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.

[#] AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack (MTV Games, 2008)

I feel like I should be doing an album review for this one.

While the run of Track Packs were originally meant to give Rock Band DLC to the consoles that couldn't get any, this one's an odd duck: effectively a playable version of AC/DC's Live at Donington DVD, totally exclusive to this disc! Actually the first time 17 of these 18 tracks have ever appeared in a rhythm game, it seems hard to pass up playing "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" and "Back in Black" and "Thunderstruck" in Rock Band—but hold on. There are caveats that I think pretty universally temper how much excitement you can expect to have for this disc.

For one thing, being a live set, there's lots of, well, liveness going on. Several of the songs are extended with long breaks where singer Brian Johnson plays the crowd, or long intros meant to build anticipation. These are fine enough in a live setting, but kinda suck when you're waiting a minute or two for your instrument to come back in, or playing a really dull drum part in a break. These songs also have the longest Big Rock Endings (where the only goal is to smash on your controller for pounts) of the entire series—some go for at least half a minute. Of strumming and mashing buttons! It's a little tiring and dull. Brian Johnson's gnarled space alien singing also probably won't appeal to folks looking for an AC/DC greatest hits in Rock Band, but I didn't mind all that much personally.

That all said, this isn't a bad set to go through if you're a rhythm gaming fanatic or you like AC/DC. It's built on the first Rock Band's engine, so if you're okay with missing hyperspeed and the like, it plays perfectly well. The songs are still catchy and definitely fun in casual play, even if their extended forms make any kind of score grinding an exercise in tedium (gold stars hinge entirely on being perfect on the easy songs or hitting the absurdly difficult solos on the harder ones). Thoroughly flawed but fun in spite of itself, this is the rare case of a wonky game that's wonky for reasons that seem to be mostly out of the developer's control. Harmonix did their usual good job transcribing these songs, it's just that what they're transcribing is a nine minute long rendition of "High Voltage".

[#] Amplitude (Sony, 2003)

A perpetually underrated music game masterpiece.

FreQuency might've given Harmonix a lot of good press, but it didn't make them millionaires. Its sequel, Amplitude, improved every single aspect of FreQuency and hasn't dated a day in 18 years...and still didn't make them millionaires. This may be the single best game in history no one bought. To date, I still staunchly shill it to everyone I know, because it deserves it. And that, my reader, means you now.

Amplitude plays roughly the same as FreQuency, juggling instruments track-by-track to rebuild a song's mix, except it's now on sonic highways rather than through tunnels. Compared to FreQuency, Amplitude features a gentler difficulty curve over four difficulties, Mellow, Normal, Brutal, and Insane. The latter two are apt names—you'll be chasing good scores on them for a long while. The timing window is much relaxed, similar to the first Guitar Hero, and Amplitude is still as playable as it's ever been, especially given the absolutely fantastic soundtrack that spans everything from blink-182 to Slipknot to P!nk to David fucking Bowie.

The graphics are much improved from FreQuency, featuring dizzying cityscapes and bubbling reactor cores you'll fly your Beat Blaster through, and the FreQs, formerly just icons, are now customizable 3D models that play along to the track you're on and whose bodies and heads you'll unlock as you play. You get ranked in songs by your score (1-4 bars), and there's nothing better than nailing the right path through a song and earning all four. While you can still get local multiplayer and even online going for extra fun, even solo, this game is bonkers fun. You need to play it.

[#] Fantavision (Sony, 2000)

An astoundingly pretty fireworks puzzler that nevertheless doesn't much use your brain.

You gotta appreciate just how much people wanted the PS2, even with its pretty meager launch lineup. Fantavision is maybe the most emblematic of the lot, and reviewers at the time called it for what it is, a tech demo for the PS2's much-touted 3D particle effects. Yes, it's a game built around a single visual effect, that the dazzling fireworks displays are entirely polygonal, not one sprite in sight to make them! It's a shallow effect, but undeniably very pretty, especially during the replays. I've heard the two-player mode in Fantavision majorly improves replayability, but alas, I don't have anyone to come over and help me test it.

Fantavision is effectively a sensory toy version of Missile Command. The game presents you with a slew of fireworks in rounds, each with different shapes to them, and you use your cursor to select three or more of the same color, detonating them with the circle button. If a detonated firework spills onto an undetonated one of the same color, it'll detonate that one with it. This leads to the chain gameplay the game emphasizes. Don't explode a firework, it'll fade out and take some of your energy bar with it. Enough chaos will eventually lead you into a "Starmine" bonus round where you get a spew of one or two colors of firework, meant to emphasize huge chains.

For as much as I've heard Fantavision called a puzzle game, you can boil things down to "select all fireworks on screen, detonate them, and repeat with whichever are left plus any new ones". Not very puzzling. Makes my hand hurt from button mashing. The big reason why I keep a save of it around is the replay function, where the game will replay your performance on a stage from different camera angles, letting you appreciate the visuals and the strange stage designs (hint: you're going to space) through various filters. Seriously, this game does look hugely trippy. For someone who occasionally streams around the Fourth of July and New Year's, it makes for some terrific visual noise during intermissions. As a game, eh.

[#] FreQuency (Sony, 2001)

Where the Guitar Hero train started, with mixed results.

FreQuency carries the distinction of being the first game legendary rhythm game developer Harmonix tackled. Here's the gist: You're a "FreQ" flying through a tunnel of music. Each side of the tunnel is plastered with gems that sync up roughly to the rhythm of one instrument in the song, the difficulty determining the note density. Press the corresponding shoulder buttons as each of these gems pass the target, and if you can keep up successfully for two bars, that instrument will play itself for a few. Spin the tunnel, move to another instrument, and repeat the process until the end of the song.

At its best, FreQuency is a hypnotic game. Your goal, ultimately, is to play well enough to rebuild the mix of the song. The "arenas" outside the tunnel can be chosen, and they're quite the neon light show, for better or worse. Powerups help you capture tracks, double your score, and keep your multiplier going in case you screw up. The soundtrack is also fairly good, though how much you'll like it depends on if you've ever heard of The Crystal Method, Curve, or Powerman 5000. (And some of the quirkier and harder tracks are outright HMX inventions!)

Those things also massively limit its appeal though; it can be hard on the eyes, and you won't see or hear much that's terribly human during gameplay. It doesn't help that the timing window per note is extremely small, and with emulator lag, the game is nearly unplayable on the harder difficulties. Paired with all tracks muting at the start of each section, thus killing your groove, and I can see some people finding this game downright frustrating. I like it, though. It's flawed, and the sequel works far better in every way, but there's a lot of personality here and not a whole lot like this.

[#] Guitar Hero (RedOctane, 2005)

The start of something great—but only the start.

Probably the most impressive thing about Guitar Hero is how much Harmonix had figured out right from the beginning. Anyone who started with any later game in the series can sit down with the first game and play it—at least in theory. Guitar Hero has gained a reputation among five-fret rhythm game enthusiasts for being a lot more difficult to play than later entries, and I'd say it depends on how you look at it. Technically, there are many little details about Guitar Hero that make it more annoying than it needs to be, but the songs and charts are actually a lot easier than later entries—and no matter what, this is still Guitar Hero, and that's still wonderful.

If you're somehow unaware, you use either a plastic guitar or the DualShock (which doesn't require you to strum) to "play" the guitar part of each song, and it really is twitchy score attack ambrosia as you try to do better at each song and increase your scores. On the surface, the engine is fairly similar to Guitar Hero II, but there's definitely enough differences (the notoriously complex HO/POs that basically require you to strum each note, the lack of feedback on combo break) that I would not call the first Guitar Hero my favorite to play. There's also plenty of undercharted songs, even on Expert, and Hard difficulty is a meme that you might as well skip entirely.

Aside from the bonus tracks, all songs are soundalike covers, and assuming that doesn't turn you off on the spot, they really do a great job on 90% of these covers, especially in imitating more distinctive vocalists like Ozzy Osbourne. It's the songs that are the strongest part here, everything from Joan Jett, Deep Purple, White Zombie, Helmet, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Queens of the Stone Age, and the bonus tracks from Harmonix's own bands and Boston's finest are especially fun if you're an indie head like I am. A great beginning was charted here, but playing Guitar Hero is as much a reminder of how many improvements the sequel made as anything else.

[#] Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (Activision, 2007)

A cash-in, but a very fine one nonetheless.

I've described Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s before as the best Guitar Hero II custom disc ever made. I can definitely see why people felt short-changed about this at the time. This was Harmonix's contractual obligation game, and after II took off, their heart was in it for Rock Band instead, which expanded plastic guitars into the whole band. 80s was produced by about the same B-team that worked on II DLC for the Xbox 360 version, with a lot of the same (admittedly mostly unnoticeable) chart glitches and broken lighting events that plague that batch of songs as well (and a few similarly obscure engine bugs fixed, in fairness). Yet, even still—it's Guitar Hero II with a new batch of songs, and that's more than good enough for me.

As the name implies, all thirty of these songs come from the 80s—sorta. There's two 80s 70s covers (White Lion's cover of "Radar Love" and Krokus' of "Ballroom Blitz"), and the requisite Homestar Runner joke track. You can imagine the hair is huge and heads are banging, with songs from Quiet Riot, Accept, Twisted Sister, Anthrax, and Winger, though you do get plenty of power ballads from Scandal, Eddie Money, and A Flock of Seagulls and thankfully some more oddball tracks as well (.38 Special! "Hold on Loosely"!) There's also an increase in master tracks this time, though most are still covers. I really would've liked to see more college rock in the mix, maybe some early R.E.M. or Pixies or The Replacements, but that's my 90s bias talking. It's a fine setlist.

I mean, what more is there to say? The characters have all been given leopard print and neon hair extension makeovers, the venues are recolored, and aside from a few obscure bugs, 80s effectively plays the same as II. That's a really good thing, to be clear—still the best-feeling rhythm game engine I've ever played, still same great practice mode, same great co-op play, and again aside from some chart oddities (ask any Guitar Hero diehard about "Ballroom Blitz"'s bridge and they'll cough up a lung in front of you), it still plays great. At the time, I can imagine wanting more, but these days, taken as it is, 80s is still a ton of fun to breeze through.

[#] Guitar Hero II (Activision, 2006)

Possibly the best rhythm game ever made?

Yeah, this is the good stuff. Guitar Hero II cemented itself as one of the finest rhythm games ever made, taking the already solid base of the first game, fixing all the annoyances with it and adding more songs, more things to unlock, and bass and rhythm guitar parts into the mix. Like the first game, you're the guitarist in a cover band, going from the dingiest bars to Stonehenge itself on your quest to become rock royalty. Press the fret buttons, flick the strum bar, and get good at that, because this game gets hard! Absolutely habit-forming, any trait of it, the graphics, the music, the gameplay, I could rave about all day. And I will.

Fixing the many quirks and relaxing the timing window from the first game results in a near-perfect feeling game engine that never feels unfair to play, even if it's still a lot stricter than later games. Practice Mode lets you slow down songs to as much as half speed so you can learn the ins and outs of each one, section by section, and if you're going for perfection, it's the best addition to the whole game. Each song has a second player part, either of the bass part or a second guitar, so if you happen to have a buddy along, you can smash through II's 64 songs (!) together as more of a band than you ever could before.

For songs, Guitar Hero II leans a lot harder on the metal end of things (Megadeth, Lamb of God, Suicidal Tendencies, All That Remains, Spinal Tap, even), though there's still tons of classic rockers (The Police, Rolling Stones, Heart) and 90s and 2000s rock favorites (Foo Fighters, Stone Temple Pilots, Butthole Surfers), so everyone's got something they'll love here. The sense of musical exploration is what I adore the most, where bands I know nothing about like The Living End or Harmonix's own bands leave the biggest impression. Seriously, this game has given me so many hours of playing, modding it, meeting people, arguing with people, and listening to its songs on buses wistfully that it's basically a part of my DNA now. This is the Guitar Hero you want. Not III.

[#] Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (Sony, 2001)

A world to get lost in, quite literally.

Part of the trifecta of PS2 mascot platformers, Jak was possibly the most anticipated and impressive due to coming from Crash Bandicoot devs Naughty Dog. I don't want to put it like this because I do genuinely respect their work, but sometimes, it feels Naughty Dog does it differently just to do it differently, and The Precursor Legacy is a pretty prime example. This is a lush, sprawling game without load times, naturalistically built without much in the way of "game" identifiers like informational popups or maps. It's impressive, and I got lost all the time, and it just didn't click for me like Sly and Ratchet.

Jak is an elf teenager on a quest to return his friend Daxter back to human form. He sets out to collect precursor orbs and power cells to progress, channeling five different colors of "eco" energy to give himself extra powers. A lot of it is pretty standard collectathon material, but it's definitely satisfying to get a rush of blue eco and collect a ton of precursor orbs at once. Jak controls okay, but you'll need the manual to learn all his moves (which I don't own), and his double jump has a really irritating delay that gets in the way of the platforming.

All of this said, Jak and Daxter is short and sweet. Visually, it's gorgeous—you can practically feel the warm sand of Sentinel Beach underfoot as you rush around collecting green eco and orbs and defeating monsters, and the vehicle sections were genuinely quite fun and break things up. There is a story, but it's pretty thin and just an excuse to get you to collect more things, not to mention how hugely irritating Daxter is, especially when he mocks you on death. Like I said, this is my last place of the PS2 mascot platformers, but I also liked it enough to 100% it. What does that say, about me or the game? You decide.

[#] Jimmy Neutron: Jet Fusion (THQ, 2003)

Like one of Jimmy's inventions, not very well thought out.

Kids, take this lesson from nostalgia: it lies to you! One of two Jimmy Neutron (a show I liked a whole lot) games I grew up with, the other being the so-bad-it's-very-good PC movie tie-in game, Jet Fusion is the one I remember less of, and now I know why. It's hard, and not for the best reasons! When an invention to project books into real life goes awry, Jimmy's favorite action movie star secret agent Jet Fusion is captured by the notorious Professor Calamitous and Jimmy's gotta go through several culturally sensitive stages to save him and collect a set of all-powerful idols before Calamitous does.

Each stage (which aren't altogether very memorable, despite the potential stages based on feudal Japan, dangerous jungles, and pirate ships might have) has you build two items from scavenged parts, one to clear the stage and one to give Jimmy a new weapon. The tutorial stage in the school equips you with the main one you'll use throughout the game, the Pulse Light Ray—aka a gun. Jimmy Neutron has a gun. Game of the year. And while, yes, it is fucking hilarious to spend much of the game ventilating dudes (including the school bullies), I admittedly could not finish Jet Fusion.

Most of the problem is with the controls. Jimmy is stiff and has an absurd amount of weight to him, which isn't a great trait when you have to platform everywhere! There's also a lot of instant death traps, including any water. Now imagine how a platforming bit involving floating logs and cannibals with dart guns goes. One specific jump in the volcano level saw me use up a whole continue's worth of lives and never once making it—kinda sucks! The collectibles are fun enough and there is charm here, but the most enjoyable part was for sure checking out the trailers for all the other Nickelodeon media on the disc.

[#] Madden NFL 2003 (Electronic Arts, 2002)

John Madden! Football!

Look, I get it. I get it! No one understands the rules of American football. I've been playing these games for weeks and years and only recently learned the difference between a 3-4 formation and a 4-3 formation. Madden NFL 2003 makes learning all those things worth it though. This is not just a nerdy simulation football game—like it is, but it's not. The smoothness of the gameplay, the detail work and jumbotrons in the stadiums, the unlockables, the music, the way it's got arcade flavor when you crave sugar and depth when you're hungry for a steak, it's peak. It's a damn shame most people will never know it because it's just another Madden game.

Madden 2003 introduces the wonderful Mini Camp drills, all focused on a specific element of offense or defense (throwing passes, tackling runners, deflecting passes, kicks and punts), rewarding you with trophies and Madden Cards for your performance. The Madden Cards alone, I could write paragraphs on, as I went nuts trying to collect all these things through Franchise, Mini Camp, the Two Minute Drill mode. You get cards based on players, cheat cards you can play to, uh, cheat, historical teams and players, even crazy unlock teams of mummies, goblins, sheriffs, and sugary cereal-addicted superheroes. (Their custom stadiums, that yes, take place at high noon, pardner, or in a cereal bowl with a milk field, are also unlockable.) There's that flavor PS2 games have where they just let you fuck around endlessly, and it's here and I love it and I wish new games still had it.

For the actual discerning football fan, the simulation is super solid. Physics have aged wonderfully, rosters are fully customizable, and the passing and running games both feel perfectly balanced and manageable regardless of which side of the ball you're playing. My only minor complaints come from your AI teammates being absolutely useless sometimes, not blocking during runs and punt returns or gathering stupid penalties, but nothing's perfect. It dawned on me, halfway through a perfect season with my Ravens, that some of the littlest details here, being able to knock over the chain gang on the sidelines, the halftime show, even decent color commentary, are somehow missing in later Maddens on much more capable hardware. We genuinely had no idea what we had.