Try to think of a PS2 game that changed gaming as we know it. GTA 3, Silent Hill 2, even things like SOCOM were way ahead of the curve, among countless others. But there are also plenty of PS2 games that shot for the moon and ended up lost in the ocean.
Haven: Call Of The King
Unquestionably a victim of its own ambition, Haven: Call of the King was all set to be the action adventure hit that Midway Games and Traveller’s Tales were looking for on the PS2. A sci-fi action adventure game, Haven would include elements drawn from several different genres, including platforming, puzzle solving, shoot ‘em ups, space combat and racing, with Midway and TT Games even trademarking the term “FreeFormer” gameplay in reference to many different genres Haven would be pulling from. Just to put the nail in the overconfidence coffin even further, Midway were hoping that Call of the King would be just the first step in the Haven trilogy.
The reality is that this video game car boot sale would stumble at the first hurdle, with reviews remarking that the game’s insistence on pulling from several different genres spread the game too thin. Most agreed it was ambitious, but that ambition meant that every single element of the game felt undercooked. Instead of focusing on one thing and making it brilliant, Haven did many things, some of them way worse than others. It also forgot to make the main character that likeable? It’s not a bad game, but the not so nice critical reaction the game received likely contributed to Haven being a commercial failure, leading to parts two and three being cancelled. Bad news for anyone who did manage to finish Haven, considering it ended on a bloody cliffhanger, but it really isn’t that deep.
Deep Water
The PS2 might have introduced the world to the Monster Hunter franchise, but while Capcom were busy incubating what would become their sleeping dragon, other game developers were offering their take on the “accept quest, kill monster, repeat” formula. Deep Water from Tamsoft Corporation might be the most interesting and different take though, as instead of playing as a lone warrior, wielding a massive weapon and running headfirst towards the nearest dragon, Deep Water casts you as a lone sailor, exploring the ruins of a flooded post-apocalypse searching for gigantic, eldritch-inspired abominations.
As you’re alone on the boat, it’s up to you to drive, shoot and manage the fuel on your speedboat, leading to you running around your boat like a headless chicken the minute creatures or bandits start trying to attack you. There’s also a full open world to explore, plenty of monsters to hunt and new weapons to find, making it pretty ambitious for a PS2 game. Unfortunately, the idiosyncratic nature of the game, and the frankly woeful story progression that requires endless, sluggish trekking across the map, meant that Deep Water never found much of an audience on the PS2. But hey, all paths towards progress tend to be bumpy.
Steambot Chronicles (Bumpy Trot)
Steambot Chronicles joined the ever growing list of mech combat games when it launched on PS2 in 2005. Otherwise known as Bumpy Trot, which is always extremely fun to say, Steambot Chronicles follows an amnesiac man and his newfound best friend as they tour the world in a Trotmobile, which is basically what happens if a 1950s American convertible transforms into a walking mecha. Or, that’s what the normal path of the game is all about, anyway, as players are given the choice to sack that all off and side with the bandits instead, leading to a completely different storyline.
You see, what makes Steambot Chronicles so ambitious, aside from the dual analog controls for the mecha combat that people either loved or hated, is the fact that every single NPC tracks their individual relationship with the player. Depending on if you’ve been nice or mean to certain characters, you can have a completely different relationship or reputation between NPCs even in the same city.
It’s a more ambitious and nuanced take on reputation than some games with a more binary good vs evil tracker, and it even has some rhythm game sections, but unfortunately, not people took a chance on Steambot Chronicles, and now the game’s rarity has made it almost impossible to find physical copies. You don’t need to look too far beyond the search results to play this one though, matey.
Beyond Good & Evil
Unquestionably the most famous example in this video, Beyond Good & Evil has become widely regarded as one of the best 3D action adventure games of the PS2 era. In a lot of ways, Beyond Good & Evil was the game that Haven: Call of the King could have been, as both are sci-fi action adventures that pull from a range of genres to create something unique and engaging. In BG&E’s case, there’s stealth, platforming, combat, racing, puzzle solving and more, all jumbled together in a compelling story of Jade, an investigative reporter at the forefront of an alien conspiracy.
Critics at the time lauded Beyond Good & Evil as one of the best games out there, with a large majority of that praise due to the impressive execution of its own, ambitious elements without ever feeling bloated or incoherent. Had it been just another case of a PS2-era game with lofty promises and middle of the road results, Beyond Good & Evil would have been yet another forgotten game on a platform littered with them. The cruel irony with Beyond Good & Evil though is that despite the game’s impeccable review scores and numerous awards, the commercial sales were beyond disappointing, and it was actually bundled with…cheese. Yes, genuinely, cheese. We’re sure all of our lovely, beautiful viewers played it, but the general public? Not so much.
Monster Rancher 3
Trying to give a full rundown of the multimedia franchise that is Monster Rancher would probably take up more time than is wise in an era where you have to keep your audience invested every possible second, so let’s just focus on the fact that Tecmo’s life sim/monster collecting series was a big hit during the PS1. Being able to use your own CDs to generate monsters within the game was a big thing back in those days, as the feature also appeared in Jade Cocoon, but Monster Rancher made the feature its own. As soon as Monster Rancher 3 debuted on the PS2, Tecmo added more scanning features, including the ability to scan DVDs now instead of just CDs, giving players even more bizarre monstrosities to boss about.
Aside from the ability to scan more discs though, what made Monster Rancher 3 a more ambitious game? For starters, MR3 introduced a cel-shaded graphical style in 2001. Monster Rancher 3 was certainly among the first to take advantage of this new graphical style. Beyond that, the gameplay was overhauled too, as while previous games were just about training monsters to fight and send them on expeditions, MR3 introduced regions and climates that different monsters would be affiliated with, adding a much needed layer of complexity to the game. But, for whatever reason, the series has kinda struggled to remain relevant in the west over the last 25 years. Maybe it’s just…unlucky?
XIII
While video game adaptations might be looked down upon, sometimes they can also be pretty dang ambitious. Putting your own spin on an established work, especially when that established work is a bit of an unknown, cult hit can lead to a lot of inspired choices. Ubisoft plucking an obscure Belgian comic book series about espionage, conspiracy and amnesia definitely stretched the creative legs more than other tie-ins that were swarming the PS2 at the time, but unfortunately, XIII didn’t review all too well when it launched. Throw in some weak commercial performance, enough to kill any plans for a sequel, and it’s pretty clear that not enough people played XIII.
It’s a real shame, as XIII is one of the better FPS games on the PS2, particularly for its use of cel-shaded graphics and comic-book inspired storytelling, obviously drawing influence from the source material. Unlike other FPS games on the platform, where you’d shoot everything in sight in every room, XIII had much more of a stealth-focus, using a variety of weapons and gadgets to proceed through the levels. In another nice touch, the levels had a bit more interactability than console players would have previously been used to, as players could pick up improvised weapons like chairs to KO enemies.
It’s a “streets won’t forget” game, but I also wish I could forget that horrendous remake.
MS Saga: A New Dawn
From the name and majority of the game’s cover, you can be forgiven for thinking that this is just another RPG on a platform that, quite frankly, was filled to bursting with the bastards. The name just speaks generic fantasy, while the kids on the cover who look like they’re “going through it™” could be found on literally any other RPG. Of course, then you look at the top end of the cover and think, “wait, is that a bloody Gundam?” Turns out, yes it is, as the MS in the title stands for Mobile Suit. Quite why Bandai wanted to make a turn-based Gundam RPG without driving home the fact that its Gundam related is baffling, and might have contributed to this game’s relative obscurity.
Designed to be an accessible entry point into the Gundam franchise, which has had more spin-offs and series than Katy Perry’s had PR disasters, you control an ever-growing party of heroes as they stand against the might of the Dark Alliance. What makes MS Saga: A New Dawn so interesting and ambitious for a turn-based RPG is how the Gundam suits actually function in combat. All the suits are fully customisable, from weapons to individual parts, giving you full control over the moves and abilities you can perform. It’s a liberating system, so it’s a shame that Bandai didn’t capitalise on the Gundam name properly in promoting this ambitious hidden gem, and it’s now in the doghouse of time.
Dog’s Life
Experiencing the world through the eyes of a dog is the type of thing that you can only do with video games, unless you’re an Animorph, in which case sound off down below, which is what makes Dog’s Life so ambitious from the get go. It’s also funny that Sony published this, because they definitely wouldn’t these days.
Playing as an American Foxhound by the name of Jake, you’ll explore three different regions of a fictionalised version of America, all in the hopes of trying to rescue another dog you have a crush on from the dog pound. Granted, this dog’s life might be a completely different life from most dogs, but who’s to say the dog you have at home isn’t going on a huge adventure whenever you head out to work? Something for you to think about.
Essentially a collectathon platformer, Dog’s Life’s main innovation is the introduction of smellovision, designed to simulate the more scent-based way dogs explore and see the world. Using smellovision, you’re essentially collecting bones to unlock stat upgrades and new abilities, which probably isn’t how that actually works. The end result unfortunately led to something of a recurring issue for games in this episode, which is middling reviews and poor sales, but there haven’t been many games since that have really tried to put players in the paws of a pooch. Say what you want about Dog’s Life, but it took a big swing, and you can’t get more ambitious than that, even if the animations look a bit forsaken these days,
Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land
The name might have been forgotten and left to rot over the past few decades, but the majority of your favourite RPGs and dungeon crawling games hold a huge debt of gratitude to the Wizardry series. Debuting in 1981 for the Apple 2, Wizardry’s approach to RPG exploration and dungeon crawling would have a huge inspiration on the RPG juggernauts of today, including Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Shin Megami Tensei and more. Atlus would even publish a spin-off of Wizardry for PS2, called Tale Of The Forsaken Land, which deserves a lot more love than it received.
Set in a world that’s been destroyed by a great cataclysm, you control someone on orders of the queen to explore a dungeon and fetch some answers about your own past and the kingdom too. While dungeon crawling had been done to death already by the time that Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land, where this spin-off gets its ambition is how alignments of different members of your party affects their trust in you depending on your actions. Different types of alignment vibe with different actions, affecting your bond with all your party members and the skills you have access to. It’s a pretty strange mix of visual novel storytelling and King’s Field mixed with Final Fantasy, so it’s a shame it’s pretty much stranded in the shadows.
Shadow of Memories
Look, we just need to give you the elevator pitch on Shadow of Memories and you’ll probably be sold on why it deserves to be on this ambitious video: it’s a time-travel detective story where you’re trying to solve and prevent your own murder. Tell me that isn’t swinging for the fences based on premise alone. It’s a premise so nice that uhhh…one other game did it in the next 20 years and kinda didn’t do that well either…but still!
Set in a fictional German town, Shadow of Memories, or Shadow of Destiny in the land of mandatory tips, sees you controlling a young man by the name of Eike who is murdered under mysterious circumstances. Fortunately for Eike, he’s got a big man upstairs who’s looking after him; specifically a genie called Homunculus, who resurrects Eike, hands him a time-travelling device called the Digipad and says “get solving, kiddo”.
The time travelling is what makes Shadow of Memories especially ambitious, as the feature is used to solve puzzles in order to progress. Anything you do in the past affects what happens in the future, while there’s also a time management aspect to it all as you need to make sure you’re in the place where you’re supposed to die, otherwise the game ends. Throw in multiple endings depending on your choices within the game and you’ve got one of the most ambitious adventure games on the PS2 that, you guessed it, sold poorly. It even reviewed way better than other games featured here, but review points don’t and never will equal sales, unfortunately.
If they did, we’d have Titanfall 3 by now.
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