I plan on buying our household a PS2 for Christmas. I need some advice on this thing since I’ve been out of the gaming concole world for a long time.
Okay… I’m too quick on the tab/enter key today… My questions are as follows:
Memory. Do I need it? Is it used for save games or what? How much do I need? One for each game that I get?
Since this is supposed to be a family thing, do the following games offer the ability for at least two people to play at once
Tekken Tag
Need for Speed 2
Unreal Tournament
Turok
Any opinions on those games? I’d like to start us off with a Shooter, a Fighter and a Driving game. Any decent alternatives?
You need at least one memory card to save information on…everything from high scores to options to features. It’s not strictly required, but you’ll have an extremely hard time without one. If you play any kind of game that requires you to periodically stop and record your progress (n.b. this includes nearly every fighting game out there), you MUST have one. Unless you have a ton of games, one memory card is sufficient. There’s like 8MB on it, and most games only take between 300-800 KB.
All fighting games have 2-player capability; some allow even more (though none for the PS2 that I know of). Most driving games allow head-to-head competition utilizing a split screen.
For a fighter, I definitely recommend Capcom vs. SNK 2, as it has a pretty gentle learning curve, but a steep requirement to get the best ending. The easiest difficulty level is actually quite easy, so the whole family can get into it. The Tekken games are okay, but grossly overrated. What the endlessly glowing reviews don’t tell you is that it’s a damn hard game to learn (trust me, I’ve actually played these), much less get good at, and the controls are some of the most counterintuitive I’ve ever seen. It’s not a coincidence that most of the fights you see are either mashfests, single attack-fests, or a combination of both. If you’re seriously considering a family game, I don’t recommend either Tekken title available for PS2. Street Fighter EX 3 is pretty good, but don’t get it unless you really like Street Fighter.
Shooter…erm…I’d recommend Silent Scope 3, except that I haven’t played it yet. Oh, what the heck, get Silent Scope 3. The Namco shooters, Time Crisis 2 and Ninja Assault, may be worth taking a look at.
I cannot recommend a driving game as 99.9% of driving games make me queasy. DAY-AMN, is the deck stacked against you.
Hope this helps!
(P.S. If you really want a family game, you cannot go wrong with Klonoa 2.)
Fighters–go with either Virtua Fighter 4 or the new Tekken game.
Shooters–Medal of Honor is great, but it’s one player only. For 2 player stuff, try James Bond: Agent Under Fire, or the new Timesplitters 2.
Driving–Need For Speed 2 is pretty good, but I like Gran Turismo 3 better. GT3 is also only $20.
I just realized that I my be misleading people when I say I’m getting the PS2 for my “family”. My family is not a normal one with two adults and kids. It’s three adults, two of which are addicted to video games already.
Though I might throw that out there before folks started suggesting child appropriate games. No childeren to worry about (yet).
That was pretty much what I was looking at for fighters. I liked the look of Tekken better for some odd reason.
A friend has ames Bond and I fiddled with it a bit. Too many gadgets for me. I basically I just want to kill stuff and Frag my housemates ala Doom style. I lose interest if it’s gets too complicated. I played Turok at my friends place. That seemed kinda fun (but hard). Any other straight shoot-em-up games out there? Timesplitters looks kinda fun.
I think what attracted me to Need for Speed was the “running from the cops” part. Played a verson for the PSone and liked it. GT3 looks very atractive as well. I might end up owning both (come on, income tax return!)
If you want to run from cops, go buy Grand Theft Auto 4(or 3, but 4 was just released).
Yes, you need a memory card. Ps2s are pretty cheap at myinfinity.com
as are the other consoles.
For games, try gamefaqs.com they have large lists of what games people are playing. & opinions on the games. sorted by category.
At the moment, Im playing GTA4 & LOTR,
Nitpick: GTA: Vice City != GTA4.
And yes, it sounds like Timesplitters 2 is the best shooter for you. You might also try Red Faction, but I think Timesplitters has gotten better reviews.
I’m starting to lean towards Red Faction for a shooter. I think I’m attracted to the Mature rating vs the Teen rating on Timesplitters. Sometimes I just want good video violence. (blood! gore! destruction!) I’ll most likely end up with both after I get the usual round of gift certificates for Christmas. They both sound like great games and both have great reviews.
On another note,
Can anyone think of a real good reason that I can’t have Christmas in early November? Now that I’m researching all this, I don’t think I can wait till Christmas to get one. (yes, I’m weak)
I’m enjoying my recent purchase of SOCOM: US Navy Seals … like my friend said before I bought it: The headset is awesome. If you’ve been home alone all day playing video games, it’s nice to have someone to talk to 
Although it’s not quite in any of the categories you suggested, I recently picked up a charming little game called BloodRayne. It’s a little bit like Tomb Raider, but with hand-to-hand combat and quite a bit of gore. Rayne’s sex appeal is the major selling point of the game, but if you took that away, you’d still have a good game.
Also, if you can find it, pick up a copy of Sky Odyssey. It’s an older game, and the graphics aren’t as good as the newer games, but it’s a lot of fun, and challenging enough to keep you busy for a long time.
Spy Hunter is a decent racing game, although it does have a shoot-'em-up element. And there’s a remake of Defender coming out in the near future that looks pretty sweet.
My tips:
Ico - excellent puzzle solving adventure game with stunning scenery (under-rated in my opintion). Not an action game… more of a thinking game.
Burnout 2 Point Of Impact - Very good driving game for 1 or 2 players. Very high speed driving thrills - lots of fun.
Grand Theft Auto Vice City - My favourite game so far. Guns, knives, car-jacking, beating the crap out of people. You are pretty much given free run of the city to do whatever you like - just don’t get busted by the cops. Not for kids, obviously!
Haven’t played red faction, but I have got TimeSplitters2. TS2 is an alround quality shooter. If you plan on playing 2 or more players a lot ten I highly recommend it. There are a huge number of maps, characters and weapons so its ideally suited to deathmatch games.
Memory card - buy one. 8mb should do you. Trust me you WILL need it!
Oh great. Another driving game that I must own. Wreckless driving and destructive collisions. Right up my ally. I’m going to have to take a hard look at all these great games and try to pick one from each catagory (for now). It’s getting harder and harder as the list grows longer.
GTA : VC is another that looks good to me. It doesn’t seem to fit nicely into any of my main catagories, so I can probably justify getting it on it’s own. (isn’t rationalizing fun?)
Oh yeah, just remembered…CART Fury. The perfect racing game for your household. No complicated setups, no slogging through differentials and driveshafts and tires and systems and blah blah blah bling bling bling…just get in the car and race like hell. A must-have.
I recommend Klonoa 2 no matter what, though you might want to rent it if you don’t really care for getting all the special items and features (can be fun, can be frustrating).
And if mass bloodshed is your thing, go with Silent Scope 2, which has a cool 2-player mode to boot.
I have another question about memory cards.
Say you had two people who were trying to finish a game. Both require frequent saves. I understand that the card has plenty of space on it, but would there be a danger of them accidently saving over the others hard work? Would it be safer for each to have a their own memory card for their saves?
Yeah, it’s safer to have two memory cards, one for each person, though most of the games I play will ask if you’re sure you want to save over another save. The cards come in different colors. I really wouldn’t bother, though.
PS2s play both PSX and PS2 games. If you get a PSX game, you need to save it on a PSX card, rather than a PS2 card. There’s still LOTS of great PSX games out there, at very reasonable prices now.