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Post by 1983parrothead on Sept 3, 2018 14:11:29 GMT -5
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Post by GamerL on Sept 3, 2018 17:35:20 GMT -5
My all time favorite console without a doubt.
The PS2 is just so well rounded, while it wasn't quite as powerful as the 'Cube or the Xbox, depending on the developer you could still get some incredible looking games for the time or games that just flat out looked nice, the PS2 couldn't quite do a lot of fancy effects but it could do nice, sharp textures well.
Then there's the library, also incredibly well rounded, great first party support, great third party support, great Japanese support, great western support, there's just so many cool games on the console, including some all time classics.
To me the PS2 represents the sweet spot of gaming, when technology was just good enough that games started to approach realism but not so advanced that you couldn't still make a good looking game within a reasonable budget, when there was a perfect balance between western and Japanese releases and when games had newfound mainstream attention but games were still made for gamers first and foremost, when you could make an artsy game like Silent Hill 2 but it wasn't some indie thing only available on digital platforms but a "AAA" game you could buy at Walmart.
We've since lost that perfect balance and that's a shame, but we'll always have the PS2, there's still TONS of games from it's library I've yet to play, I have a feeling I'll still be going back to the PS2 for a long time.
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2018 0:55:33 GMT -5
The PS2 is the highest-selling home system of all time, so like a '00s NES, it has this incredibly expansive library. I've been catching up with it on-and-off for years, and there's still a bunch of PS2 titles I want to play. It has so many hidden gems, too. And sort-off like Gamer Griff was saying, it was the last generation where Japanese companies as a whole were still going strong. The last great system, in my view. The Switch is doing some interesting things, but it still seems to be stuck with just Nintendo's own games (or the stuff they publish) and a ton of smaller indie titles; the mid-level games, and the big 3rd party titles companies like Capcom, Konami, Namco, etc. used to make aren't really represented.
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Post by GamerL on Sept 4, 2018 4:49:55 GMT -5
The PS2 is the highest-selling home system of all time, so like a '00s NES, it has this incredibly expansive library. I've been catching up with it on-and-off for years, and there's still a bunch of PS2 titles I want to play. It has so many hidden gems, too. And sort-off like Gamer Griff was saying, it was the last generation where Japanese companies as a whole were still going strong. The last great system, in my view. The Switch is doing some interesting things, but it still seems to be stuck with just Nintendo's own games (or the stuff they publish) and a ton of smaller indie titles; the mid-level games, and the big 3rd party titles companies like Capcom, Konami, Namco, etc. used to make aren't really represented. The number of hidden gems on the PS2 insane. And "00s NES", I like that a lot and think it's true. The PS3 is a veritable desert in comparison, I'm actually struggling to think of a single exclusive not published by Sony themselves that I care about, I wonder why the PS3 turned out to be such a disaster exactly? I sure was fucking hyped back in the day, just the name alone, "PS3" had me convinced it was going to be the hottest shit gaming had ever seen, but of course I was thinking it was going to be like the PS2, only better. |
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2018 5:20:30 GMT -5
Well, part of it is that exclusives became way less common across the board, so most of the big PS3 titles can probably be played on PC now, and a lot of big Japanese companies got budgeted out of games development or re-focused on portables, mobile phones, or whatever else that didn't entail insane investments.
You know how people sometimes blame Shenmue's budget for tanking Sega? Depending on what you believe out of the different numbers quoted online, Watch Dogs had about the same budget, and that was just one of Ubi's bigger releases that year. It sold well, but that level of risk is insane.
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Post by GamerL on Sept 4, 2018 5:59:31 GMT -5
Weirdly the Xbox 360 was a better follow up to the PS2 than the PS3.
There were a lot of franchises that started on PS1/PS2 that had 360 exclusive entries and may have even wound up skipping the PS3 completely, franchises like Ace Combat, Armored Core and... Rumble Roses (not the best example but you get my point)
And Dead Rising, one of my all time favorite games, felt very much of the spirit of where Capcom was at during the 6th gen with their PS2 games and it was a 360 exclusive for a decade and wound up skipping the PS3 completely.
I quite like the pre-Kinect 360 to be honest, I have no nostalgia for the PS3, it's not that there aren't games on it I still like mind you, just that there's no sentimental value for the PS3 for me as a whole, it was overall a disappointment.
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2018 6:08:15 GMT -5
Yeah, there was more of an effort with the 360 to get exclusives and reach different types of gamers, it seems. Maybe Sony just rested on its laurels because the PS2 had been so big. Console transitions are always a risky moment, and nobody's ever been able to keep that dominant position forever. Nintendo was number one in system sales for two generations, then dropped drastically with the N64 (though the N64 sold almost as well as the SNES in North America, it was much less popular elsewhere); Sony similarly had two generations of domination followed by a drop.
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Post by GamerL on Sept 4, 2018 6:38:18 GMT -5
Yeah, there was more of an effort with the 360 to get exclusives and reach different types of gamers, it seems. Maybe Sony just rested on its laurels because the PS2 had been so big. Console transitions are always a risky moment, and nobody's ever been able to keep that dominant position forever. Nintendo was number one in system sales for two generations, then dropped drastically with the N64 (though the N64 sold almost as well as the SNES in North America, it was much less popular elsewhere); Sony similarly had two generations of domination followed by a drop. Sony had a completely cocky and shitty attitude back then, remember the comment about how people should "get a second job" to pay for the high price of the PS3? There were other PR disasters like when they sued an importer company for selling Japanese PSPs in the US before the official US release date, which made them look like a big ole bully. The marketing was so terrible back then too, remember the creepy fucking crying babydoll PS3 commercial? The PSP ads with "I'm playing nut!" or the fake viral video "all I want for Christmas is my PSP!" (and a little later the ad for the white PSP with the white woman threateningly gripping the neck of a black woman, THAT would go over real well today) The PS3 itself looked like a George Foreman grill and the controller was originally shaped like a banana. A lot of people WANTED the PS3 to fail because of all this, I never went that far, but hatred for Sony and Playstation became a meme that's never really fully gone away, hell, even I feel weird about having a positive attitude towards Sony after the PS3, to say they ruined any goodwill they had built up amongst gamers is a hell of an understatement. Just ugh, I'm bringing back bad memories. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, the PS2 fucking ruled. |
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Post by toei on Sept 4, 2018 7:15:06 GMT -5
Yeah, there was more of an effort with the 360 to get exclusives and reach different types of gamers, it seems. Maybe Sony just rested on its laurels because the PS2 had been so big. Console transitions are always a risky moment, and nobody's ever been able to keep that dominant position forever. Nintendo was number one in system sales for two generations, then dropped drastically with the N64 (though the N64 sold almost as well as the SNES in North America, it was much less popular elsewhere); Sony similarly had two generations of domination followed by a drop. (and a little later the ad for the white PSP with the white woman threateningly gripping the neck of a black woman, THAT would go over real well today) That was only in the Netherlands, but I'm convinced whoever came up with that shit was a straight-up white supremacist. Who would even think of associating the color of the PSP to the race of their model, and specifically think to put her in a dominant and aggressive position over a black woman next to the slogan "white is coming", unless they were racist as shit? I'm sure it drew the usual "it's not racist, you're all oversensitive" defenses, but it's just too obvious to pretend it's not there. I've literally seen Nazi propaganda that was more subtle. And you're right about everything else. I wasn't paying much attention at the time, so I only vaguely remember it. Sony dug their own hole, basically. |
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Post by retr0gamer on Sept 4, 2018 7:57:18 GMT -5
The PS3 was a complete disaster at launch and for a few years. No real killer app game for it and third party releases looked and ran significantly worse on the PS3. The 360 in comparison had a good few diverse exclusives. That started to shift though and the exclusives on 360 started to dry up, engine developers got a handle on the PS3 were there was parity between PS3 and 360 releases (and in the case of frostbite engine games, they ran better on PS3). At the end the PS3 got a whole host of Japanese and Sony exclusives and in my eyes by the end it was a much better console than the 360 which just seemed to rest on it's laurels after the initial great run of exclusives.
It wasn't a great generation for games but it was far better than what we have now with the One and PS4 being totally homogenise and just not essential if you have a PC. Even the PS4 exclusives haven't impressed me outside of Bloodborne. God of War is fine but the constant cutscenes bore me.
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Post by dsparil on Sept 4, 2018 9:42:07 GMT -5
PS3 was quite a mess. I basically passed on it since I didn't have an HDTV and reports were that some games were illegible in standard definition. That was the point that I went Nintendo only although I did pick up quite a few used PS2 games over the years. Plenty of video store closing also meant a huge supply of former rentals that were available for dirt cheap. I picked up something like 15 from a single closing for around $60!
I do regret not grabbing a PS3 with hardware backwards compatibility when I had the chance though. I had an opportunity for a cheap one that was barely used, but the lack of an HDTV and what was then a still fully functional PS2 ended up dissuading me.
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Post by spanky on Sept 4, 2018 10:01:04 GMT -5
I had a lot of good times with the PS2 but it took me a while to warm up to it.
The hype for the system ALONE killed the Dreamcast. The DC was doomed no matter what, but I was a huge fan of it.
The first year of the PS2 was pretty rough. I remember reading the launch lineup review in EGM and thinking "NOTHING here appeals to me."
Then GTA 3 came out. I watched a friend play it on his PS2 and I was mesmerized. I sold my Dreamcast, N64 and a ton of valuable SNES games and my entire Game Boy collection to get enough cash to buy a PS2 and GTA 3 from Funcoland. I kinda regret this.
The quality of the hardware itself drove me nuts. I remember having tons of disc read errors. I eventually got the slim version which was much more reliable.
I played quite a few of the noteworthy PS2 titles - my favorite is probably MGS3 Subsistence, but the bulk of my library is compilation discs. I remember playing Capcom Classics Collection and all those SNK collections a tonnnnn in college. I lived in the dorms (I was an RA) and people would walk by and be like "Holy shit! Final Fight" and join in. Great times.
I like the PS2 quite a bit but it's definitely not my favorite system. I gravitate towards more instant gratification stuff nowadays...when I think of a PS2 game, I think of loading, long cutscenes, mandatory tutorials etc....stuff I don't really want to bother with.
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Post by Bumpyroad on Sept 4, 2018 10:32:31 GMT -5
One thing i loved the most about PlayStations, is their gamepads. They're most comfortable for me design-wise. I still got functional original PS3 Sixaxis, which was discontinued in '08?, so more or less a decade lasting, what i can't say the same about a PS2.
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Post by KGRAMR on Sept 4, 2018 13:25:04 GMT -5
I had a lot of good times with the PS2 but it took me a while to warm up to it. The hype for the system ALONE killed the Dreamcast. The DC was doomed no matter what, but I was a huge fan of it. The first year of the PS2 was pretty rough. I remember reading the launch lineup review in EGM and thinking "NOTHING here appeals to me." Then GTA 3 came out. I watched a friend play it on his PS2 and I was mesmerized. I sold my Dreamcast, N64 and a ton of valuable SNES games and my entire Game Boy collection to get enough cash to buy a PS2 and GTA 3 from Funcoland. I kinda regret this. The quality of the hardware itself drove me nuts. I remember having tons of disc read errors. I eventually got the slim version which was much more reliable. I played quite a few of the noteworthy PS2 titles - my favorite is probably MGS3 Subsistence, but the bulk of my library is compilation discs. I remember playing Capcom Classics Collection and all those SNK collections a tonnnnn in college. I lived in the dorms (I was an RA) and people would walk by and be like "Holy shit! Final Fight" and join in. Great times. I like the PS2 quite a bit but it's definitely not my favorite system. I gravitate towards more instant gratification stuff nowadays...when I think of a PS2 game, I think of loading, long cutscenes, mandatory tutorials etc....stuff I don't really want to bother with. Truth to be told: I actually hated the PS2 'cause it killed the Dreamcast for me and for years, i did so without never playing ANY PS2 game...then i played Gradius V on the days i was playing on many system and my opinion on the system actually changed for good but i still hold some grudge for it for killing the DC, though as i've seen from the indie DC scene, that system was never dead to begin with. |
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Post by lurker on Sept 4, 2018 15:50:11 GMT -5
I hate how both the PS2 versions of TMNT Smash-Up and Godzilla Unleashed ended up being the lesser ones. Wii version of Smash-Up had Fugitoid as a playable character (who was only a cutscene/plot character in the PS2 version) and the Wii version of Unleashed had more characters, like King Caesar and Biollante, whereas the PS2's exclusive was a clone character.
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