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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.
Heir to the GoldenEye throne, with a lovely level editor in tow.
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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.
| Reviewed | My favorite part |
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| August 1, 2025 | MapMaker |
The pinnacle of skating games, bar none.
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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.
| Reviewed | My favorite part |
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| June 6, 2021 | Airport |
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