Well its that day. Today October 26, 2010 marks the 10 year anniversary of the launch of the playstation 2. It is pretty amazing to me that ten years after launch the ps2 is still such a great system even in comparison to the current generation consoles. The library of the playstation 2 is massive and I don't see myself running out of good new games to find for it in the near future.
For example, here is my wishlist for the PS2
Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
Ape Escape 2
Ape Escape 3
Area 51
Army Men: RTS
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Black
BloodRayne
BloodRayne 2
Burnout Revenge
Cabela's Outdoor Adventures 2006
Castle Shikigami 2 (Shikigami no Shiro II)
Champions: Return to Arms Review
Colosseum: Road to Freedom
Crash Tag Team Racing (lan mode)
Crimson Sea 2.
Darkwatch
Devil Kings
Disaster Report
Dropship: United Peace Force
Dropship: United Peace Force Review
Extermination
Fantavision
Ferrari F355 Challenge
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns
Fireblade
Full Spectrum Warrior
Genji: Dawn of the Samurai
Ghosthunter
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Gitaroo Man
Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance
God Hand
Gradius III & IV
Gradius V
Gradius V
GrimGrimoire
Gungrave: Overdose
Heroes of the Pacific (LAN MODE)
Indigo Prophecy
I-Ninja
Kessen
Kessen 2
Kessen 3
Kickle Cubicle
Kill.switch
King's Field: The Ancient City
Kya: Dark Lineage
Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Maximo vs. Army of Zin
Mega Man Anniversary Collection
Metal Slug Anthology
MetropolisMania
Midway Arcade Treasures 3
Mobile Lightforce 2 (Shikigami no Shiro)
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Nightshade
Okami
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny
Onimusha 3: Demon Siege
Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams
Onimusha: Warlords
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast
Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Pinball Hall of Fame
Pipe Mania
Primal
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Psychonauts
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords Review
Raiden III
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
Ratchet: Deadlocked
Raw Danger!
Ring of Red
RLH: Run Like Hell
RoadKill
Road Trip
Rumble Racing
R-Type FinalSecond Sight
Secret Weapons Over Normandy
Sega Genesis Collection
Shadow of Rome
Silent Hill 3
Silent Hill 4: The Room
Silpheed: The Lost Planet
Sky Odyssey
Smuggler's Run 2
SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron
Speed Kings
Spartan: Total Warrior
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy
Star Wars Starfighter
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
SWAT: Global Strike Team
The Bouncer
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
The Mark of Kri
The Punisher (2005)
The Red Star
The Suffering
The Suffering: Ties That Bind
The Thing
The Warriors
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3
Way of the Samurai
We Love Katamari
Worms 3D
WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW (online)
XGIII: Extreme G Racing
Yakuza
Yakuza 2
And those are only games I know about
In honor of this anniversary I played my copy of Smuggler's Run that had been sitting under my Television for probably a year.
I have played this game for probably 3 or 4 hours and overall I find the game to be a game that contains small sprinkles of fun on top of a mass of frustration. In the game you are a smuggler who smuggles things that need smuggling. I just explained the story of the game about as good as the game does lol. Before each mission you get a 5 or 6 sentence mission brief that makes absolutely no sense and is read to you with horrible cheesy voice acting.
That is just a minor annoyance, the real thing that annoyed me about this game is the gameplay. The game has extremely simple gameplay. Most of the missions have you driving around in circles through a extremely hilly landscape hitting checkpoints around the map. While you are doing this you are pursued by swarms of cop cars who are faster than you. You can fail the mission either by the time running out before you hit all the checkpoints, or by sustaining too much damage. Your damage meter very slowly recharges, but usually if you make one bad jump or slow down for a second a swarm of cops will ram your car until it dies a painful vehicular death. Very often when playing a 5 minute mission you will make one mistake and be destroyed by the police cars moments before completing the level. So, my experience with this game has been about 30 percent fun and 70 percent frustration.
Another thing that annoys me about this game is that it relies on extreme trial and error gameplay. After the first 3 or 4 missions the time limit for the missions shows no mercy. Most levels require many replays just so that you can memorize the fastest routes between each checkpoint. You have a mini map you can summon up on your screen while driving, but it is zoomed in way too far so you often cannot even see the checkpoint on it until you drive very close to it. This means you have to rely on the not too accurate giant on-screen arrow that points you in the general direction of the checkpoint until you are so close to the checkpoint that using the minimap is not even useful at that point.
All my bitchings aside, for a launch game it does do some cool things. The first level you drive around in is a massive level that lets you see far into the distance. I noticed no popup and the game runs smoothly framerate-wise from what I can tell. It can be relaxing just roaming around the environment and jumping off hills and driving through rivers while you listen to the techno infused soundtrack. There is a free roam mode where you can do this very thing and for my sanity I often had to take a break from the missions in this mode haha.
Also, a minor thing in this game that made me laugh is that you can run over pedestrians, deer, and dogs. The game has some hilarious over the top ragdoll physics when you hit them and they launch into the distance if you hit them at a high speed. I cannot help but think this system was the basis for later open world rockstar games like grand theft auto.
Another small thing I like about this game is that is supports playstation 1 dualshock controllers. That means you don't have to deal with jamming down a squishy analog face button in order to accelerate.
As expected the game has launch game length load times and that did not bother me that much. The game made my slim ps2 roar while playing it too. It is a blue backed (cd) disc and it just spun like a maniac constantly while I played haha. Most blue backed ps2 games I have played do that while loading, but settle down once a level starts.
So back in the day, if I had played this game it wouldn't have convinced me to rush out to buy a Playstation 2. Some of the other launch ps2 games like Timesplitters (its multiplayer) may have though if I had known about them at the time.