25 years ago today, on March 4, 2000, Sony released the PlayStation 2 console in its native Japan, getting the ball rolling on what would go on to be a phenomenally successful era for the company, and a seriously memorable one for anyone who was playing video games at the time.
It isn’t really possible to overstate the legacy of the PS2. It remains the best-selling games console of all time, shifting north of 160 million units worldwide, and as you’d expect, there were quite a few games to play on it, too. Well over 4,000 in fact, and among that very large number are some of the greatest games ever committed to code.
When it comes to games, the PS2 had it all, from RPGs to mascot platformers, stealth genre standouts to all-out action hack and slash, and sprawling open-world epics that ate up tens of hours of your time. You’ll struggle to find a more diverse library of games on any console.
We could wax lyrical about a pretty large chunk of those 4000+ games, but we might be here a while. Instead, to celebrate this landmark anniversary for the mighty PS2, we’ve picked out a dozen or so (note: not all) of its very best games, focusing in particular on games to which the passage of time has been kind. Several decades later, the games in this list are still very much worth your time, whether replaying for a nostalgia hit or picking them up for the first time.
Happy birthday, PlayStation 2, and thanks for the many, many memories.
Kingdom Hearts
Square Enix’s famously convoluted crossover RPG series can only be recommended with some serious caveats the further entries into it you get, but the original game doesn’t have any of that baggage. Seen as a bit of a miracle game when it first launched on PS2, Kingdom Hearts mashes together the worlds and beloved characters of Disney and Final Fantasy in a way that absolutely shouldn’t work, but somehow does.
You play as the bright-eyed Sora, a young boy who teams up with the likes of Donald Duck and Goofy to save his friends and the world from forces of evil. The game itself is a pretty basic hack and slash RPG these days, but it’s still like nothing else, and visiting the settings of Hercules and Tarzan is a thrill for 90s Disney kids.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
So enduring is the third mainline entry in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series that we’re getting a ground-up remake of the game later this year, but the truth is, the original PS2 game is still more than playable in 2025, and for many it remains the standout entry in the series. Technically a prequel to all other MGS games, Snake Eater tells the origin story of Naked Snake and his mentor Big Boss, and takes place in a superbly realised fictional 1960s Soviet Union jungle.
By this game, Kojima’s stealth action gameplay had really found its groove, while several of the boss fights are held up as all-timers. An expanded release, called Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, added a much-improved third-person camera and is the version to play should you seek the PS2 game out now. (And you should.)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
While arguably eclipsed by subsequent entries in Rockstar’s long-running Grand Theft Auto series, at the time of release, the scope and scale of San Andreas was nothing short of mind-blowing. As CJ (perhaps the most iconic GTA protagonist of them all given his enduring meme status) your lengthy quest to rebuild your gang’s status and unearth the truth behind your mother’s murder takes you across the titular state’s open-world map, from the LA-inspired city of Los Santos you call home, to the sprawling countryside, and later the desert setting of Las Venturas, modelled on Las Vegas.
Combat and mission design shows its age a bit now, but everything people love about GTA is present in San Andreas, and with the next game in the series due to arrive at some point this year, now is a great time to revisit this PS2 classic.
SSX 3
The SSX series has tragically faded into obscurity in recent years, but revisiting its glory days in the PS2 era remind you how good it was. All of EA’s early arcade snowboarding games are still worth playing now, but SSX3 was the series at its very best, mainly due to the introduction of an open-world mountain for the first time, as well as a freeride mode that allowed you to seamlessly ride from the top of the mountain to the bottom, through every course, with no loading.
Like every SSX, the game is a mix of high-octane racing and score-chasing freestyle events in which you have to perform the best tricks and seek out opportunities for massive airtime. All of this is soundtracked by a fictional radio station helmed by the iconic DJ Atomika, who narrates the game. SSX (and arguably snowboarding games in general) never got better than this.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves
Long before Sucker Punch Productions was making games about sneaky samurai, it was making games about a sneaky racoon and his thieving animal accomplices. And if you enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima, it’s fun to rewind all the way back to 2004 and jump into the studio’s early work. All four Sly Cooper games are stealth action games in which you pull off Saturday morning cartoon-flavoured heists, but Band of Thieves was a significant departure from the first game’s linear platforming, introducing much larger open-world levels and more playable characters with different skill sets.
As a family-friendly series, don’t go in expecting the in-depth systems of a Splinter Cell game, but Sly 2’s cocktail of breezy stealth gameplay, light-hearted humour and vibrant comic book-inspired visuals remains a unique and decidedly PS2-specific treat.
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 is one of the very few 10/10, no-notes perfect video games ever made, so it was always going to take a spot on this list. Leon S. Kennedy’s bloody jaunt to rural Spain is peak Resi, with perfect pacing, great puzzles, series-best gameplay and more B-movie charm than you could wish for. And sure, the recent PS5 remake might look and feel better to play in 2025, but as far as we’re concerned that game complements, rather than replaces, the original game.
Resident Evil 4 is a more action-oriented experience than other entries in the series, and it’s hard to describe a game in which you can roundhouse kick a virus-ravaged farmer as especially scary. But if you like your survival horror games to be power fantasies, there is simply no better example than Resident Evil 4, whatever version you opt for.
Okami
One of the best looking games on PS2, and quite possibly all time, Okami is probably the greatest Zelda game Nintendo never made. You play as sun goddess Amarsatu, who takes the form of a white wolf and uses a magical paintbrush to manipulate the world and take down enemies. If you’ve played any pre-Breath of the Wild 3D Zelda games then Okami will feel familiar. You visit towns and villages, befriend the quirky locals, complete side quests, explore dungeons and fight a variety of powerful bosses with your Celestial Brush.
Neither puzzles or combat present a massive challenge, and it goes on for just a bit too long, but Okami remains a timeless masterpiece. And with a sequel confirmed to be in the works, now is the perfect time to revisit one of the PS2’s most iconic games.
Ico
With its minimalist approach to game design undoubtedly a huge inspiration for countless indie titles that would arrive years later, Ico is still cited in any debate about games qualifying as an art form, and while the medium has grown up a lot since 2001, Fumito Ueda’s quiet masterpiece is still a singular experience worth seeking out. You play as a boy shunned by his people because of the horns he was born with. Locked in a castle, he meets a girl named Yorda, and the pair team up to escape.
There is next to no dialogue, no UI and very little context given, which isn’t uncommon in many games now, but really stood out in the PS2’s lineup. Everything is focused on the bond between Ico and Yorda, and how they work together to solve puzzles and overcome enemy encounters. Ico was later remastered for the PS3, but there’s something timeless about the original PS2 version.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3
The Tony Hawk‘s Pro Skater series as a whole is mostly brilliant, very occasionally bad, but if you polled the player base on the best one, we think THPS3 would have a good chance of coming out on top. It was the entry that added the game-changing revert feature that lets you chain together combos with manuals immediately after landing air tricks on quarterpipes. Mastering the revert trigger is the key to getting the really big scores, and it’s hard to go back once you’ve started using it in your runs.
The third game also featured some series-best levels, such as Airport, Cruise Ship and Tokyo, all of which could be played using unlockable characters like Wolverine and Darth Maul, thanks to then presumably more reasonably priced licensing deals we sadly didn’t get as many of in later entries. Both THPS3 and 4 could be getting remade this year, but if don’t need HD graphics, the PS2 game holds up remarkably well.
Burnout 3: Takedown
There are few more tragically underserved series’ in all of gaming than Burnout. By putting as much emphasis on crashing and causing general mayhem as getting over the finish line in first place, the series almost created its own sub-genre of arcade racing, and every entry is brilliant in its own way. But the Burnout name hasn’t been seen again since 2008’s Burnout Paradise, whose open-world setting didn’t land for everyone.
If you want to experience Burnout in its purest form, there is no better entry than Burnout 3: Takedown, which introduced the titular Takedown mechanic that rewards you with boost for successfully shoving an opponent so much that they crash spectacularly before you. If you yourself were the victim of a crash, you could manoeuvre your car into an opponent for a revenge Takedown of your own, which was arguably even more satisfying. The resulting game was as gleefully bonkers as it sounds, and even now there’s no racing game that plays quite like it.
God of War
The PS2 turning 25 isn’t the only significant PlayStation-related anniversary this month. It also marks 20 years since the original God of War which introduced gamers to the Spartan warrior Kratos, who would go on to be a mainstay protagonist in the series, and one of Sony’s most enduring mascots. Play God of War (2005) now and it’s almost unrecognisable from the cinematic story-driven blockbusters that have defined the PS4 and PS5 eras. The early entries in the series are proudly hack and slash affairs, set in ancient Greece, and won’t find Kratos having moving one-to-one conversations with his son between bouts here.
Back in the mid 2000s, the blade-twirling demigod was a violence-only kind of guy, capable of taking down beasts 10 times his size with his acrobatic, anger-driven combos. The sense of scale was there from the start, though, and as much as we admire God of War’s more serious pivot, the arcade-y immediacy of the game that started it all remains hard to resist.
Katamari Damacy
Katamari Damacy is one of the more memorable games from the PS2 library, and arguably the weirdest. You play as a prince whose father, The King of All Cosmos, no less, accidentally destroyed all of the stars in the sky he rules over, and so you’re tasked with rebuilding them. Or replacing them we should say, with the balls of junk you assemble by rolling around levels collecting whatever you can until they’re large enough to be considered worthy of a star by the King. You have to be careful not to knock them at speed, or you’ll lose objects, and you have to finish your Katamari within a time limit. As it isn’t the easiest thing to control, doing so can be surprisingly challenging.
Exactly how the game is fun is hard to explain, but you know as soon as it’s in your hands. Katamari Damacy’s one-of-a-kind sense of humour, colourful visuals and incredible soundtrack all contribute to its infectious personality, and mark it out as one of the PS2’s leftfield greats.
Final Fantasy X
PlayStation has been synonymous with Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy VII debuted on the PS1, and while Final Fantasy X isn’t quite as significant as the former in terms of what it did for the series, it’s easily among the best RPGs on the PS2, and a pretty important Final Fantasy game to boot. Set in the fictional continent of Spira, the game focuses on Tidus, a professional player of Blitzball, a fictional underwater sport. The teenager finds himself in this mysterious land after an attack on his home, beginning an epic quest to find out what went down and save the world from the game’s big bad, ominously named Sin.
Final Fantasy X was the first game in the series to feature fully 3D environments and voice acting, while its innovative battle system removed the time constraints from previous games, allowing you to really plan your next turn like a chess player. The tropical setting is also a standout in the series, lending the game a distinctly summery energy.
