be as impressive as MGS1 it was a whole lot more fun to play around with. Dragging dead guys around really made a difference in my life.
Onimusha – 9/10
This was one of the first truly quality games that came out for PS2. Genuinely creepy and with awesome sword fighting.
Okage: Shadow King – 5/10
I expected a lot from this RPG, which looked very interesting, and supposedly a sense of humor. Ultimately it was far too boring, like a Dragon Quest game but trying too hard to be quirky and “Tim Burtonesque”.
Rayman 2 Revolution – 9/10
Probably my favorite 3D platformer this side of Banjo Kazooie. The game itself was older, but they added an over world that was cool.
Ring of Red – 7/10
This Konami strategy game featured a neat premise (mechs won World War 2, lots of Germans in Japan) and interesting real-time elements in the battles, but ultimately was kind of tedious.
Red Faction – 7/10
A pretty boring game, but the ability to blow up all of the environment (GEOMOD) was so great and so next-gen that I loved it at the time. Especially multiplayer matches where we borrowed into the ground to lead our opponent’s into a vicious viper den.
Smuggler’s Run – 7/10
See last week’s List Jr. Ok maybe it’s not that good.
Summoner – 4/10
Worthless, but part of me still thinks it is great (a la Quest 64). The only reason people will remember this is because of the genuinely hilarious video of the characters playing Dungeons and Dragons with each other.
Sky Odyssey – h/10
This game cannot be reviewed, it is too mysterious.
Timesplitters – 5/10
The most average first person shooter ever, but you could build your own levels and the shit flew HECKA fast.
Zone of the Enders – 7/10
Even though I liked the MGS 2 demo that came packed with it more, Zone of the Enders had some of my favorite mech fighting and a pretty atmospheric setting.
*I want to know how I OWNED all of these games, and how I can get those $12,000 dollars back.
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