PS2 Game Reviews

[Guest chirs3]

I just got a PS2 and did a little marathon session, so here I go.

 

1) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

 

Overrated like you wouldn't believe. Yes, it's pretty good. But Game of the Year? Give me a break.

 

The AI alternates between smart and stupid, the acting alternates between believable and robotic, and the controls... well, they don't alternate, they're just frustrating. Especially having to stand Snake up to run away if you're discovered crouching. Otacon providing useless info doesn't help - like "Shoot the control box", when there are actually three control boxes to shoot.

 

Still, when it's not trying to piss you off, it can be a fun game.

 

65%

 

2) Grand Theft Auto 3

 

There's not much to say except GOD DAMN. Awesome game. I have two complaints, those being some missions are really hard and the graphics get a little blurry sometimes. Neither are anything worth paying attention to. This is a keeper.

 

95%

 

3) Silent Hill 2

 

Scary as a mothertrucker. The atmosphere and story are exceptionally well done. Puzzles and voice acting are very good. Only problem is the mundane action, which you can pretty much avoid altogether by running. At least in SH1 they chased you. Not so in here.

 

75%

 

4) Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

 

A great hop-n-bop Mario-esque platformer. It's just way too short.

 

90%

 

5) Final Fantasy X

 

There's not much to say. It's Final Fantasy. Yes, it kicks ass. Yes, the graphics are stellar. We've all heard this and expected it.

 

The new level up/ability system kicks Materia's ass and takes its throne. The story is great, the voice acting surprisingly good for a first try, and it's just a lot more fun to play than other FF's. And, as odd as this may sound... the boss fights... are HARD. Scary, I know, especially for a FF, but it's true.

 

I haven't beaten it yet, but from what I've seen...

 

90%

 

6) SSX Tricky

 

Perfect in every way, except it lacks replayability. After you conquer all the tracks with each of the 14 characters, I mean. More tracks would have been good.

 

The voice acting and music are phenomenal, especially the "Tricky" theme. The Uber tricks are eye-poppingly crazy. It's hard, yet not frustrating.

 

95%

 

PS: 14 characters was a guess. All I remember is there's a lot.

 

7) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

 

They need to take rap out of the Tony games, because except for a few select songs from 2, it's all sucked.

 

It's hard to give this a rating. It's fun, yea, but it's exactly the same as Tony 2, except the revert. With the exception of Canada, the levels don't seem any bigger, and the "varied" mission objectives means half the skaters have to 50-50 a rail, the other half have to kickflip a gap. Such variety.

 

A good rental.

 

60%

 

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Fin

[Guest]

I agree with everything except for Tony Hawk 3

 

 

 

I think that it would have been better had they made an actual GOOD place to skate. None of them are really any-good, to me. The Wherehouse/whatever gets old, Canada gets old, LA gets REALLY old and the boat...don't even get me started. The only one I really go back to is Skater Island, and that's because I just like skateparks. I know I missed a few levels, but to me: they aren't worth it.

 

 

Still, being able to play as Rowley AND BAM!~ is cool.

[Guest redbaron51]

The only thing that was good on THPS 3 for music was...

 

Ramones

Motorhead

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

I'm wondering how long it will take everyone else to realize that MGS2 was overrated. Everyone was talking about it before it came out and eveyone was talking about it after it came out, but I'm waiting for people to look back and say, "GTA 3 was better than MGS2." I had the oppurtunity to play MGS2, but I couldn't really play it because I was playing GTA3 at the same time. I played MGS2 for a few hours, but I picked up GTA3 and never looked back. I'm not saying MGS2 was a peice of crap, but it wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be.

[Guest]

I beat MGS2 in honestly an hour and a half. The boat took me twenty minutes, and the rest took an hour and ten, INCLUDING cutscenes.

 

 

I still liked being able to play evil dude and put one in the dome of some dude that I just made sleep.

 

 

He was probably dreaming of that quasi-fine Fortune. That outfit made me feel LUCKY!~  Get it?

[Guest chirs3]

Well, I took a whole 10 hours and change, mainly because I was either running off cliffs due to the poor control scheme or sitting through, not joking, a string of A DOZEN cutscenes (including Codecs) that could take up ten minutes at a time.

[Guest Narcoleptic Jumper]

I beat MGS2 in honestly an hour and a half. The boat took me twenty minutes, and the rest took an hour and ten, INCLUDING cutscenes.

 

Sorry, but that isn't possible.  The ending cutscene alone is about 45 minutes long.

[Guest chirs3]

I doubt it's 45 minutes. I think it can just fall into the "Longer than necessary" category.

[Guest J*ingus]

Depends.  If you skip through EVERYTHING, all the cutscenes and codec stuff, and do it all as fast as humanly possible, I could maybe see it being done in less than two hours, but I still think the guy is exaggerating.  

 

For me, I loved the game.  I didn't think it was quite as perfect as the first one, the story just got too weird and convoluted at times, but it was still a damn fine game in my opinion.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

MGS2 isn't shit compared to GTA3.

[Guest chirs3]

MGS2 isn't shit period, comparitively or standalone. Like I said, when it's not trying to piss you off, it can be really really fun.

[Guest Shaved Bear]

The only thing that was good on THPS 3 for music was...

 

Ramones

Motorhead

i dunno, when playing the game i thought the Henry Rollins song was ok

[Guest chirs3]

I thought most of the Punk and Rock from THPS3 was good... but the Rap was just awful.

 

They need more Rap like THPS2 had - "Cyclone", "Pin The Tail On The Donkey", those were good.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

I'll tell you what rap sucks, the rap in GTA3. The music loses its luster after a while. The music is servicable for a while, but when you think about how many hours you can spend playing the game, the music can get kind of old. After a while, I started laughing at the rap songs in GTA3. Royce the 5'9 shouldn't have volunteered Game Records for the soundtrack because that soured me to him.

[Guest chirs3]

I usually just tuned it to Chatterbox.

[Guest Angle-plex]

1) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

 

Overrated like you wouldn't believe. Yes, it's pretty good. But Game of the Year? Give me a break.

 

The AI alternates between smart and stupid, the acting alternates between believable and robotic, and the controls... well, they don't alternate, they're just frustrating. Especially having to stand Snake up to run away if you're discovered crouching. Otacon providing useless info doesn't help - like "Shoot the control box", when there are actually three control boxes to shoot.

 

Still, when it's not trying to piss you off, it can be a fun game.

 

65%

 

Overrated? Yes. 65%? No. Some of the best graphics on PS2. Very good gameplay and controls. The first MGS is my fav. game ever, and I do think the second is overrated, but I wouldn't give it a 65%.

[Guest chirs3]

The control scheme was godawful, making accidentally running off cliffs a common occurence. Not to mention having to STAND UP TO RUN! There should be a crouch-run, duck-run, whatever you wanna call it, because as crazy as it sounds, people do it and I bet Snake would too.

 

I usually don't take graphics into account when grading a game... not like "ooh, the textures are good!" I compliment or attack graphics when they add or detract from the game's mood and atmosphere. MGS2 fell right in the middle. They did nothing to wow me, but did nothing to piss me off either.

 

Mostly going back to the smart/stupid AI and the crappy control scheme, as well as the 34124782349238 hours of cutscenes, it makes the game NOT FUN more often that it's fun. Since playing games should be about fun, that's why I gave it a pretty low score. When it IS fun, it's very fun.

[Guest Angle-plex]

MGS was a better game than MGS2 though. In MGS, just when you thought you knew what was going on, something came out of nowhere. In MGS2, you just don't know what the hell is going on.

 

Also in MGS2, the one thing besides the story I didn't like was that you just use the M9 over and over and over. There wasn't any sneaking around like MGS.

 

I really didn't find the controls awful. Image it on X-Box or Gamecube.

[Guest Narcoleptic Jumper]

Yes, the ending cutscene is about 45 minutes long. I'm NOT exaggerating.

 

MGS was a better game than MGS2 though. In MGS, just when you thought you knew what was going on, something came out of nowhere. In MGS2, you just don't know what the hell is going on.

 

How true is that. In MGS2, you don't know what the hell is going on, and then something comes right out of the blue, and you STILL have no idea what is going on. The story sucked, plain and simple. That's why it will never be as good as MGS, GTA3, or any other game with a coherent story line.

 

MGS2 = Good game. Game Of The Year? I think not. It gets an 85% in my book.