PlayStation 2 Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando (Sony, 2003)

Upping the ante, upping the firepower.

The single most genius sequel issue Insomniac sidestepped for Going Commando is "why, if I had it before, do I have to get it again?". Your old guns? Give the game an old save and you'll have 'em free of charge again (though they might be a little weaker next to the big new guns). Your O2 mask and Hydro Pack? You start the game with it, go diving as ya please. This is no retread—Going Commando takes you to a new galaxy, with new weapons, higher stakes, some space dogfighting and now hoverbike races, and plenty of other little minigames, battle arenas, and post-game content to get distracted by. Ratchet grew up a bit! There's even progressive scan! Oh, it's a crackin' good time.

Ratchet and Clank, now galaxy-wide heroes for stopping Chairman Drek's dastardly plans, are transported to a new galaxy and recruited to retrieve a cute little stolen prototype gremlin called a Protopet for the appropriately-named Megacorp. They soon learn the situation isn't quite what it looked like, and it's up to them to fix what they'd inadvertently broken. Again, not a deep story, but a highly amusing one, and a great excuse to take you to a new set of space stations, muddy backwater planets, and vast deserts and tundras to retrieve crystals for strange shaman types (great for zoning out with your chat over!).

For difficulty, the game keeps it fair with weapons and your health that scale the more destruction you dish out. Your vast arsenal this time includes the satisfying crunchy Blitz Gun, the sniper-friendly Pulse Rifle, the, er, suggestive Lava Gun (and its disappointing upgrade), and the absolutely overpowered, playfield-leveling Bouncer cannon. If I can advise you on anything, it's to learn them all, because boy does the right gun come in handy sometimes! If anything, I feel Going Commando is slightly shorter than the first game, and almost to make up for the obnoxious difficulty of the Drek fight, this one's final boss goes down really quick. I don't mind a game you can breeze through, though. You want more? Get a lot more of it here, and quick.

[#] Rock Band (MTV Games, 2007)

A slimmed-down, yet still highly enjoyable, experience.

The transition to a new console generation always presents a challenge for developers. Their ideas can be realized in IMAX at long last, sure, but the old hardware is still selling great, and you can't just leave it behind, can you? Credit the always-inventive Harmonix for coming up with a compromise for Rock Band: rather than risk playability getting the four-player madness of the next-gen versions going on the aging PS2, this version uses pre-rendered video backgrounds that ensure the game plays silky smooth no matter what's happening on stage. It does mean a loss of a lot of the next-gen features, but it was absolutely the right move.

If you don't know what Rock Band adds over Harmonix's previous Guitar Hero, you get to play with a band of up to three other people, adding a drummer and vocalist into the mix of guitar and bass. There really is something infectious about the co-op music game experience, especially when you get such a great library of iconic classic bands (The Who, Kiss, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Boston, The Clash, Bon Jovi) and more modern ones (Radiohead, Garbage, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, Nirvana, Soundgarden) to go through with your friends. Sadly, I've gotten to experience it very seldom in my life, but highly recommended if you can get a band together.

For what the PS2 version specifically loses, your World Tour mode effectively consists of the same tiered Career mode as Guitar Hero II, just without earning money. (And no playable bass!) The only thing to unlock here are more songs, hardly a bad thing, though I did have to use a downloaded copy when my childhood one froze up during a bonus track and I couldn't unlock the rest. The Practice Mode, due to using its own audio, is also severely limited and only provides you one slower speed (!) and no way to practice sections full speed (???). They did what they could to fit this on a dual-layer DVD, I guess. It's not the ideal way to experience Rock Band at all, but even cut down, it's still a good time.

[#] Rock Band 2 (MTV Games, 2008)

Going out on the console that birthed them with a bang.

The original Rock Band for PS2, while still fun, was definitely a cut down experience from its seventh gen variants. It seems Harmonix and Pi Studios were determined to give the ancient PS2 a farewell tour worth paying for, though, because Rock Band 2 is truly excellent. Really, all that you lose are the character creation, DLC, and online play, a shame indeed, but completely understandable. Everything else though, the improvements to the Tour modes, no fail and hyperspeed modifiers, even a drum trainer and freestyle mode to give you beats to practice outside of songs and just plain jam on your plastic kit with, respectively, are all here and all very nice.

The original game's campaign was rather inflexible, either a solo tour for a single instrument or a band tour for multiple (and no bass in Solo Tour! what the fuck), but here, you make a band and change instruments and difficulty at any time. Yes, if you've got friends who are only around some of the time, your save isn't locked to their availability. And you can play bass by yourself now! (Given how difficult these songs get on guitar, thank you. Also, I just love bass.) You're also not limited to a tiered setlist; instead, you get to "tour the world" playing sets in major cities, not just adding a cheeky bit of nonlinearity to the formula, but also decreasing the odds you get stuck on any one song.

Between World Tour and the Play Challenges (themed setlists for "2000s hits", "prog", "challenging basslines", and so on), this is not the kind of game a seasoned rocker can just blow through. The songs also get bonkers more difficult than the first game, almost exhaustingly so, and those marathon setlists, the longest of which lasts six hours in all, are no joke. Thankfully, you can save during most of them, and play each one on any difficulty you feel up to. With all its improvements and maybe the most legendary lineup of bands ever compiled, Metallica, The Who, Talking Heads, Bon Jovi, Soundgarden, Linkin Park, Blondie, Testament, all the way down to my weirdo indie favorites like Lush and Silversun Pickups, even on PS2, Rock Band 2...uh, rocks.

[#] Rock Band Track Pack Volume 1 (MTV Games, 2008)

Twenty all-new epic rock tracks as performed by the original artists!

These Rock Band Track Packs were a real joy to have as a young marf, stuck on last gen hardware with no way to play all those tons of cool DLC songs the 360 and PS3 kids were getting. Each one is a set of twenty DLC tracks, wrapped up in a quick standalone setlist that doesn't require the original game to play. This first Track Pack was actually exclusively released for the Wii and PS2 (later ones would be released for all four systems, with the songs exportable to the full game for the 360 and PS3), demonstrating the concept.

The setlist is mostly wall-to-wall huge tunes, an eclectic mix of tracks from pop punk (blink-182's "All the Small Things", Paramore's "crushcrushcrush") to 90s alt (Oasis' "Live Forever", Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song") to some golden oldies (David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Gimme Three Steps") to much more recent rock (Queens of the Stone Age's "Little Sister"—not to mention Wolfmother's notoriously difficult "Joker and the Thief"). It's a fun set! The only real letdown is the Grateful Dead track "Truckin'"—overly long, like a lot of the Dead's tunes are, I wish we got "Casey Jones" from the same pack instead.

This disc is built on the same last-gen engine as the main game on PS2, so do know you're still getting the video backgrounds, shitty Practice Mode, and limited Guitar Hero II-like tier progression system with no ability to play singleplayer bass as it. What I find most interesting were the minor graphical and technical improvements Pi Studios made to this port over Rock Band PS2, notably in the instant song restarts over that game's loading-delayed ones. Very nice. This is a highly playable set (I gold-starred most songs basically first try) of really good tunes, and that's all there is to say about it.

(This review equally applies to each successive Track Pack. Check out the setlist, and if the songs appeal to you, give it a go. They were on autopilot for these, understandably so.)

[#] Sega Classics Collection (Sega, 2004)

A rather confused and very damp squib.

This is the weirdest game in my PS2 collection for a couple reasons. The box says Sega Genesis Collection, which according to the Internet, is a properly beloved and lovingly assembled collection of emulated Genesis games on one disc. What's in the case is a lot stranger. Sega Ages is a long-running series of ports of classic Sega games to home consoles, and the 2500 series remade individual games in 3D and sold them as budget titles in Japan, with this here Classics Collection collecting nine volumes in all: Monaco GP, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier, Golden Axe, Bonanza Bros., Columns, Virtua Racing, OutRun, and Alien Syndrome.

It's a strange lineup. Glaring omissions from the 2500 series aside—Virtua Fighter 2 and Panzer Dragoon come to mind—Virtua Racing instead of Daytona or Sega Rally? No Streets of Rage? C'mon. That these games weren't all remade for one cohesive package is also demonstrated in their bizarre, inconsistent menuing and saving systems. Some games prompt you to save the moment you boot them up, while others don't autosave at all. The 3Difying is similarly inconsistent. Some games are tarted-up monstrosities, while Virtua Racing is a digital donger from 1992 right in your face. No, there's no museum component or extras to these games.

All's forgiven if the games are there at least, right? Maybe. Columns' Egyptian gem stacking is as mind-bending as ever, the best game here. OutRun's music and branching raceways still prove iconic, but the controls are way too touchy for how fast you go, and the car-ass-up-to-the-camera view seems extra obtrusive. (Space Harrier has the same obstructed viewpoint issue, but at least your space dork's death screams are amusing.) Virtua Racing is sluggish, Fantasy Zone is a cutesy Defender clone with bizarre physics, and not much else kept my attention. The only winner here is the asshole that made off with my copy of Sega Genesis Collection. Curses!

[#] Sega Rally Championship (Sega, 2006)

I'm in my mum's caaaaaah. Broom broom.

Hearing that there was an arcade-perfect port of Sega Rally Championship (the less memorable but arguably more fun sister game to Daytona USA) for PS2 included on a second disc with Sega Rally 2006 got me interested. Not to play Sega Rally 2006, of course, but to grab the extra disc off Myrient. A Japan exclusive, this port is indeed arcade perfect, a lot of fun, and tough as nails. You get three courses, the easy-breezy Desert, the winding Forest, and the boxy Mountain track, with the goal of completing all three within the alloted time, plus what time you get from checkpoints.

Your car slides on mud and goes airborne on jumps. You gotta learn to navigate tight corners at high speeds, paying attention to your gear shifts if you want any chance of making it through Forest, let alone Mountain. I've never done it, but it's a good time all the same. The car physics and handling feel great (though the fact that the car starts each race in neutral never fails to confuse me), and the graphics and sound are about Dreamcast-quality, smooth and very easy on the eyes. You can pick manual or automatic for your transmission, and there's two cars to choose from, the Toyota Celica and the Lancia Delta Integrale, the latter of which is my favorite because boxy cars just have soul, alright.

Championship also includes a Practice mode where you can take on each course individually without the flood of other cars on the road, obviously good for practice, but also time trials if you wanna challenge yourself. (I still haven't beaten the Mountain course.) Should you complete a course, your best times save to memory card as well. It's a shame this disc is Japan-exclusive, since it's all perfectly maneuverable in English and anyone into racing games of any stripe would do well to seek it out in any way possible. Like the best rally cars, it's a thrilling ride stripped down to only what it needs to go fast.

(This disc is playable on a suitably modded PS2 from any region through ESR, MX4SIO, or other OPL boot method. I use MX4SIO myself. It also emulates great.)

[#] Serious Sam: Next Encounter (Take-Two Interactive, 2004)

You really need more than the first impression.

Despite my undying love for fast-paced arena shooters, can you believe I've never played a Serious Sam game before now? I want to say Next Encounter won me over, because it did—with the five minute demo I played on a demo disc. It was smooth, the controls were really easy to come to grips with, and the piles of enemies gave ample opportunities for "super combos", which just turbocharges your ability to kick ass. I was ready to strap in and fall in love with the bizarre amount of readable lore and kooky character designs for a rooty-tooty game, but not so fast. Next Encounter has some issues that lost me as quick as it found me.

Your titular wisecracking musclehead has to crawl through history cleaning up waves of demons under the control of an entity called Mental, etc etc. Run fast, shoot everything, get combos for killing fast. There's plenty of secrets in the quite huge levels (which aren't super hot to look at but hardly offensive), and the gun variety is cracking, especially when you can make smores off your enemies with a flamethrower. The super combo system is satisfying, though it takes too long to start up and there's bizarrely no way to extend it. There are a few vehicle segments, but these are wonky to control and only good for the faster travel.

The biggest issue with Next Encounter is how cheap it can be. These levels sprawl way too much, and getting sniped by mobs from behind or hundreds of yards away and getting hand cramps as you circlestrafe the shittiest gladiator boss on the planet five attempts in hardly makes me feel like a badass. Those screaming kamikaze bombers are a lot less funny after the 50,000th one too. Like too much caffeine, Next Encounter is fun at first, but whether it's chest pains or some guy one-shotting you in the face with his huge cannonballs, the side effects really aren't.

[#] Sly 2: Band of Thieves (Sony, 2004)

Up the stakes, up the excitement, come out with a mighty fine thief game.

What do you do when you've already pulled off some master thievery? Go bigger! Sly 2: Band of Thieves is frankly the best of the trilogy, and that's a commonly held opinion, and it's not hard to see why. Sucker Punch cast off a lot of the "gamey" aspects that they were holding onto with the first game, the limited number of lives and the ultra-linear platformer levels, and brought Murray and Bentley into the playable mix with their own unique playstyles. Add to that some seriously memorable hub worlds and music that'll get you in the master thief mood any day, and yeah, it's damn near perfect.

Having defeated the big bird that killed his father, Sly and the gang break into a museum in Cairo to steal the soulless, immortal machinery that Clockwerk had been replacing his body parts with in hopes of destroying them for good—only to discover the Klaww Gang has already stolen the parts! You now jet across the world, from France to India to Prague to Canada, to pull off large-scale heists against another batch of colorful criminals to steal Clockwerk back piecemeal. You go on stakeouts, you steal keys from guards, you interrogate generals, play Robotron to hack computers, trade shots with realass military tanks—all pretty standard thief stuff.

The writing is much improved and matured (though still very family-friendly) from the first game. Murray goes from a hapless dope to a badass raging hippo who can and will beat the everloving fuck out of a tiger spice lord, and Bentley, still cowardly, makes things go boom with his genius array of gadgets. Each of the hub worlds are hugely memorable (if a little confusingly laid out sometimes), especially as you tear through the streets of Paris, pickpocketing patrolling mooks and stealing priceless works of art. A very fun adventure with tons of replayability, Sly 2 is a high watermark of PS2 platforming. Show your bling and let it shine you.

[#] Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (Sony, 2005)

A fittingly quick exit for a thief game, I suppose.

If Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves doesn't top the second game, it's only because Sucker Punch wisely decided to not fix what isn't broken. Sly learns of a gigantic inheritance owed to him in a vault on an island in the South Pacific and assembles a master team of new (and old—no spoilers) faces to help get him inside. Instead of pulling off master heists in each hub world, Sly recruits a new member into the Cooper Gang, again taking him, Bentley and his shattered legs (he's got a sick wheelchair, he'll be fine), and a spiritually-enlightened Murray across the world from Venice to Australia to China.

Sly 3 is most notable for its abruptness and the strands of experimentation that belie its rushed development. It wraps the trilogy up in satisfying fashion (it's at least as funny and multifaceted in its writing as Band of Thieves was), using the previous game's stealthy platforming as a solid base, but it's noticeably shorter than it and the end seems to come weirdly quickly. The new members of the gang are briefly playable, and they each bring a new flavor to the mix, whether it be dogfighting by biplane or plumbing the depths of the seas, but they're not around as much as they maybe should've been.

Technologically, there are some interesting ideas, like an amusing focus on 3D—yes, red-blue anaglyph gameplay for select missions! These noticeably dip the framerate and aren't really worthwhile outside of the novelty. Seemingly noticing the lack of runtime for the story, Sucker Punch brought back and expanded the post-game master thief challenges from the first game, and these are fun enough, though I didn't seriously go for any. Sly 3 does what you want it to, which is put a nice cap on the series in story (and there were never any further games), and I definitely enjoyed going through it. All that said, it really doesn't try terribly hard either.

[#] Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Sony, 2002)

Oh, to be a sneaky little guy.

Sly Cooper comes from a long line of master thieves. He's also a raccoon. These will be on the test. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was the first true success from the former Microsoft employees who formed Sucker Punch in the late 90s, and part of the trifecta of mascot platformers that also saw Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank rise to prominence. Sly and his gang (a dorky hypochondriac turtle named Bentley and their dumb getaway driver hippo friend Murray) vow to avenge Sly's father's death and the theft of the titular Thievius Raccoonus at the hands of a shadowy cabal of criminals known as the Fiendish Five—all while getting chased by a hot fox babe!

Setting itself apart from the pack with the series' now-trademark cel-shaded 3D cartoon art style, Sly oozes charm. You roll into one of five varied landmarks, the snowy mountains of China, rainy shores off the coast of Wales, or the Louisiana swamps, trade barbs with your debriefing partner Bentley, and collect keys to square up against the boss from a variety of levels. Some have you hop in a barrel to hide, or dodge spotlights and lasers. Some have you man a turret to protect Murray out in the wild. Sly is not very sturdy, so stay unseen and don't get into fights. It's stealthy without being tedious, and the writing makes it all satisfying to watch come to completion.

For all of Sly's charms (and there's plenty), it definitely doesn't escape first game syndrome. If you're expecting the open world, massive heists of the sequels, these are far more linear levels that play more like an old-school, two-hit-death platformer. Sly controls well, though the recurring vehicle segments absolutely do not. I seem to recall some of the bosses also feeling rather cheap and taking a few attempts, but nothing all that egregious. It's stylish, it's well-crafted, and while it's hardly the pinnacle of the trilogy, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a strong start that you should probably play at some point. (After the second one though.)