The Best PS2 Games of All Time

Konami's 2004 jungle infiltration asks you to manage a camouflage index, eat what you shoot, and treat your own injuries mid-mission. The sniper duel with The End runs as long as you let it, and leaving the game alone for a week can mean coming back to find he has died of old age. What Steam sells is the 2023 Master Collection Version; Wikipedia's is the only page for the PS2 original.

Three cities, one contiguous state and no loading screens between them, on hardware that shipped in 2000, and Rockstar North's 2004 sprawl still feels indecent. Rockstar delisted the original from digital retailers ahead of The Definitive Edition and restored it later as a Rockstar Store bundle, which is why the link here is Wikipedia. The "Wrong Side of the Tracks" mission has ruined more evenings than any other level on this list.

Team Silent built the fog to hide the PS2's draw distance and ended up with the most frightening weather in games. James Sunderland's pocket radio hisses static when something is close, so you hear the thing before the fog gives it up. Konami's listing on Steam is Bloober Team's remake from October 2024, a different product entirely, which leaves the 2001 game with only its Wikipedia entry.

Fumito Ueda's design method was subtraction: strip out anything that got between you and the story, including the HUD. Sony kept it exclusive to its own machines, PS2 in 2001 and PS3 a decade later, and it is not on Steam in any form. What is left in play is holding Yorda's hand and pulling her along, which turns a bodyguard escort, normally the worst thing in games, into the reason you keep going.

Clover Studio was shut down a few months after this shipped in 2006, and Kamiya has since called its sales a failure. The only Ōkami on Steam is Okami HD from December 2017, a remaster eleven years younger than the disc, so the link goes to Wikipedia. Its trick is the Celestial Brush: pause the world, paint a stroke across the frozen screen, and a slash cuts while a circle makes the sun rise.

Voice acting arrived in the series here, in 2001, and Square built a whole game around being able to hear people talk. Steam only stocks the FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster, two games in one package, which leaves Wikipedia for the PS2 release. The Sphere Grid replaces levels with a board you walk your party across, so growth becomes a route you choose rather than a number that ticks up.

Santa Monica Studio's 2005 debut stayed exclusive to the PS2, and the God of War you find on Steam today is the 2018 Norse game, so the link here is Wikipedia. It opens on a hydra big enough to fill the screen and closes the fight with a button prompt, the quick-time finisher the rest of the decade copied. David Jaffe's team hung combat on the Blades of Chaos, chained to Kratos's forearms so every swing sweeps wide.

Capcom Production Studio 1 shipped this in early 2005 and sent the West a version tuned harder than Japan's, which is why a generation remembers it as brutal. Capcom did sell it standalone on Steam once, as the 2007 Special Edition port; that listing is delisted, and what is left is the Devil May Cry HD Collection, so Wikipedia is where this points. Swapping between Trickster, Swordmaster and Gunslinger mid-combo is where the series found its combat ceiling.

Keita Takahashi pitched this outside Namco's normal channels and built it at the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory for under a million dollars. What Bandai Namco sells on Steam is Katamari Damacy Reroll, so the 2004 disc has only its Wikipedia page. The PS2's memory set the ceiling: the team wanted the ball to shrink as well as grow, found they could not, and so the whole game runs one way, thumbtacks to cows to buildings.

Tetsuya Nomura overheard two producers arguing about 3D movement, volunteered to direct, and came back with Disney and Final Fantasy in one 2002 game. The push here was licensing as much as engineering, getting two catalogs into a single real-time combat system. The Gummi Ship runs between worlds are the toll you pay for it. Steam sells it only as part of a Kingdom Hearts HD ReMIX collection, so Wikipedia holds the page for the PS2 release.

Polyphony Digital's 2004 disc carries, in Wikipedia's words, "over 721 cars from 80 manufacturers, from as early as the 1886 Daimler Motor Carriage", which is a museum you can drive. B-Spec mode lets you sit out the race and direct a hired driver instead, which sounds mad and is oddly gripping. It never came to PC; search Steam for Gran Turismo and the single hit is a racing suit for Sackboy.

Naughty Dog wanted one world with no loading screens, having watched Crash Bandicoot's corridors box them in, and the PS2 let them do it in 2001: you can walk from the first village out to Fire Canyon without a single cut. Power Cells are the currency and they are everywhere. Naughty Dog sells on Steam now, The Last of Us Part I among them, but Jak itself stayed exclusive to PlayStation, so this link is Wikipedia.

Insomniac had just finished the Spyro games when it built this in 2002, and it did not build the renderers alone: Naughty Dog handed over technology from Jak and Daxter on condition that improvements came back. The only Ratchet game on Steam is Rift Apart, so the PS2 one sits on Wikipedia. What that shared tech bought was up to 36 weapons and gadgets, the Suck Cannon among them, which inhales an enemy and fires it back as ammunition.

Criterion made crashing the reward, and EA shipped it for PS2 and Xbox in September 2004. Slam a rival into a wall and you get a Takedown, which refills your boost, so the correct way to play is to drive badly on purpose. The programmers held racing at sixty frames a second, and BAFTA gave it Technical Direction. It never came to PC; the sole Burnout on Steam is Paradise Remastered, hence Wikipedia.