The Best PlayStation 2 Games of All Time

While PS2 launched with a new entry in gaming’s most popular mech suit action series, Armored Core, it was also host to one that, frankly, should’ve gotten way more attention. Produced by Metal Gear Solid maestro Hideo Kojima, Zone of the Enders is a thrilling third-person hack-and-slash action game that aimed to be the gaming equivalent of Mobile Suit Gundam.

While Armored Core relished in labored player choice around each of its robots’ individual parts, Zone of the Enders was more concerned with blazing fast action, allowing players to defy gravity in mid-air mech-suit combat across all axes that felt revolutionary at the time. Its anime-inspired story was often nonsensical, but aligned with the proclivities of the gonzo auteur Kojima, and imbued the bedlam with a dire sense of urgency. While many games on this list might have seen loads of sequels or even current revivals, Zone of the Enders remains mostly a memory well deserving of resurrection.

Following the crazy success of the Resident Evil series, Capcom decided that the best way to guarantee more hits was to apply the same tanklike design and horror ethos to a whole slew of new IP with games like Parasite Eve (1998) and Dino Crisis (1999). But of all the Resident Evil-likes, the samurai-themed Onimusha was the best effort at creating something that could stand alongside its acclaimed zombie series.

Although a whole trilogy of Onimusha games were released in for the PS2 in rapid succession, it was the first game, Warlords, that remains most memorable. Set in the Sengoku period, the story follows samurai Samanosuke Akechi in his battle against demonic forces that have aligned with the army of the late daimyō Oda Nobunaga. Trading in guns for blades, Onimusha is a great period take on the Resident Evil formula with a hack-and-slash mentality that gives the series its own distinct identity.

Across four entries on the original PlayStation, Twisted Metal became one of the premier franchises for Sony, and helped bolster its portfolio of mature-themed titles across unique genres. Although the odd little subgenre of vehicular combat games mostly remained niche by the time the PS2 rolled around, the console delivered what could be considered the apex of that niche with Twisted Metal: Black.

Using the horsepower of its new platform, Black played like a dream compared to its kin, with a healthy frame-rate that remained stable no matter how much mayhem ensued across its sprawling levels. The story took on a noticeable darker tone, turning all its cast like the serial killer clown Sweet Tooth, into tragic figures trapped inside an insane asylum. Easily the best game in the series, it should have been a springboard for future games, but ended up being a high point for a franchise that mostly drifted into obscurity, with just a handful of minor entries until it came back into the zeitgeist with a live-action TV adaptation in 2023.

One of multiple Sony characters that leveraged to become the brand’s mascot, à la Nintendo’s Mario, Sly Cooper was probably the furthest from a real contender, but his games made for compelling third-person platformer experiences.

With a slick, cel-shaded aesthetic, Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper games hold up better visually than most others of their era, but the third entry in the series really stands out. Unlike its other Sony-produced cousins, the duo-centric Jak and Daxter and Rachet & Clank, Sly focuses on a singular protagonist and his cadre of thieving friends for a stealth-based experiences predicated on perfect heists. Mascot platformers were a dime a dozen during this era, but Sly’s particular blend of sneaking gameplay and eye-popping aesthetics elevated the series from the pack, with the third entry perfecting the formula before its eventual sunsetting.

Another multiplatform game that ended up being essential to any PS2 owner’s library, The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is still regarded as one of the best action-adventure games of its era. Reinventing the side-scrolling series as a fast-paced third-person platformer, the new take on the Prince let players manipulate the flow of time with an innovative mechanic that let them rewind after making a miscalculated jump or pratfall.

Subsequent entries would hue tonally darker and add new features, but the first game of this new continuity remains practically perfect in its elegant controls and simplicity. With easily readable terrain that makes platforming puzzles feel fair, but completion well-earned, it’s still a joy to pick up and play The Sands of Time today.

Despite not technically being a PlayStation exclusive, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a series that’s always associated with Sony’s systems. In fact, the third entry basically appeared on everything — from the OG PS1 to the Game Boy Color — but it remained one of PS2’s most successful and fondly remembered games.

Although it’s mostly known for incremental improvements, it’s hard to complain about iteration when the bones of Tony Hawk Pro Skater are so good. A graphical bump on the PS2 over the previous generation of hardware give it just enough of a new facelift to feel fresh, but this version of the game also included an online mode utilizing the console’s network adapter. Like its predecessors, the third Tony Hawk game is also well-known for its banger of a soundtrack, featuring tracks from The Ramones, Motörhead, and CKY.

The point of most racing games is to stay on the course, neatly taking turns and generally avoiding soft bumps and errors that will eat away at the clock. Burnout wants you to finish, too, but also really relishes in the mayhem of a head-on collision. EA’s hyper-paced racing series rewards players for pushing their vehicles to limits of speed and control, with each near-crash adding to the score and providing just a little more juice to entice riskier and more reckless gameplay.

The best of the batch is Burnout 3, subtitled “Takedown” for good reason. The new central mechanic of this entry is the ability to ram into opponents until they violently crash, turning an already hectic racer into a fighting game on wheels. Provoking the competition will cause them to behave more aggressively and erratically, adding another layer to the risk/reward dynamics of psychotic fantasy driving.

There was a point in gaming where just about every sport under the sun was represented regularly as part of EA’s portfolio. The PS2 launched with the beloved snowboarding title SSX, but its sequel is the one that most people remember. Leaning into the “extreme” part of X-Games, SSX Tricky turned a mostly cartoonish downhill racer into a lavishly over-the-top spectacle.

From the opening moments, the game hits hard and fast with a bombastic demo scene paired with Run-DMC’s rap classic “It’s Tricky,” which instantly sets the tone. The premise of Tricky is basically a downhill derby on steroids, where players can catch ludicrous air and string together physics-defying combos of moves that would make Tony Hawk blush. Its colorful cast of characters and crunchy controls make Tricky a riot, and it tops the list of older franchises that fans desperately want to see make a modern comeback.

After pulling off a hat trick with the superb Crash Bandicoot trilogy (and a kart racer!) on the PS1, Naughty Dog went full Nineties-era Chicago Bulls to do it again. Their second threepeat came in the form of the Jak and Daxter series for PS2 (which once again punctuated with its own racing game), which kicked off early in the console’s North American run shortly after its 2001 debut.

An open-world 3D platformer, the first Jack and Daxter game, The Precursor Legacy, feels in many ways like the natural evolution of mascot franchises like Mario and Spyro, all while creating its own comedic voice. With a team of Hollywood animators working on the game, it helped rapidly evolve the technology of cartoonish game visuals for the next generation of PlayStation, and while its successors would veer in very different directions tonally, the original remains a wonderful platformer, and one of the best of its kind from the time. Although Naughty Dog went on to push gaming into new cinematic heights with Uncharted and The Last of Us, you can’t help but hope that they’ll someday revisit more whimsical material like Jak and Daxter.

Rhythm games hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers. Arcade favorites like Dance Dance Revolution and the drum-based Taiko no Tatsujin had profound cult followings, building IRL communities where players could be swept up by musicality over gunplay. Harmonix’s Guitar Hero begged the question of how well a communal music game could do when every living room and dorm suddenly becomes a rock show.

Using a plastic guitar peripheral, players can strum along, pressing fret buttons and pulling the whammy bar to perform pretty decent covers of classic rock hits like Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” and Kiss’ “Strutter.” It’s mostly iterative of the first game, but Guitar Hero II built on everything that worked the first time around to create a microcosm in time when just about everyone was playing this game, all getting a quick education in music history to add to their LimeWire queue. A version of Guitar Hero lives on today in Fortnite Festival, but in the old days, without the ubiquity and abundance of streaming music and saturation, getting together with friends for jam session had a special novelty.

Every great game platform needs its definitive racer, and for PlayStation, that’s almost always going to be Gran Turismo. Unlike breezier, more arcadey franchises of the time, Gran Turismo has always been billed as “the real driving sim,” with an emphasis on hyper accuracy around all its vehicles and tracks, which are distinctively modeled after real-life counterparts to a tee.

After a strong start on the PS2 with Gran Turismo 3, the fourth entry upped the ante with extremely upgraded graphics and a complex physics system that impacted everything from the weight of each car to how the wheels pitch while braking. Pushing the PS2 to its technical limits, it’s astonishing how good this game looks on the hardware it’s grinding.

The product of one of the most unlikely team-ups in gaming history, Kingdom Hearts brought together two obsessive fan bases — JRPG fans and Disney acolytes — for a bonkers multiversal crossover. On paper, nothing about the game should work: a group of Final Fantasy-coded kids are sucked into the various worlds of Disney properties to help root out some kind of magical rot. The plot gets extensively more convoluted with each entry, but in the original game, it was mostly a gibberish excuse to send players headfirst into the animated realities of Mickey Mouse, Hercules, and Aladdin.

Outside of the infectious novelty of meeting and fighting alongside multiple generations’ worth of beloved children’s characters, Kingdom Hearts also introduced a groundbreaking real-time combat system that’s now standard in Square Enix’s RPGs. Directed by Tetsuya Nomura, who is now basically the torchbearer for all things Final Fantasy, it was a glaring look into the crystal ball for how today’s biggest RPGs would look and play.

It’s kind of funny that, despite being the biggest console of all time, the PS2 was extremely light on first-person shooters. But what it lacked in games like Halo, it more than made up for with whip fast third-person action games like Devil May Cry, which gave its white-haired hero Dante an endless stream of bullets to plug into demons at a clip.

A prequel to the first game, Dante’s Awakening tells the story of the young demon hunter and his race to prevent his twin brother, Vergil, from erecting a cataclysmic portal to another world. A 2006 re-release let players control Vergil, too, but both versions expertly utilize Dante’s wry, flippant attitude that’s in contact juxtaposition to how serious the proceedings should be. Devil May Cry is one of the most celebrated action series ever, standing alongside the likes of Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta as experiences that are intended to be profoundly stupid, yet endlessly entertaining.

One of Sony’s greatest strengths as a leader in the games industry has long been its willingness to let more outlandish artistic visions slip through in between its blockbuster releases designed for broad appeal. Ico is one of those games; developed over the course of four years at a time when players could expect a new gargantuan-sized Grand Theft Auto each Christmas, the fact that it exists at all feels like a blessing.

Ico centers on the simple premise of a full-length escort mission (gaming’s most notoriously maligned concept). Players control an outcast boy with horns named Ico, who must help the princess Yorda escape her confinement in a castle. It’s mostly a slow and steady litany of puzzles to solve, but the game’s minimalist aesthetic and cinematic effects like bloom lighting give every frame an ethereal feel. Ico utilizes the PS2 hardware to show that not every game needs to be maximalist, and feels like an early example of how creative design and modest ambition would later thrive in the indie scene.

The 2000s was a decade where the last vestige of old game design meant that studios could successfully churn sequel after sequel nearly annually without ever really taking any dips in quality. Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal is the third game in the cartoon shooter series, although it’d be easy to forget; there were 10 installments of Ratchet & Clank from 2002 to 2009 alone.

But for the PS2 era of the franchise, Up Your Arsenal is a clear pinnacle, with the biggest assortment of ridiculous gadgets, drivable vehicles, and even a newly introduced online multiplayer mode. The race to be the face of Sony’s system led to many potential mascots popping up during this period, but of the lot only the duo of Ratchet & Clank remains, having just reappeared in recent years with one of the best PS5 games currently available. Trekking back to this older entry makes it easy to see why the series has such staying power.

Although the PS2 had an outsized share of blockbuster series, it wasn’t lacking for weird little games for freaks. Katamari Damacy is the ultimate example of an idea so bizarrely surreal that its mere existence feels like some kind of corporate prank.

The premise sees a god-like being, the King of All Cosmos, accidentally destroying all the stars and moons while drunk; it’s up to his son, the diminutive Prince, to gather enough resources to rebuild the celestial bodies. Those resources consist of literally everything on Earth, with players rolling a very sticky magical ball around each stage, sucking up whatever’s in their path as the junk heap grows. It begins with small things like paper clips and crayons, but before long, the prince is steamrolling houses and cities to bring back the moon. Katamari Damacy never really starts to make sense, and that’s to its credit. The cult favorite doesn’t need to concede to normalcy when its grip is more than strong enough to suck in even the most unwilling observers.

Everyone’s got their favorite fighting game. For arcade heads and Super Nintendo aficionados, it was some version of Street Fighter II; for early adopters of Sega’s doomed platforms Saturn and Dreamcast (and later Xbox), it might be Dead or Alive. For PlayStation fans, it almost certainly Tekken.

Namco’s 3D action series has always been a technological showstopper, usually appearing first in arcades before being ported to PlayStation, where the power of the disc-based system shined with all its polygonal glory. Tekken 5 was the second mainline entry for PS2, and cranked everything great about the franchise to the max. With 32 characters from across the martial arts spectrum and one of the soapiest stories in gaming, it’s pound-for-pound the best fighting game on PlayStation 2, and one of the best of all time.

After making what might’ve been the single best game for the first PlayStation with Metal Gear Solid, creator Hideo Kojima aimed to up the ante and cinematic flourish of his subsequent sequels — each in some way intended (but failing) to be his last. While Metal Gear Solid 2 mostly rehashed the story and controls of its predecessor, the prequel Snake Eater reinvented what a Metal Gear game could be.

Following Naked Snake, the mentor and genetic father of the series’ original protagonist Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3 forces players into a jungle-bound espionage mission where survival is paramount. Eating rations and wildlife replenishes stamina, and everything from bullet wounds to scorpion stings demand medical treatment in-menu. Long considered a favorite among fans, the game pared down some of the philosophical navel-gazing of its predecessor, but only just so. It remains a Kojima game through and through, where soap box pontificating about the nature of war brushes against villains who spit hornets and scantily clad spies flaunt their bodies to entice teenage appetites. But 20 years later, it’s an experience that’s still influencing how cinematic storytelling can be used in interactive media.

The origins of Resident Evil 4 are somewhat funny. After Sony emerged as the next big thing in gaming, pilfering Nintendo’s biggest franchises and third-party partnerships from under their nose, you’d think that Capcom’s horror franchise would make its big next-gen debut on the PS2. Except, it didn’t; Resident Evil 4 was one of a very select handful of mature-themed titles that found a home on Nintendo’s GameCube as part of a short-lived exclusivity deal — at least initially. About six months later, it arrived on PlayStation, where its sales vastly outpaced its maiden run thanks to the platform’s larger install base.

Resident Evil 4 is seminal for many reasons. The first of the series to eschew the clunky, tanklike controls of the older entries, it helped popularized the over-the-shoulder, third-person shooting mechanics that are now standard in pretty much every action game of its ilk. It also moved away from zombies and claustrophobic urban environments in lieu of an eerie rural town in Spain. Destined to be endlessly remade and re-released, it’s generally considered a franchise peak, but its initial popularity was partially due to its arrival on PS2.

At the time of its release, there hadn’t been a game as terrifying as Silent Hill 2. While the big horror series of the time, Resident Evil, was trafficking in zombie-laden jump scares, Konami’s eerie opus invested more in an oppressive, somber atmosphere that left players feeling isolated and questioning every inch of their pixelated screen. Within the dense fog of the streets and alleys of Silent Hill, only the mangled flesh of Eldritch frights loomed, perpetually creeping from the borders of the mind to the screen itself.

Set in the epicenter of American horror — rural Maine — the story follows James Sunderland, a man drawn to the idyllic town by a letter from his deceased wife. Hoping to find closure in their once-lakeside getaway, James’ story devolves into madness as aberrations begin creating physical manifestations of his personal trauma. Armed with just a flashlight and an unrelenting will, it’s up to the player to find a way to free themselves from the torment. Silent Hill 2 arrived at a point where horror games were evolving beyond the novelty of simple scares, weaving a more humanistic kind of horror, and still stands as one of the crown jewels of the genre — with a recently-released modern remake giving the game a fresh coat of paint. But the original holds up well, and remains a seminal example of how the immersive aspect of horror works just as well, if not better, in gaming than any other medium.

Although PlayStation is the kind of ecosystem that has it all, there are areas where it’s historically fallen short of the competition. Despite nailing its own takes on mascot platformers and RPGs, the specific experience of a fantasy adventure in the vein of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda eluded the first generation of Sony hardware, and much of the second. That is, until Ōkami arrived at the tail end of the PS2 generation.

Steeped in Japanese mythology and folklore, Ōkami aimed to give non-Nintendo players their own version of a sweeping fantasy epic where exploration offers rewards in the form of new abilities and subtle storytelling beats. Its cel-shaded visuals give the game a vivid aesthetic that’s held up extremely well compared to more realistic games of the era, with the flourish of sumi-e ink painting that endemic to Ōkami’s Japanese roots.

The spiritual successor to Ico, Shadow of the Colossus took the ethereal tone and minimalist setting of Sony’s experimental puzzle adventure and imbued the journey with exponentially greater scope. Rather than escorting a damsel through the hallows of an abandoned castle, the game lets players take on the role of Wander, a stripped-down hero whose goal to slay the towering colossi feels insurmountable.

While series like God of War would make an action spectacle out of ascending titanic bodies and slaying deities of the old world, Shadow of the Colossus bathes its violence in melancholy. The sixteen colossi roaming the environment don’t feel inherently evil or deserving of death, and their terrifying majesty feels in tune with the game’s natural world. Each behemoth requires a multi-part gauntlet to scale and slay; it’s an experience one could call a boss-rush, but there’s no urgency to race through its challenges. It’s an esoteric game where taking in the beauty is part of the fun, and felling each giant makes you feel equally bad as you do triumphant.

Final Fantasy may have gotten its start on Nintendo, but its biggest and most successful eras, from VII to X, were all exclusive crown jewels for PlayStation’s library. After a rapid-fire sequence of three ambitious games for PS1, the tenth main installment of Square’s legendary RPG franchise arrived in the very first year of the PS2, instantly cementing the platform as yet another must-have console for fans of role-playing games.

The technological leap from IX to X was jaw-dropping, turning the once-text based narrative into a fully voiced cinematic epic. Each Final Fantasy has its own self-contained story and world, and the bright, colorful realm of Spira felt like a huge shift away from previous entries, which bounced between medieval settings and elevated sci-fi. With the ability to swap in the entire cast of characters at will into the expanded party during battle, its gameplay felt bigger and more strategic than ever; it’s turn-based systems representing a high-point for classic RPG standards right at the fulcrum of the genre where action-oriented styles began to take over.

It’s absolutely wild to think that Rockstar Games was able to develop not one, or two, but three full-length Grand Theft Auto games from 2001 to 2004, each exponentially more ambitious than the last. Compare that to today, where fans have waited 12 years for the latest installment, and it shows how the business of game development has changed entirely.

The third PS2 entry, San Andreas, is in many ways the very best Grand Theft Auto has ever been. Taking its crime-movie trappings away from the mafioso world of previous games and positioning its story in a fictional facsimile of South Central LA, it opened the storytelling potential in incredible ways. The world of San Andreas is sprawling — seemingly impossible so for the time. With so many missions, side-quests, and mini-games to indulge in, outside of just cruising around listening to the radio, it feels endlessly playable. How so much content and artistry were packed into just a single game from 2004 remains a technical marvel. For many PlayStation 2 owners, Grand Theft Auto is the definitive game of the era — the one that’s soaked up the lion’s share of their time and memories sitting in front of the TV before the responsibilities of adulthood set in.

When you look back at all that the PlayStation 2 was able to accomplish, from hosting generational RPGs and action games to squeezing out logic-defying open worlds with hardware weaker than an iPhone 6, it’s a tall task to pick one game that exemplifies everything that made the console great. But, in fact, there is one game that not just shows what Sony was capable of then (and now), but feels like a perfect encapsulation of gaming culture of the 2000s. Santa Monica Studio’s God of War is that game, a product of its time that could’ve only existed at this distinct juncture.

God of War is everything that defines the modern concept of a first-party PlayStation game. It’s heavy on cinematic storytelling, with cutscenes that play out like extended movies. Its action is top-notch, breathlessly weaving players through scripted set pieces with the scope that Hollywood execs could only dream of. But despite its film-like qualities, it remains definitively a video game — an experience that’s defined by verbs like run, jump, and punch. And, oh, what verbs they are.

God of War II picks up after the first game where the disgraced Greek general Kratos has killed the titular god, Ares, and taken up his mantle despite his status as a non-deity. Betrayed and killed by Zeus, Kratos must fight his way out of the Underworld and turn back time, slaughtering his way through the Greek pantheon along the way. The story is profoundly juvenile; Kratos is the ultimate edgelord — driven entirely by hatred and rage, speaking only in grunts and menacing one-liners. Using the Chains of Chaos, his violent tendencies empower players to rip through swaths of foes and cinematically eviscerate mythological figures with extreme prejudice.

What it lacks in maturity (but not mature content), it makes up for with some of the best action gameplay ever designed. Kratos’ story is silly, but works wonders as fuel for dynamic combat with a perpetually self-sustaining sense of urgency. Each action is punctuated by stylish glory kills, and the boss encounters stretch the limits of what players think will be possible in a game. These days, much of this in commonplace, but the scope and sheer entertainment value of God of War is the blueprint. As games inch ever closer toward becoming playable movies, its greatest teaching is that, no matter how showy things get, it all needs to be in service of the interactive experience. That’s why it’s a video game.