Top 10 PS2 Exclusives

IT’S CHRISTMAS!!! And you know what that means don’t you? It’s time to whip out your wallet and hand over your hard-earned cash for some seriously good games. In this special series of VideoGamer.com Top Tens, we list the best exclusive games for each of the seven major platforms, and tell you why they’re so ruddy brilliant. Today we cast judgement on Sony’s evergreen PS2. Is it the greatest console of all time? These ten games suggest it might just be.

10. Metal Gear Solid 3 – 2006

Truth be told, Metal Gear Solid 2 was a disappointment. It looked the business, and the first level, which saw Solid Snake infiltrate a rain-soaked tanker, was stunning, but stand-in hero Raiden didn’t cut it. Thankfully, Hideo Kojima learned from the mistake and saved Raiden from further embarrassment in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, replacing him with Solid Snake look-a-like Naked Snake. The game’s camouflage-fuelled stealth gameplay is superb, and Kojima’s trademark lengthy cutscenes are stylised genius. Better than its predecessor in almost every way, MGS3 is an essential inclusion in any discerning PS2-owner’s collection.

9. Final Fantasy XII – 2007

Final Fantasy XII dares to be different. Battles can be avoided entirely by simply running around monsters. The trademark transition between exploration and combat is nowhere to be seen. Party members are controlled with a curious “gambit” system, which dictated their actions under certain circumstances. And the “license” system determines which abilities and equipment are used by characters. It’s not your typical Final Fantasy adventure, but it is a breath of fresh air for the series, one that revamps many of the tried and trusted mechanics the series is famous for. Some fans don’t like it, and, admittedly, it’s grossly inaccessible for series newcomers, but for everyone else it’s one of the greatest Japanese role-playing games ever created. Fans of Square’s superb PlayStation RPG, Vagrant Story, are guaranteed to love it – FFXII is Yasumi Matsuno’s handiwork.

8. Final Fantasy X – 2002

Sure, Tidus, Final Fantasy X’s spiky-haired, teenage angst-ridden lead character, is annoying as hell, and the puzzle sections make you want to hurl your controller across the room, but everything else about this epic Japanese role-playing game is superb. The graphics are great, the combat’s rewarding and the story’s a real tear-jerker. It’s also absolutely huge, and it will easily take you over a hundred hours to uncover all of its tantalising secrets. Perhaps its most memorable feature is the “Sphere Grid”, an easy to understand and often fun system for levelling up your party members. Speaking of party members, they’re great. It’s impossible not to fall head over heels for the softly-spoken Yuna, to fantasise over the gothic Lulu, and to laugh at Rikku’s gobbledygook. There are few better role-players out on any console.

7. Devil May Cry – 2001

Hideki Kamiya’s stylish hack and slash effortlessly back flips its way into this best PS2 games of all time list. Main man Dante is anime cool personified, and his gothic gun firing and sword slashing are the stuff of action game fans’ dreams. DMC spawned scores of desperate copycats, some rubbish, some incredible, but the one that started it all might just be the best. You won’t find a more responsive, silky smooth or rewarding combat system anywhere else. Slice, juggle, jump, shoot, slice – when you hit the “zone” you feel like a painter brushing away enemies with casual flicks of the wrists. DMC is a work of art, and one of the greatest action games ever created.

6. Virtua Fighter 4 – 2002

SEGA’s Virtua Fighter isn’t for everyone. That much is obvious. Compared with the instantly gratifying Tekken Tag Tournament, for example, it’s positively pedestrian. But those willing to invest the time into its complex 3D systems will be rewarded tenfold. Virtua Fighter is technical, bone crunching, and considered. It’s the fighting game for fighting game aficionados. It’s also a graphical powerhouse, with stunning backgrounds and superbly animated fighters. More than one of the PS2’s best games, Virtua Fighter 4 is one of the greatest fighting games of all time.

5. Ico – 2006

Japanese developer Fumito Ueda is such a talented sod that he has two games on this list. You can probably guess what the other one is, but for now we’re talking about Ico – a playable fairytale, cult hit, and favourite pin-up of the games-are-art brigade. You could argue that Ico’s genius is due to its sense of balance: it’s accessible without being overly simple, beautiful without being pretentious, subtle without humdrum lacunae. It’s the kind of game that makes critics simper and gush like giddy schoolgirls, and rightly so – because Ico is a thing of beauty.

4. God of War – 2005

Scores of developers copied Capcom’s Devil May Cry. Few did so successfully. Even less managed to surpass it. But two who did were Sony Santa Monica’s David Jaffe and Cory Barlog. The game was God of War, and what a game. It was bloody, visceral and gorgeous. But, crucially, it was easier than Devil May Cry, and thus appealed to a more broad audience. This is not to say God of War is overly simplistic. On the contrary, there are few games as unashamedly hardcore. But it was “doable” by most, and beatable by most of them. God of War started something special. The Blades of Chaos are spinning…

3. Gran Turismo 4 – 2005

The Gran Turismo series can take all the credit for kick-starting the current trend for super-realistic driving games, and in the minds of many boy racers, nobody does it better. As with any iterative franchise, GT 4 is very much a recognisable descendent of the original game – but by Jove, it’s one hell of a great grandson. Consider this: if you embarked on a quest to see each of the game’s cars, spending an entire day with each model, it would take you nearly two years before you’d finish the job. Polyphony Digital somehow squeezed over 700 jam jars onto a single DVD, along with 51 tracks to test them on – and let’s not forget that this is the only PS2 game that can be viewed in 1080i. Not a bad achievement, all in all.

2. God of War 2 – 2007

Towards the end of the PS2’s glorious life (we know you can still buy it now, but you know what we mean), a number of games came out exclusively for the system that would have seemed impossible back in 2000. One of them was God of War 2, a game that made a mockery of the perceived graphical power of the console. It was a beautiful rollercoaster ride through hell, with action pouring from every orifice. Speaking of orifices, bald-headed mentalist Kratos and his Blades of Chaos were adept at tearing the game’s many enemies new ones, then watching as their insides spilled out all over the shop. Adrenaline-pumping action so good it makes the wait for God of War III almost unbearable.

1. Shadow of the Colossus – 2006

A video game that makes you feel rotten for killing the badguys? You’d think it couldn’t possibly work – but then on paper, who would back a project that consists of nothing but boss fights? Shadow of the Colossus is a game that confounds our expectations. It nimbly clambers up our back, plunges a sword into our weak-spot, then stands aside as everything comes crashing down to Earth. It forces us to question everything we know about the medium, and yet at heart it’s just another recreation of the oldest of stories: David versus Goliath, Man versus The Monster. In short, this game is a giant – a behemoth that casts a long shadow over everything that surfaces in its wake.

Check back tomorrow for our run down of the ten greatest PC-exclusive games.