PLAYSTATION 2 GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

I really consider the PS2 to be my favorite console. It's the one with the biggest pile of games I can spend months on end playing. Like the other console pages, this is my little way of recommending you stuff to play. My focus is on stuff I either have history with or smaller, more obscure titles I've enjoyed or found curious.

[#] Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (Sony, 2002)

Oh, to be a sneaky little guy.

Sly Cooper comes from a long line of master thieves. He's also a raccoon. These will be on the test. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was the first true success from the former Microsoft employees who formed Sucker Punch in the late 90s, and part of the trifecta of mascot platformers that also saw Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank rise to prominence. Sly and his gang (a dorky hypochondriac turtle named Bentley and their dumb getaway driver hippo friend Murray) vow to avenge Sly's father's death and the theft of the titular Thievius Raccoonus at the hands of a shadowy cabal of criminals known as the Fiendish Five--all while getting chased by a hot fox babe!

Setting itself apart from the pack with the series' now-trademark cel-shaded 3D cartoon art style, Sly oozes charm. You roll into one of five varied landmarks, the snowy mountains of China, rainy shores off the coast of Wales, or the Louisiana swamps, trade barbs with your debriefing partner Bentley, and collect keys to square up against the boss from a variety of levels. Some have you hop in a barrel to hide, or dodge spotlights and lasers. Some have you man a turret to protect Murray out in the wild. Sly is not very sturdy, so stay unseen and don't get into fights. It's stealthy without being tedious, and the writing makes it all satisfying to watch come to completion.

For all of Sly's charms (and there's plenty), it definitely doesn't escape first game syndrome. If you're expecting the open world, massive heists of the sequels, these are far more linear levels that play more like an old-school, two-hit-death platformer. Sly controls well, though the recurring vehicle segments absolutely do not. I seem to recall some of the bosses also feeling rather cheap and taking a few attempts, but nothing all that egregious. It's stylish, it's well-crafted, and while it's hardly the pinnacle of the trilogy, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a strong start that you should probably play at some point. (After the second one though.)

Recommended for... platformer fans and raccoon fans.

[#] SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (THQ, 2003)

Who would win, a million robots with stun guns or one spongey boy?

Not many old-school Nicktoons games get modern remakes, so what does that say about Battle for Bikini Bottom? Says it's pretty good! Plankton's evil scheme to mass-manufacture robots to break him into the Krusty Krab goes haywire, and now every inch of Bikini Bottom is crawling with a surprisingly imaginative array of goo bots, stun bots (kinky), fire-breathing bots, sleepy bots, Texas bots, a lot of robots, okay. It's up to SpongeBob, Patrick, and Sandy to take turns kicking ass and eventually taking on themselves in giant robot form--how meta.

Bikini Bottom takes you everywhere, from the relative scenic peace of Jellyfish Fields and Goo Lagoon (go find the Atari controller sandcastle) to the eerie depths of Rock Bottom, the Mermalair, and the Flying Dutchman's graveyard, and even some slightly stranger spots in between. You ever wanted to see what Patrick dreams of? You ever wanted to race down Sand Mountain? Actually, those sliding areas are easily the most fun part of the game, whether you're taking it fast or exploring the branching slopes, it's a good-ass time.

The platforming is pretty beyond reproach, and while not every stage hits (I never liked the Kelp Forest or the Mermalair, truth be told), there's more than plenty that do. SpongeBob also gains abilities over the course of the game, and they're all pretty killer. Seriously, the Bubble Bowling move is so much fun, there's a gigantic playable skii-ball machine in Goo Lagoon. How fun is that? And that's my biggest takeaway from Battle for Bikini Bottom--there's so many little side areas, changes of pace, and fun little extras to find in each level that 100%ing it is a pleasure, not a pain, no small feat for Heavy Iron Studios.

Recommended for... platformer fans and anyone who misses golden age Nickelodeon.

[#] TimeSplitters (Eidos, 2000)

Heir to the GoldenEye throne, with a lovely level editor in tow.

If you've never heard of TimeSplitters, you might know its spiritual predecessor: GoldenEye. Yeah, the one on N64. GoldenEye's been talked to death, but what's lesser known is that a lot of the Rare staff who worked on it went on to form Free Radical Design and produce the TimeSplitters series in the 2000s. TimeSplitters itself is better known for the story-based later entries in the series, but how's the first? I can't say no to any game with a level editor, man. It's a bit lightweight, the loading times are egregious (half a minute per level!), but if you're looking for a fast-paced four-player arena shooter for your PS2, it's got the guns and the funs.

For the story mode, you play a rather grotesquely designed guy or gal in various time periods seeking to retrieve an item from each (an ankh in a tomb in the 1930s, a briefcase in a chinese restaurant in the 1970s). When you do so, time-traveling ghouls called the TimeSplitters flood the level to try to kill you. The shooting mechanics and autoaim are very good, and the framerate is silky no matter the carnage. You're timed for each mission (and yes, there are target times that unlock cheats), but while GoldenEye had the objectives and locales from the Bond film to hang on, these levels are fun but repetitive, not much going on except a speedrun shooting gallery.

It's really in the multiplayer and level editor that TimeSplitters holds great appeal. There's various deathmatch and capture the flag modes you can play either with bots or with up to three other humans, and the matches are highly customizable and the bot AI is actually surprisingly good. MapMaker is another nicely intricate addition: you're able to put together tiles of hallways, ramps, and rooms in up to five layers, choosing where you want spawn points, gun places, flags, health and armor pickups, even per-tile lighting and color effects. It's highly engaging stuff, and provided you can get over the long load times, TimeSplitters's gunplay and MapMaker might just prove habit forming.

Recommended for... creatively-inclined ADHD shooter fans.

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Activision, 2001)

The pinnacle of skating games, bar none.

Tony Hawk's was an institution on the PS1. These games took a sport and culture everyone's fascinated by and merged them with dead simple controls that even people who aren't gamers can glom onto. I can only guess just how next-gen Pro Skater 3 felt when it dropped back in the day. I mean, this game is next-level in terms of its graphics, the scope of its levels, the objectives, and just how cinematic it can be at times. With a slicker engine, better physics, and cleaner graphics, I don't begrudge anyone calling this their favorite Tony Hawk game.

Like the manuals in the second game, Pro Skater 3 introduces a new mechanic in reverts, which lets you keep your combo exiting a ramp by pressing R2 at just the right time. Also like manuals, it's a little hard to go back to the earlier games that didn't have reverts after making use of it for so long. Seriously, it just feels natural once you've gotten used to it, and it's key for the scores this game asks you to get. If you thought 250,000 for Philly was a tall order, try the 500,000 you'll need to get top marks on the Cruise Ship!

While previous games gave objectives that involved tricking over obstacles and collecting items, Pro Skater 3's objectives oftentimes involve a little thinking. Sometimes, you have to defeat criminals by causing an earthquake. Sometimes, you have to help a man get back into his haunted mansion using an axe stolen from a construction site. It's a nice change of pace, and makes great use of each locale. This game really incentivizes you to 100% each skater, given all the bizarre unlock characters and hidden goodies that await you. And trust me, you'll want to.

Recommended for... absolutely anyone with a pulse and can hold a controller.

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