The PS1 might have been one of the pioneers of full 3D gaming, but it was the console’s successor, the PS2, that really began to push ambitions and technology forward in a massive way. But there are some games on the PS2 that really pushed the capabilities of the PS2 itself to their limits.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
The game where you can be an obese kung fu master horse gambling tycoon was slightly ambitious, if you can believe it.
This open world masterpiece sat at the pinnacle of the PS2’s library and even the GTA series as a whole for years, pushing the series and even an entire genre forward in a lot of ways. While the other GTA games on PS2, and even before that on the PS1, offered excellent sandbox playgrounds that you could cause carnage in, GTA: San Andreas gave players a world that they could feel a part of, and interact with it in ways that console gamers previously weren’t able, all wrapped up in a game that offered some of the best looking sunsets on the entire platform. And yes, you could still spawn in a tank and cause mayhem. It was everything players loved, and more.
Controlling CJ, former member of the Grove Street gang as he reunites with his family after five years, you’ll see the man travel through Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas meeting the usual cast of absolute sociopaths that GTA tends to include. What separates San Andreas from other GTA games is how much freedom it gave the player to take part in other activities beyond shooting everything that moves, whether it was schools for driving and flight, motocross racing, horse race betting, car modifications, nightclub dancing, hitting the gym, dating, gang warfares with territory control or flying RC planes in one of the most annoying missions ever. The PS2 hadn’t seen anything of this scope before, making it a real envelope pusher.
Burnout Revenge
We’re burnt out from waiting for a new Burnout at this point, but at least we can still remember the good old days of listening to some pop punk/rock bangers while slamming cars into oncoming traffic. I used to taunt the lollipop lady from across the road with my Burnout collection. Good times.
Burnout 3: Takedown might be considered the best game in the series overall, and we’d even agree with that sentiment, but Burnout Revenge pushed the PS2 to its absolute limits at times, creating one of the best looking racing games on the platform. The fact that Burnout 3, with all its destruction and chaos, was able to run a smooth 60 frames per second anyway, is a mindblowing accomplishment, but Burnout Revenge upped the ante in a huge way with improved graphics along with more cars and objects on screen at one time, while still maintaining that steady framerate. Never mind technical mastery, that’s straight up wizardry.
The improved car models and lighting for the game’s many tracks are utterly incredible, even if some of the levels look like they’ve been given a bit of a yellow filter, while the destruction of the cars was given some updates too. Perhaps what’s most staggering about the work Criterion did is that Burnout Revenge also introduced the traffic checking feature, which basically let you ping pong cars going in the same direction as you. Cars would often be flying around everywhere, both rival racers and otherwise, and yet Burnout Revenge still managed to maintain that smooth as butter framerate.
Honestly, it’s brilliant what Criterion accomplished here, and while the PS2 exclusive follow-up Dominator polished the graphics even further, some of the chaos that pushed the PS2 to its breaking point was lost. Just like this IP. Goddammit.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong
Hey, remember when licensed games sucked etc etc — you know the drill. However, it was always surprising when a licensed game managed to be somewhat decent at least, some imagine everyone’s surprise when Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the game tie-in to the pretty good film remake from 2005, turns out to be pretty good itself.
While you’d think that’d be because of King Kong himself, who does appear in a couple of levels to beat up some massive dinosaurs before going on that ill-fated rampage across New York at the tale’s finale, the actual highlight and moments that pushed the PS2 to its limits are the rest of the game.
When not pulverising dinosaurs and swinging through the jungle as King Kong, you’re instead playing as playwright Jack Driscoll, played by Adam Brody. Dragged along on this cursed voyage, you reach Skull Island and find it filled with nasty little critters that want to turn you into lunch. Playing out like a first person shooter, the Jack levels like Jurassic Park with a tommy gun, with players at times able to take advantage of the island’s food chain to sneak past tough enemies.
The graphics are incredible too, with gorgeous landscapes and stellar work capturing the likenesses of the film’s actors, so if you’ve ever wanted to be shouted at by a digital Jack Black playing the world’s most obnoxious film director, King Kong has got you covered.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Hideo Kojima and the teams that work on his games have earned a reputation over the years for making titles that push the boundaries and limits of gaming consoles. Metal Gear Solid was nothing short of a landmark achievement for the PS1, so naturally Kojima and the gang had to up themselves going into the PS2 era. Metal Gear Solid 2 was a leaps and bounds technical improvement to the point where it was embarrassing most other PS2 releases at the time, even if most people were salty about the Raiden bait and switch, but Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater went much further.
From graphics to gameplay, framerate, textures, the addition of online play, and the minute little details that you only seem to get from Kojima produced games, Metal Gear Solid 3 was a marvellous accomplishment for both the PS2 and the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
Like MGS 2 with Substance though, Konami released an updated version of Metal Gear Solid 3, Subsistence, which included a redesigned third person camera to move away from the top-down/fixed camera angles that the Metal Gear Solid series had been using up until that point. You’d think that giving players more control over what they could see would reveal some blemishes or aspects that players might not have been able to find with the original camera angle, but somehow, MGS 3 managed to look even better from this new perspective.
It just goes to show that if you load up your games with so many handcrafted little details, features, quirks, and the ability to let father time work his magic, you’ll be able to stand up to incredible amounts of scrutiny.
Black
We’re back on the Criterion hype train again, as the Burnout crew decided to ditch the rubber for lead with Black.
A modern military shooter that released before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare made the concept cool (see: insanely profitable), Black arguably provided the blueprint that allowed the Modern Warfare era of Call of Duty and beyond to become the juggernaut it is today. Stick a heavily armed dude behind enemy lines in backwoods eastern Europe, make sure there’s an explosion going off at least every five seconds, and you’ve got the makings of a winning formula. From a gameplay perspective, the guns feel incredibly powerful, with Black boasting some of the best feeling shotguns in all of gaming, but the real limit testing comes from the game’s graphics.
From character models to the guns themselves, everything in Black looks like it’s about one step away from forcing the PS2 to spontaneously combust from over exertion. The guns are probably the most detailed models ever committed to the PS2, while the character models themselves look incredible, and their death animations wouldn’t look out of place in the following gen either. The real highlight of the whole package though are the explosion effects, which turn what was already a masterclass in presentation into a blockbuster experience and a standout shooter for the PS2.
If you want to experience the best looking FPS game you could ever play on the PS2, Black is the pinnacle.
Gran Turismo 4
Gran Turismo has always been at the cutting edge of PlayStation’s technology and boundary pushing.
The first two Gran Turismo games arguably produced the best graphics on the console, something that Polyphony Digital would continue to push with future instalments on follow-up consoles. Gran Turismo 3 was an excellent showcase of what the PS2 could be capable of, but Gran Turismo 4 pushed the limits of the console even further, coming the closest to photo-realistic graphics the PS2 had ever reached before. Whether it was the detailed models of the hundreds of licensed cars, or the depictions of real life race tracks like the Nurburgring or Laguna Seca, Gran Turismo 4 managed to become the best looking game on the entire console.
Not only did the graphics test the capabilities of the PS2, but Gran Turismo 4 even made use of some rarely used features of the PS2, as the game even supported a rudimentary form of HD gaming, along with three other games across the entirety of the PS2 library. Polyphony Digital have a knack for eking out the absolute maximum that the current PlayStation is capable of.
Regardless of what you might think about how grindy the most recent Gran Turismo is, it’s a showcase piece of the absolute raw power of the PS5, and that’s a tradition that’s been maintained throughout the life of both PlayStation and Gran Turismo. If we do a PS3 version of this list, expect more Gran Turismo. That’s just how it goes.
Resident Evil 4
The fact that Capcom managed to get Resident Evil 4 working on a GameCube in the first place is still wild, but the PS2 version in particular takes the cake. The Resident Evil series has always pushed graphics to the edge, with the pre-rendered backgrounds of the original Resident Evil trilogy being some of the best and most innovative ways of implementing 3D environments in a way that looked good, but Resident Evil 4’s character models, environments and more were such a huge improvement on not only previous Resident Evil games, but on other Capcom games at the time. From the Village to the Castle to the dingy little Island and its laboratory, every single part of Resident Evil 4 set a new benchmark for survival horror gaming.
Going back to the PS2 version of RE4 in particular, it’s a bit of a step down from the GameCube version, which mostly offered better particles and lighting along with cutscenes rendered in the game engine. The PS2 version wasn’t quite as powerful as the GameCube, so Capcom had to make some concessions in those regards to make the port actually work, which unfortunately meant your weird chosen outfits wouldn’t appear in cutscenes as they all became pre-rendered FMVs.
However, Capcom still managed to keep the game running at a consistent frame rate despite the downgrade in hardware, while offering new modes and goodies as a way of making up for the loss. There’s a reason it’s been considered a miracle port in the years since.
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
The Battlefield series had already been a huge hit on PC by the time Battlefield 2: Modern Combat came to the PS2, pushing the very limits of players GPUs by offering dozens of players online in one game. Console gaming had exploded in popularity as well though, so EA and DICE decided it would be best to try and make a console specific Battlefield game, the result being Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.
The game pushed the PS2’s online capabilities to new heights, offering online matches with up to 24 players alongside huge maps and decent graphics. It might not be the best looking game on this list, but it was a damn sight better than some of the other shooters that were available on the PS2.
What makes Battlefield 2: Modern Combat such a boundary pushing game though was the single player campaign, specifically the hot swapping feature. While the story and missions were just a simple collection of challenges and objectives, players were able to use a feature called hotswapping to actively change to another allied soldier in the level. You could start out the mission as a regular infantry soldier fighting on the frontline, only to hotswap to a sniper to get a better look at the wider fight, then hotswap again to an engineer to take out the enemy’s vehicles and artillery.
It’s a feature that we’re shocked hasn’t been adapted into another shooter these days, but it all managed to work seamlessly on the PS2. We don’t know how, but they managed it.
God Of War 2
The first God of War game was a true test of what the PS2 could handle, with its more cinematic take on the character action genre of games taking what worked about the Devil May Cry series and upping the stakes by adding massive bosses like the Hydra and others. Oh, and the extreme levels of violence too. And a few boobies.
Having that much blood, and nipple, strewn about the place probably placed a massive load on the PS2’s CPU as well. Somehow though, the developers really managed to knock it out of the park with the sequel, God of War 2. When the game opens up with Kratos fighting a 200ft tall Colossus of Rhodes, and the console somehow doesn’t manage to instantly explode at the sheer spectacle of what’s happening, you know God of War 2 is a technical marvel.
Released when the PlayStation 3 was already out, God of War 2 itself follows the same formula as the previous game, containing a good mix of combat, platforming and puzzle solving, occasionally interspersed with some of the best boss fights on the platform. It’s just that God of War 2 pushes pretty much everything to 11, making it a truly fitting swansong for the PS2. Much like the Gran Turismo games, the God of War series has been a benchmark setting game for what PlayStation can be capable of, with the next inevitable GoW title probably being the one decent selling point to actually buy a PS5 Pro.
Each of Kratos’ beard hairs are going to be individually rendered, maybe. We can’t confirm that, our sources would kill us.
Dark Chronicle
Dark Cloud has gathered a reputation in the years since the PS2 of being one of the best RPGs on the console, but the sequel, Dark Chronicle, has been somewhat forgotten over the years, which is a shame considering Dark Chronicle pushes the capabilities of the PS2 even further than the original game.
Like Dark Cloud, players work their way through a series of procedurally generated dungeons, fighting enemies with incredibly fun action RPG gameplay, with the two playable characters of Max and Monica offering a different combat style and powers. While the gameplay and graphics both look fantastic, especially so considering Dark Chronicle is one of the earlier released games on this list, it’s the action outside the dungeons that pushes the PS2.
Basically, as you explore dungeons, you unlock gemstones that can be cashed in to unlock plans for new buildings and items that can be placed in a village of your own creation. Once you’ve placed buildings, you can then start recruiting villagers to populate the town, completing requests for them and fulfilling certain conditions to advance through the game. As RPGs go, Dark Chronicle was incredibly involved and filled with intricate systems that come together to create magic.
Throw in some of Level 5’s classic cel-shading graphics, making for some of the best anime-style visuals on the platform, and you’ve got a limit pushing RPG everyone should check out.
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