Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 changed the game for Capcom’s horror series, tossing out the fixed camera and slow, lumbering terror of zombies for a more frantic, action focus and an outrageous B-Movie plot which saw you rescuing the US president's daughter from a cult. There was still plenty of tension, only this time it was thanks to a chainsaw-wielding maniac and his friends making a beeline for your neck. Resident Evil 4 remains one of the best in the series to date, and stands among the finest of its generation. While the subsequent RE games floundered with direction and pacing, Resident Evil 4’s only crime was nailing a new formula on the very first attempt. (Entry supplied by resident Resident Evil superfan Henry Stenhouse - Ed.)
Final Fantasy X
JRPGs already had cutscenes that looked too good to be true but the level of detail in FFX's intro movie literally blew us out of the water. Even though it would take years for in-engine graphics to catch up, the world of Spira still looked fantastical, with tropical beaches and cities rendered with jaw-dropping scale. It was also the first Final Fantasy to feature voice acting, a fact we're willing to throw out to explain away that infamous laughing scene. Still, even with that awkward moment seared into our brains there were some truly great performances.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid's first two games were a little wild on the conspiratorial twisting story side, but the third game is really where Hideo Kojima got let off the leash. Deciding that Vamp in MGS2 was the baseline for new villain characters, everyone gets a superpower in this '60s homage to Bond movies, and the real open-world survival elements of Metal Gear's later entries are shown for the first time. It's also just the best Metal Gear, no contest. Fight us. MGSV didn't have the weird Ape Escape tie-in minigame.
Guitar Hero
We thought we'd left hyper-specialized gaming console peripherals in the 90s, despite the Gun-Con's best efforts. But just in at the tail end of the PS2 era came a brand new genre to fill our cupboards with plastic guitars and drum kits and microphones. Guitar Hero, the Harmonix rhythm game that started the flood, took to the stage in 2005 and since then we've had any number of new intruments to add to the orchestra. The latest, Harmonix's recently revealed Fuser, takes the genre into VR – the only frontier left for peripheral-based music performance games.
GTA Vice City
While GTA3 started the third-person open world crime formula that dominated this generation of console games, it was Vice City that added the extra cinematic spice that was missing. Acting as a conduit for the Houser brothers' love of '80s films, a twisting and turning narrative and rockin' soundtrack elevated Vice City to the stuff of legends. San Andreas that came after was also a damn fine game, but missing some of the awe-inspiring moments that made us ask "can games even DO that?"
Have we missed your favorites? What do you consider to be the best games of the PS2 era now that it's 20 years on?
