GamesRadar - PS2 Reviews

The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun (Review)

Nov 17, 2009

The Secret Saturdays stars 11-year-old Zak Saturday and his super scientist parents Solomon “Doc” Saturday and Drew Saturday. The three of them together study supernatural animals called Cryptids – which are kind of like Pokemon only less cute. The PlayStation 2 game puts players in the shoes of the Saturdays at different points throughout the game. ...

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge (Review)

Oct 28, 2009

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge marks the first time the series goes backward from the PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2. Like you’d expect from any backwards conversion, some of the game’s slickness is lost in the downgrading. But as ports go, Arctic Edge holds up well enough on PS2 for diehard racing fans to consider it. ...

Astro Boy: The Video Game (Review)

Oct 26, 2009

It seems Astro Boy returns every decade or so, and now American film makers have retooled the iconic character for another reboot. Albeit low budget looking and feeling, High Voltage Software put more life into Astro Boy: The Video Game than we’d expect from a movie tie-in. Bright, sleek and silver, Metro City sets the stage for Astro Boy’s adventure against an evil robot-wielding president. ...

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits (Review)

Sep 28, 2009

The Guitar Hero series has usually had a stellar track list – seriously, how many people would be willing to shred out to a ridiculous looking plastic guitar if the tunes were lame? So on one hand, it makes sense for publisher Activision to release this compilation, which collects 48 songs from five previous Guitar Hero titles (Guitar Heroes 1 through 3 as well as Rocks the ‘80s and Aerosmith). ...

Madden NFL 10 (Review)

Aug 27, 2009

“Move Forward” is a common phrase in the sports world. Your best player gets injured? Someone else needs to step up so you can Move Forward. Your coach has an indiscretion with someone else’s wife? It’s in the past and you have to Move Forward. Teams have conditioned themselves to forget about whatever’s just happened, almost from the instant it occurs. They just keep Moving Forward. ...

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Review)

Aug 4, 2009

Tiger Woods (the man) has had quite a run in the past year – he won the U.S. Open on a broken leg, had a baby boy, and roared back to the top of the golf heap in record time. Tiger Woods (the PS2 game) can hardly claim that wild of a ride. In fact, this carbon copy of last year’s bare-bones title continues the desultory trajectory of the series on PS2 in recent seasons. ...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Review)

Jul 1, 2009

Seven months. That’s how much extra time EA Bright Light has had to tweak and polish Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince after its release date was pushed back thanks to the movie’s theatrical slippage. The time could have been spent perfecting one of the most valuable game licenses. ...

Ghostbusters The Video Game (Review)

Jun 23, 2009

The dreams of thousands, nay, millions of twentysomethings came true recently. Despite delays, a publisher change and a few holdout actors, the Ghostbusters are back, two decades after their last film. ...

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (Review)

Jun 18, 2009

To describe Staff of Kings as a game seems a bit disingenuous – this is a collection of smaller sub-games, similar to Disaster: Day of Crisis. There are puzzley platform bits, typically involving copious whip-cracking; there’s brilliant environmental combat, which lets you hurl pool balls at bad guys, shove enemies into aquariums or whack them in the head with garden tools. ...

Coraline (Review)

May 27, 2009

You know exactly what you’re in for when a game’s first move – its way of drawing you in to the rest of the adventure – is forcing you to slowly drag a box around the kitchen. Then making you say hello to the neighbours. Then getting you to prepare tea. Basically, everything you don’t enjoy doing in real life. ...

Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon (Review)

May 27, 2009

The PS2 just can't be killed. Even with its successor nearly three years old, the war horse keeps going. And while the PlayStation 2 has a good amount of shovelware clogging its new release section, the Shin Megami Tensei series is keeping it honorable with games expertly tailored for the RPG fanatic in all of us. ...

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 (Review)

Apr 22, 2009

We tried. We really, really tried to get to grips with the notion of these sorts of games being massively popular in Japan, where this one, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, is called Gundam Musou 2 – loads sexier. It’s based on an anime series featuring androgynous pilots fighting each other and accidentally dying/falling in love/wearing sunglasses in space. In theory, it should be the best thing you’ll ever slip into your console ...

Ultimate Ninja 4: Naruto Shippuden (Review)

Apr 9, 2009

You can always count on the Ultimate Ninja series to provide flashy, over-the-top kung-fu craziness with each installment, and Ultimate Ninja 4: Naruto Shippuden certainly delivers the fireworks … for a PS2 game. But even if you’re a Narutophile, you should consider how deep your love for lil’ whiskers goes before investing in this one. ...

Rock Band 2 (Review)

Apr 1, 2009

If the first Rock Band was the opening leg of a full-blown concert tour, with four players living the rock and roll dream via color-coded buttons and plastic guitars, drums, and microphone, Rock Band 2 is like the final show of that same tour. ...

Samurai Shodown Anthology (Review)

Mar 31, 2009

The great trouble with a lot of SNK games is that due to the exorbitant cost of the Neo Geo consoles and cartridges, pretty much no one got a chance to play them when they first came out. It’s only now, through downloads and retro compilations like this one, that many of us are getting our first taste – and for many titles (such as the uber-bland King of Fighters) it’s just come a little bit too late. ...

MLB 09: The Show (Review)

Mar 17, 2009

Sony’s baseball franchise has been rocking our socks for years now, lighting up our old reliable PS2 season after season. The development team has squeezed just about everything imaginable out of the venerable hardware, and the result has been a steady stream of hardball awesomeness. This go-round, The Show bears a striking resemblance to seasons past – and we’re OK with that. ...

Nobunaga's Ambition: Iron Triangle (Review)

Jan 28, 2009

Holy crap, this is the TWELFTH Nobunaga's Ambition, and yet not a whole lot has really changed since the old NES days. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on how much you fervently love the series. And with a series as focused on a specific audience as this is, you either maniacally tent your fingers at the prospect of another entry, or their brain wanders away at “Nobu-” ...

NCAA Basketball 09 (Review)

Jan 27, 2009

The virtual college basketball landscape has shifted dramatically in the past year, as 2K Sports has dropped out of the game, leaving EA alone in the NCAA hoops arena. Their March Madness brand has been abandoned, substituted with the blander (if slightly more apt) NCAA Basketball “Insert Partial Year Number Here.” ...

Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica (Review)

Jan 21, 2009

As the epitome of niche, Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica will never enjoy mass-market appeal, and it’s kind of a shame. As far as JRPGs go, AT2 does absolutely everything right, with an innovative battle system that never seems to get old, well-developed characters, a complex yet easily-followable story, and even a well-streamlined map system that eliminates the tedium of traveling. Unless you totally hate RPGs, you will enjoy this game ...

The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga (Review)

Dec 24, 2008

In the arcade glory days, 2D fighting games from SNK had many fans in both the US and Japan. In the mid-nineties SNK created The King of Fighters, a “super” fighting game combining characters from some of their numerous hit series. This annually updated fighting franchise’s first five versions (1994-1998) have been archived in King of Fighters: The Orochi Saga. ...