GamesRadar - PS2 Features

59 levels to play before you die: M - S (Odin Sphere)

Mar 21, 2008

Bloc Party's song "Helicopter" can make anything amazing, but it didn't have to work too hard during the tram-ride sequence in Getting Up. Say what you will about the game, but frantically leaping between four aerial cable cars and shimmying around their edges to spray paint a single giant message - all while dodging machinegun fire and tossing riot cops - felt overwhelmingly badass the first time we did it. ...

The Top 7... Deadliest shark attacks (Okami)

Aug 3, 2009

In real life, everyone knows sharks are perfectly lovely creatures that hold down good jobs, drive responsibly in hybrid cars, and almost never prey on humans. In popular media, however, they’re vicious aquatic bastards who like nothing better than to sneak up on unsuspecting swimmers and devour them as gruesomely as possible, preferably in front of an audience. ...

Before and after: the games that changed during development (Okami)

Jun 15, 2009

Splinter Cell Conviction

Sam Fisher’s gone through some midlife crisis-sized changes over the past couple of years. One minute he’s a tortured emo agent on the run, with as little respect for the law as he does for kept facial hair. The next he’s a malicious murderer, who makes Jack Bauer look like Jack Osborne.

Above: From badly groomed to just plain bad

The Conviction of 2007 has heavy influences from ...

The Top 7… greenest games (Okami)

Apr 20, 2009

How noble, the human species! Once a year we selflessly take a break from wrapping products in toxic plastics and burning piles of old tires to appease this stupid, stupid planet we live on. How dare it demand more trees, breathable air and animals that don’t choke to death on our trash? ...

The Top 7... Little heroes in big worlds (Okami)

Oct 20, 2008

Our weekly Top 7 lists usually cover timeless topics that could probably post any point throughout the year. But this week, with the newly released, critically fellated LittleBigPlanet inspiring countless cases of tiny heroes roaming gigantic worlds, we wanted to be a bit timelier and celebrate the very best of the very small. ...

Top 10 Entries on Top 10 Lists (Okami)

Aug 1, 2008

If you’ve been reading gaming lists - magazine, internet or bar napkin - for as long as we have, then you’ve probably noticed a number of inclusions that seem to always make it. It’s like you can’t have a “Defining Moments”, “Worst whatever” or “Underrepresented blah” list without mentioning what every reader assumes will be the top pick. ...

Five reasons you suck if you don't play Okami (Okami)

Mar 26, 2008

If you didn't go out and buy Okami, you suck. Period. Okami is one of the best games that hardly anyone played. Despite having received rave reviews and numerous awards - including our very own “Too Beautiful to Live” accolade - sales for the title were lackluster. What the hell, gamers? Do you want to play crap like Deer Hunter 17 and Bratz: Inappropriately Sexed-Up Pre-Teens all your life?Luckily, the Wii version of Okami is just ...

Top 7... Death Rattle Games (Okami)

Mar 10, 2008

We'd like to think that every developer sets out to make the perfect game. But as budgets swell, stockholders throw tantrums, and release dates draw near, there's a whole myriad of snafus can explode in the face of well meaning folks. Plenty of games spit in the eye of gamers’ expectations and miscarry at retailers every year - that’s not special. These games are the great white whales that tanked so hard they dragged entire companies down with them. ...

2007's worst kept gaming secrets (Okami)

Dec 18, 2007

18th Dec, 2007 There are some things that developers and publishers just don't want you to know. And given the unnaturally high number of game announcements, hardware revelations, industry shake-ups, and all round cool things going on this year, they've wanted you to not know a lot during 2007. Thankfully though, the internet exists, and thus nothing is sacred. That's the eternal irony of the games industry. It's a business which tries to shroud itself in secrecy, but whose patrons congregate ...

10 reasons why Okami is a mad masterpiece (Okami)

Feb 22, 2007

1) It lets you control time One of the most visually-appealing and useful abilities is being able to control the time of day by drawing either a sun or a moon in the sky. Draw a moon and the bright sky will be slowly consumed by bleeding black ink, bringing with it nightfall. Draw a sun and a gorgeous spinning orb of heavenly glory makes it sparkle and scares off tougher enemies. This becomes more and more useful later in the game when certain missions only become available at a certain time ...

CheatPlanet's Top 5 FAQ Submitters (Okami)

Dec 22, 2006

You turn every knob, pull every switch, press the A button, the B button, the “just get me past this effing level” button, but nothing works. After exhausting what seems to be every possible solution with no success, your burning frustration finally sears a hole through your thick ego. You have no choice, its time to put down the controller and find help. Weve all done it. Its free, easy, and available - no, not your buddys hot sister - the answer to your gaming woes. Detailed ...

GamesRadar's potentially annual Platinum Chalice awards 2006 (Okami)

Dec 22, 2006

It's the end of another great year for gamers. Two new systems launched. Two handhelds waged bloody battle. And next gen gaming got a big kick in the pants - thanks to a year of lonely rule by the Xbox 360. PC gaming fought fire with nukes, waging its battle against the console-based onslaught. In short, it ruled. How do we handle this? We're handing out our gleaming Platinum Chalice to those games and systems which gave us the business. No boring list of 37 different strategy games, divided ...

Grabbing the God Hand (Okami)

Sep 29, 2006

At this year's Tokyo Game Show, we had the luck to sit down with a very talented man. Atsushi Inaba is a maverick game creator who's had his hand in a number of off the wall game titles. He first became known for the one-two-punch of Viewtiful Joe and the incomparably complex and obscure Steel Battalion (that Xbox game that required a $200 cockpit controller.) Now, he's back with two big hits: Okami and Phoenix Wright, and topping it all off with the absolutely off-the-wall God Hand. We've ...

The Legend of Okami (Okami)

Sep 22, 2006

They say flattery will get you everywhere, and that imitation is the sincerest form of such behavior. But is there a limit to how much you can ape something before it crosses the line of "homage" into "ripoff?" Well, when the result is a game as life-changing as Okami, we're content to let it take everything that makes The Legend of Zelda a masterpiece and copy it any day of the week. Spending no more than a few hours with Okami will reveal how much it plays like a new Zelda game. You've got a ...

A Year of Hotness (Okami)

Feb 28, 2006

With Xbox 360 out (if you can find one) and PlayStation 3 just around the corner, you might think the only place left for your old PS2 is in a box in the attic. But hold that thought, and cast your eye over our deluxe selection of upcoming titles: this generation isn't shuffling off quietly. Valkryie Profile: Silmeria The original Valkryie Profile, for PSone, slipped under the radar of all but a few dedicated RPG fans. Shame, because it was one of the most exciting games to hit the genre, with ...

The Top 7... games so bad they had to add breasts (Outlaw Golf 2)

May 14, 2007

An overwhelming majority of gamers are male, so it makes perfect sense for every marketing team in the world to target their software at young guys. And what do all men ages 18 to one zillion love? Girls, gore and big loud machines. If they could make a game about a firefighting bikini squad that hunts down zombies in a decked-out sex/fire truck, world peace would be declared. But until that day, we have to settle with regular old T & A. Developers are well aware of this, so occasionally ...

The Top 7... Girl-on-girl kisses (Outlaw Golf 2)

Nov 28, 2006

What's hotter than watching a cute princess kiss a fat, middle-aged plumber? Well, anything really, but given the headline above, the answer should be obvious: watching a cute princess kiss another cute princess. It's sexy, it's vaguely taboo and it's pleasantly devoid of bristling mustaches and lingering sewage odors. It's much more common to see girl-on-girl kisses in other media, but it happens in games more often than you'd think. To prove it to you, we've collected the very best ones and ...

The Top 7... games so bad they had to add breasts (Outlaw Tennis)

May 14, 2007

The Top 7... games so bad they had to add breasts (Outlaw Volleyball Remixed)

May 14, 2007

17 videogame soundtracks ahead of their time (OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast)

Apr 28, 2009

There’s no shortage of people who think “videogames” and “music” are two impossibly distant mediums. One is something you do to kill time, the other is the ultimate expression of the human spirit and emotion yank yank blah blah blah. Game music is every bit as moving, long-lasting and inventive as the so-called real deal. It’s also such a relatively new form of music that its entire history has unfolded within our own lifetimes ...