Cool! Thanks a lot for all the suggestions, all of you! I’m going to rent all of them one at a time, and then decide which ones I want to buy. However, going by most of you, Metal Gear Solid sounds like a straight buy. As does Silent Hill 4.
Uvula Donor, I just got back from a holiday in Dubai, which is where I bought the PS2. And I found an amazing deal on it too. Chipped, one extra controller, a 16MB (non-Sony) plug-and-play memory card, a 3D speaker system, and one free game, all for 1000 UAE Dirhams, which by their exchange rate works out to US$270. Pretty neat, I think.
Re: Final Fantasy. Disclaimer: I know almost nothing of the series, except the little I saw from the movie they made a few years ago. Having gotten that out of the way, is it ok to start with FFX, or would I need to go through I to IX to understand the plot?
Don’t worry about the FF plots; none of them are connected. Well, except for X and X2 (X2 is the sequel to X, but it isn’t 12 [nor is it 11], it’s just there). There are themes that you may run into: moogles, spell names, characters named Cid, but on the whole each FF takes place in a different universe.
I will (n+1)th Katamari Damashii. It’s been put on the budget label here in Japan, which is why I picked it up. (Still more expensive than the U.S. MSRP, sadly) I’ve enjoyed it so much, I even hunted down the soundtrack CD on Amazon.
(odd note: the song that plays when the King tells you what’s up on each level is called “Fugue #7777,” which is only funny if you know that one of the Japanese words for seven is “nana.” And then you remember that this isn’t the “na na na” song…)
I can’t recommend Ico highly enough. SO cool.
The last game I bought was Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War. Combines arcade-style air combat (your typical combat loadout includes 80+ air to air missiles) and simulation style campaigns (wide variety of mission types, wingmen, fairly realistic flight handling).