Ah yes, the super chad of its console generation, tons of great games, dvd playback, and PS1 compatibility! What's not to love about this legendary system?
What are your experiences with the PS2, what were your cherished games on the console?
Despite it being the weakest of its generation, you cannot deny they managed to craft some excellent games out of it with work arounds.
Back when it came out, it was so much better than everything else up to this point.
This, coupled with many games that started fanchises and/or were highly stylish and creative, and had new Equipment (GuitarHero, SingStar, EyeToy) make it the GOAT.
It's more over-the-top and arcade-y. Things like volcanos exploding as you ride down the slopes and an indoor mall-like mountain in Tokyo with an air-lift you use to do laps. Note that it's not free-ride, so there are pluses and minuses to it.
Jak & Daxter/Ratcher & Clank trilogy were goated. I know a lot of people throw around "they don't make them like they used to anymore" but in term of those two franchises on the PS2, they really don't.
As an aside, I picked up the newest Ratchet & Clank on PC and was disappointed. They tried making it so much more cinematic and story-focused with tons of scripted scenes. Also it lacked any of the satirical humor the original 3 had.
In terms of games, Kingdom Hearts and Guitar Hero were highlights of my childhood.
I thought the Dreamcast had the weakest technical specs of that generation? PS2 was also earlier than other consoles in that generation, so slightly lower specs makes sense.
Man, TimeSplitters 2 is the goat. Still play it every now and then. Some levels weren't that great, but the characters, multiplayer aspect and just the overall "goofyness" of the game really make it stand out
I played with my PS2 quite a lot when I was young, particularly because it had a much better version of a game I grew up with (NFS Hot Pursuit 2); it then introduced me to other games I quite liked, such as Test Drive Unlimited.
It sadly broke sometime around early 2018 because I didn't take good care of it. Now I emulate it but still wish my console worked.
The ps2 had THE BEST library of any console, even to this day. I am still learning about random hiddem gems ive never heard of on it, and I've been gaming for 25 years
It was my go to console and my DVD player for years. Played so many JRPGs on there and made me a lifelong fan of ratchet and clank and one of the few games that my now wife could play (she's terrible with video games). Still lamenting that Dark Cloud series never got the success o thought it should have.
Still have my PS2, still boots and all of it, including the mad catz controller, still works.
I love the PS2. Many great games, played a lot of Lego Star Wars II on it. I still play on mine every few days, it's a great system. Games today aren't like this anymore.
The PS2 was still being produced until PS4 was introduced, and its last game was released even after the production ended in 2013 (Nov 2013, but still…)
PS1 and PS2 were both masters of their generations. The OG Xbox was just really “Halo box” back then, and GameCube was awesome, but not as strong as PS2.
The GameCube was stronger than the ps2 it was just limited by the disc format. Compare Resident Evil 4 on the two. The GameCube version had hair physics for Leon and the cutscenes were rendered in real time, while they had to pre-render them on ps2 (which also made alternate costumes better on GameCube since Leon would wear them during cutscenes)
It has the weakest hardware of its generation. During those years you had the Sega Dreamcast, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube. All this consoles had a more powerful hardware than the Sony Playstation 2
And the PS2 was also reportedly the hardest to work with, especially early on in its life before the tools had matured. It proliferated purely on the install base (partly thanks to the DVD playback)
It wasn't as underpowered as many people think. I know it's easy to go like "yeah the cpus clockspeed is like 50% lower than the gamecubes and half as slow as the one in the xbox", but really that's just half of the story. The Emotion Engine was quite powerful in the right hands, you just needed to know how to fully use it, including the 2 vector units. There are enough games out there that show the PS2s full potential. The problem is that a lot of the earlier games didn't really fully utilize the EE.
Sony forced the studio behind Helldivers 2 to make a PSN account obligatory after the game launched. That's a pretty crappy move because PSN is not available in roughly 120 177 countries, so if you live in one of those you can suddenly not play your game anymore. And Sony hasn't got the best reputation when it comes to securing and selling their user's data, so players are pretty upset and vocal about this.
But I would say that present day Sony's dick moves do not really fit in a topic about PS2 nostalgia.