PlayStation’s 25th Anniversary: Five best PS2 games of all-time

Resident Evil 4

There’s a reason Resident Evil 4 gets ported to just about every console under the sun. Sure, it’s primarily because Capcom likes money. But also Resident Evil 4 — which started out as one of several Capcom-developed Nintendo Gamecube exclusives (boy, that didn’t last) — is one of the biggest game-changers and remains the best entry in one of the most beloved video game series of all time.

Firstly, it ditched the god-awful tank controls for a much better third-person perspective and minimized the somewhat nonsensical puzzles. It also placed our protagonist, Leon Kennedy, in a wholly unfamiliar place. It wasn’t a mansion or a major metropolitan city or even a secret high-tech underground base. It was a foreign countryside where it wasn’t simply zombies you had to deal with, but a parasite that warped and twisted everyone it came in contact with.

Finally, Resident Evil 4 ditched the archaic idea of limited saves. While you couldn’t go in guns blazing on everything, you also didn’t have to hold onto to ammo like it was precious gold. This drastic turn could’ve been a disaster for the series. Instead, it led to its best entry to date. While you can now play Resident Evil 4 on plenty of other platforms, it remains the best game in the great PlayStation 2 library.

And that’s the list of the five best PlayStation 2 games. Given how vast the PS2 library was, it was incredibly hard to make this list. Admittedly, quite a few great games that arguably could have made it just missed the cut. I still love you Dark Cloud 2 and Final Fantasy XII but I can’t make the whole list RPGs.

But if you were introducing someone to the PlayStation 2 and wanted to show them not only games that were important but remain high watermarks to this day, these are the five to go with. Happy anniversary, PlayStation!