The 25 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.