Action Games are one of the things the PlayStation 2 is genuinely for. The ones worth playing start with Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War.
The biggest library in games, and a machine that was in enough houses that nearly anything could be made for it. Its strength is range rather than any single genre.
This is one of its strengths. Character action, third-person adventure and mid-budget Japanese games that would not be greenlit now — Ico, Okami, Katamari Damacy, Shadow of the Colossus.
Filtering to action means you want the fighting to carry the game rather than the story or the map. It is the right filter when what you actually miss is how something felt in your hands.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.
Combat you get better at. Action games put their design budget into the moment-to-moment, so the thing you are doing in minute two is the thing you are still doing in hour twenty, only better.
Pacing and world. Action games rarely have the quiet stretches or the writing that the adventure and RPG picks bring, and a few of them are shorter than they look.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the usual first answer, and there are 12 in the library we cover.
Yes — it is one of the things the machine is known for, and there are 12 in the library we cover.
A small set of verbs and a game that keeps finding new questions to ask of them. The weak ones add buttons instead; the strong ones make you better at the ones you already have.
No, and difficulty is a poor proxy for depth. Some of the hardest action games have very few decisions in them, and some of the deepest have a difficulty setting that lets you meet them halfway.
From the games this site covers on the PlayStation 2, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.
Or browse the whole PlayStation 2 library.