FORUM.TERMINAL_LEVY

MinaSheep wrote: Tue Oct 14, 2025 6:09 pm Ps2 era is also in my mind the era where I remember my dad playing the most video games he ever has. He would play so much Granturismo 4 that our house had at one point 4 copies because the disc kept getting worn out (crazy that games were that affordable back then)

Wearing out a PS2 disc... that's wild...

Tristi wrote: Sun Oct 12, 2025 10:42 pm
I will never be able to shut up about SkyGunner. I've been thinking lately about how there's no Star Fox game that really hits the kind of "cartoon dogfighting" highs of Star Fox 64 but SkyGunner actually does it. It's like a playable banger one-off OVA. Ghibli sensibilities but with an indie soul. And there's a little bit of that Armored Core resource management mixed in too. Every missile and bullet costs money and you're fighting not just to win the battle but make the most dough. There's definitely a learning period in grappling with the controls and the game's internal logic, but once it clicks it feels amazing.

I've been wanting to play this sooooo baaaaaad!!! Like, the ｌｅｇａｌ　ｐｈｙｓｉｃａｌ　ｄｉｓｃ has been sitting on my hard drive for a while now. As someone who spent so so much time playing crimson skies on the xbox, this shit looks dead up my alley and your praise for it just makes me wanna play it more.

The PS2 is a huge blind spot for me still due to not having one growing up. Most of my PS2 knowledge is either of The Hits or the few things I played with my friends or stepbrother as a kid. Guitar Hero was actually my intro to rhythm games though! Played that shit on a friend's PS2 soooo much. Freaked the fuck out when I saw trogdor and thunderhorse on the GH2 bonus tracks. I also have vague memories of watching my stepbrother play Zone of the Enders 2 and being like "i dunno if i should be looking at this."

anyway I did try to play Zone of the Enders earlier this year and kinda bounced off it lmao. I think it was some mission where I had to take down a shield and I just got bored.

skygunner seems really fucking sick............ why are there so many god damned video games

nimmymoo wrote: Thu Oct 16, 2025 3:58 am anyway I did try to play Zone of the Enders earlier this year and kinda bounced off it lmao. I think it was some mission where I had to take down a shield and I just got bored.

and yeah... i have affection for that first ZOE, for some reason, but it really is a short, dull little thing. ZOE2 is the real shit though, that's the one everyone's actually talking about when they talk about having positive feelings about Zone of the Enders.

Unless you're me, who is instead talking about Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars, weird little mecha fire-emblem-like on the GBA (not really that game's also dull lmao)

"v rally 3" is my current 'most emulated game of the 2025'. im car woman





do any of you have a favorite 'tiny ass ps2 game that comes on the blue CD instead of the silver DVD' mine is romance of the three kingdoms VIII

lynnedrum wrote: Fri Oct 17, 2025 2:22 am Unless you're me, who is instead talking about Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars, weird little mecha fire-emblem-like on the GBA (not really that game's also dull lmao)

explicitly off-topicking for ps2thread but i played fist of mars a ton a ton (and all other ZOE games 0 hours). its definitely "not great" but something about how long and 'filling' and competent it was and how the writing was hinting at the idea of a lot of interesting stuff potentially going on and then never really particularly delivering, really can grab a teen brain that's used to it

my nick name on many old forum type websites of that era is one of the final mechs lol https://zoneoftheenders.fandom.com/wiki/Nerokerubina

HELL YEAH, Fist of Mars was definitely a ROM i stumbled upon just at the right age to eat it all up. Maybe I'll give it another spin someday soon but I feel like my expectations aren't SUPER high for it holding up lol

I finally played Castlevania: Curse of Darkness to completion this year and it was awesome. I had the other PS2 Castlevania game as a kid and it was very clunky, so I never gave Curse a fair shake at the time. It's super fun and has a devil-raising system.

Hector the Devil Forgemaster and his Innocent Devil companion

I've also been playing Monster Hunter 2 on a private server this year, my first time seeing the online campaign. Enjoying that even though it's grindy.

crittergill wrote: Tue Oct 14, 2025 1:08 am

I really love the PS2 Ace Combat games too... I remember playing Ace Combat 4 at a friend's house when I was a kid and being totally stunned by it. Going like, damn, a video game can be this? Which probably says more about what I was exposed to than anything else but man that game is good. Great series across the board but 4/5/0 are an absolutely generational run

I completed AC4 for the first time a couple days ago (having never played an AC except for a demo of AC3 about 20 years ago) and enjoyed it a lot - started AC5 and yeah i suspect i'll be checking out every other game too

ogre_battle wrote: Mon Nov 17, 2025 5:36 am I've also been playing Monster Hunter 2 on a private server this year, my first time seeing the online campaign. Enjoying that even though it's grindy.

I really want to play the PS2 Monster Hunters soon... hearing that there were private servers up for them and seeing friends play together makes me really want to dig up those crusty roots.

I might put forward Kinetica and Stretch Panic:

Kinetica is a racing game. The player controls a kind of cyborg, bike-human fusion. The distinctive mechanic of the game is performing stunts to gain boost, with some more typical combat-racing devices. As the design sensibility of Wip3out looms large in my mind (carried out by The Designer's Republic), I really was mesmerized by Kinetica. The environmental design is really fantastic and the gameplay is compelling. I strongly associate a PlayStation 2 "style" with this game (or like, Zone of the Enders). The character art tries for a kind of collision between sexy pinup art and airbrushed automotive design that makes me think of Sony's stranger and provocative advertising campaigns at the time. (?)

Stretch Panic is an adventure game where the protagonist, Linda (?), is gifted a scarf with the power to stretch objects out of proportion. The game is formatted as a boss rush against Linda's sisters who have all been fantastically transformed by their "gifts" into monstrous versions of their strongest desires (e.g. Demonica loved horror movies. Her boss fight involves keeping her out of a room because her appearance is too terrible to look at)(the game is sometimes circulated for the grunt enemies who have grotesquely exaggerated busts, that I feel obligated to mention) The game is a bit tricky to control, as you control both Linda and the scarf separately and some of the mechanics are a bit obscure. I think the premise and design is pretty neat, and I had a blast in the boss fight against Fay Soff. I feel like it's notable in some way because it was a different way of using the analog sticks that felt like, say, Ape Escape when they were still being figured out.

I feel like I did a poor job at crystallizing what I enjoy about the games, but offer them nonetheless.