Console of the Month (Feb 2022): PlayStation 2

[SpaceBooger]

I skipped the PS2 and went with the oXBOX for that generation. The oXBOX felt like a sequel to the Dreamcast and I loved the 2K Sports games. I did end up getting a PS2 slim from a friend around the launch of the PS3. Since getting it I have not put too much time into it - almost every game I wanted to play I already played it on the oXBOX (Metal Gear 2&3, GTA Collection, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and more). The games that were not on oXBOX I did get but soon purchased superior versions on other consoles - DQ8 on 3DS (portable RPGs are always better for me), Kingdom Hearts and FFX remastered on PS3 and The Zodiac Age on XBONE.
I have a small collection of PS2 games, but this generation (PS2, oXBOX, GC) was when I was spending more time being out and social that it is my least played/collected generation of games and systems.

[Nemoide]

Like others, I was reluctant to get a PS2 at first. First I was annoyed at it because I saw it as being partly responsible for the demise of the Dreamcast.
But my little brother got one for Christmas one year and while I never played games on it, it served as the family DVD player. And for that generation, I first saw the original Xbox as the successor of the Dreamcast with a lot of interesting Sega games right off the bat. A couple years later, I picked up a Gamecube when the price dropped to $100 and figured I'd never get a PS2.
Later when I was in college, my brother was going to trade his PS2 into EB Games and I instead bought it off him for $50. I mostly bought it to play PS1 games; I knew a lot of folks in college who were into the Final Fantasy series and so I set out to play all the numbered games released at that point in order (something I eventually finished many years later). I feel like I never properly appreciated the PS2 but it does have some great games on it: Dragon Quest VIII is a fantastic RPG, the American Beatmania release led me down the path of playing hardcore rhythm games in arcades, it has more versions of DDR than the Xbox did so I appreciated that variety, and its backwards compatibility made it so that I've never felt a strong urge to own a PS1.
I actually own three PS2s that all have some sort of issue: the original model I bought off my brother that has trouble playing CD games. A slim I bought from one of our charity auctions that has some trouble playing DVD based games. And a Japanese slim that works beautifully but isn't modded so I can't play American games on it. Some day I should probably get those not-totally-working ones repaired and/or modded.

For multiplatform games, it's still my last choice for that generation after Xbox or Gamecube, which tended to have nicer graphics, but PS2 has plenty of really interesting unique titles! There are a bunch of games in my backlog I haven't gotten around to yet that I'm still looking forward to like Rogue Galaxy. And plenty of games I regret not picking up when my local FYE had them all for dirt cheap, like Steambot Chronicles.

[Ziggy]

Wow, so this thread got bumped way down. I could have guessed though. From my experience trading games on the Racketboy forums, the PS2 isn't that popular around here. I've always had a harder time selling PS2 games than any other console. A few times I couldn't even GIVE games away LOL.




I haven't been posting, but I've actually been playing my PS2 this month. I posted in another thread, I've been playing a lot of the Mega Man X series recently. I've been playing the Mega Man X Collection on PS2 a lot. For those that don't know, this is actually a great collection to have. It's still cheap to obtain, and the games all play great. The menus are in 480i, but the games themselves are in 240p. Making this a perfect solution if you're using a CRT. It adds saving for the games that originally only had passwords. These seem to be ports, not emulations, and they run great. The slowdown issues of the first three games are fixed. And load times are improved across the board.






There's a few PS2 games that I would like to try and get to playing this month, but I'll save them for another post.

[Limewater]

The slowdown issues of the first three games are fixed. And load times are improved across the board.

I didn't play a whole lot of Mega Man 4-6. Is the slow-down really significantly less on these?

[Ziggy]

I didn't play a whole lot of Mega Man 4-6. Is the slow-down really significantly less on these?

I've only played X1-4 so far, so I can't really comment on 5 and 6. X4 doesn't have any slow down issues that I can recall. Although I usually don't remember real minor slow down, I don't recall any in X4. But the loading times are definitely faster on the PS2 collection versus the original PS1 game.

[dsheinem]

I bought a PS2 at launch - the first console I did that for. I remember being in college and waiting outside the Gamestop in the Carousel Mall in Syracuse, NY to pick up the console at midnight. I got SSX and Madden at launch along with a DVD or two. I took it back to my first ever apartment and hooked it to the first TV I'd ever bought for myself and I felt like I was on top of the world. It was sweet.

This month I've been dipping into the library some. I am not tooling around with a lot of the "classic" games that I've played to death on the system - these days I typically go to quick/arcadey fixes if I play the console. So, I've played some State of Emergency, some ATV Offroad Fury 3, Some Arctic Thunder (which sucks, it turns out), and hope to toss in a few fighters and retro compilations (the PS2 is a compilation lover's dream console). I hope to play some Cave titles on it to wrap out the month too. In any case, it has been great to hook it up again...

[Raging Justice]

I didn't play a whole lot of Mega Man 4-6. Is the slow-down really significantly less on these?

I've only played X1-4 so far

Honestly, I don't think it's even necessary for people to go beyond that. I think the series peaked with X4 and it was kind of all downhill from there...including the Mega Man Zero series

[Ziggy]

Honestly, I don't think it's even necessary for people to go beyond that. I think the series peaked with X4 and it was kind of all downhill from there...including the Mega Man Zero series

This seems to be a common opinion. I really grew to enjoy MMX 1-4. I will try 5 and 6, despite what people say. I may even try 7 and 8. All in this month though? Probably not.

[alienjesus]

As mentioned early on this thread, I havent given my PS2 much love over the years - I only have a handful of games all of which I picked up on the cheap. Well, to remedy that, I've been looking up the library and have acquired a bunch of new games for the system to look forward to playing. Curious if anyone has played them:



In addition, I'd love to hear more about your favourite games for the system, especially the lesser known games. As you can probably guess by the selection above, I like a quirky game with a bit of colour, and one of the things that put me off the system was how many of the popular games were extremely brown and grey. However, with a library this large, I'm sure there's a ton of cool games I've not seen that aren't like that at all!

[Raging Justice]

As mentioned early on this thread, I havent given my PS2 much love over the years - I only have a handful of games all of which I picked up on the cheap. Well, to remedy that, I've been looking up the library and have acquired a bunch of new games for the system to look forward to playing. Curious if anyone has played them:



In addition, I'd love to hear more about your favourite games for the system, especially the lesser known games. As you can probably guess by the selection above, I like a quirky game with a bit of colour, and one of the things that put me off the system was how many of the popular games were extremely brown and grey. However, with a library this large, I'm sure there's a ton of cool games I've not seen that aren't like that at all!

I've played a little bit of Dark Cloud. It's a fun, little dungeon crawler with real time combat. The combat feels almost like those 3d, Zelda games. You also have different characters with different strengths and weaknesses and you can switch between them. The first character you get for example has a bow and arrow which makes dealing with obnoxious flying bats a LOT easier. Dungeons have a certain number of floors for you to descend as you look for various items. You have to worry about stuff like weapon durability, thirst, as well as your own health. This means you can only do a certain number of floors before having to exit the dungeon...or you die. I think the floors are randomly generated too if I remember correctly.

Also, there is a sort of city building aspect to it. As you find certain items in the dungeons, you can use them to "restore" a city that has lost its buildings and residents. You can choose where to place buildings and residents and there are various pros and cons to where you put them. You can always change your mind so it's no big deal if you don't like how you've set things up.

Lastly, there are these strange sort of boss fights that play out like a rhythm game. Dark Cloud is a weird game, but I enjoyed what I played of it

I have personally never played a bad Klonoa game. They are all great platformers. The console ones are more platform focused, while the GBA ones focus a bit more on puzzle solving, but there is still platforming involved. Klonoa 2 is much like the first one on the PS 1, but with better graphics. Basically, a really fun and well designed, side scrolling, platform game.

I've never played PaRappa 2, but have played the first PaRappa as well as the Un Jammer Lammy spinoff. I would assume it's similar. It's a music based game where buttons appear on screen and you hit the buttons shown according to the musical beat. Games like this can be fun or frustrating depending on how good you are at keeping up with the beat of the music and timing your button presses correctly. Usually, these games do allow you some room for free styling though, but whether or not the game rewards you for it is completely random. PaRappa games are fun in general because they tend to be weird, trippy, and fun experiences with odd characters and settings. However, how the games judge your performance doesn't always seem completely accurate. So you may have the occasional failure even though you thought you were doing good

I've never played that particular Katamari game, but they are all quirky games where you roll a ball around a planet as it gradually gets bigger as things stick to it, eventually getting big enough that you can roll over cars, buildings, etc. You're basically collecting items for some weird, space king. Fun games, but rolling the ball around takes some getting used to as the controls are a bit weird. You also have to deal with level time limits, which is frustrating. I personally HATE time limits in games. I'm not a fan of speed running either. The appeal of Katamari games though is the weirdness and the strange humor that comes with it.

Ape Escape I'm not familiar with, but I've heard it's a good game. Overall, that seems to be a good haul you got there.