My Gaming History: PS2

Another follow-up to my earlier post My Gaming History: PS1.

After like 2 or 3 years spending time with PS1, my parents finally decided to sell my PS1 and buy me a PS2. Since PS3 was the "hot shit" at the time, the price for PS2 plummeted down so hard, that's why they're okay with it and I was tired of PS1 anyway. And again, I was a bit pissed because I still can't catch up to the console generation.

My first game on the console was Shadow the Hedgehog, the game where Sonic Team decided to make Sonic games darker to appeal to mature audiences who like shooter games since Call of Duty was the front-page material. I was like 9 at the time, I gotta say I rolled with it, I actually liked the gunplay, it's simple and you have a variety of weapons to choose from, I always went for the rapid-fire types and I barely used RPG and explosives since they don't have much ammo, but I don't like how swords have ammo, you can say that they break after some usage but it's pretty much measured in numbers of slashes the sword can perform before breaking and taking swords with the same type you're holding adds your slash counts like ammo, that's why I barely used melee combat. Something that looks "darker" in this game is the dialog, in this game, the characters say minor swear words here and there, nothing massively vulgar, just the "go to hell" sometimes and you can't say that you haven't heard the word "damn" in the first 5 minutes of the game. Unless you're deaf or your TV doesn't have a speaker or something like that. Being the 9-year-old kid that I was, I actually found the dialog quite funny at times. This new multiple endings system was also pretty new for me, every mission, you can do hero, dark or neutral mission, each mission sends you to a different stage after completion. The first stage Westopolis, I wanted to take the hero path by killing a certain amount of aliens(they just appear because the time of reckoning is close ...blablabla... destroy Earth), and since the neutral mission is only to reach the goal ring, I didn't know there was a dash pad behind the goal ring that leads you to some more aliens to kill, I just took the goal ring and moved on with the neutral path. It took me months to figure that out and somehow back then I was afraid of boss fights, I never finished the game... years later, I found out the bosses are piss easy and since I wanted to get all the hero, dark and neutral endings, they just get tedious after a while.

Sometimes I just love messing around in games with no real plot whatsoever, that game was Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, I played it tons of time with my bro just for the sake of roaming around town ignoring the story missions, I remember eating tons of chicken until CJ's fat meter maxed out and then going to the gym for a workout and repeating it, using cheats to get advanced weapons and blow up the city, we were rocket launcher maniacs. My bro did most of the driving in the game since he was and still is a racing game fan. We use cheats all the time, just roam around in a monster truck or a tank destroying shit. It was awesome. Needless to say though, we never finished the game. Later we got GTA Liberty City Stories(I know it came out before San Andreas), I remember it being the first game I've ever finished, well, we... because I never really enjoyed that game alone, we finished it with cheats though, but after that we did a no-cheat run, we got it, although I messed it up in the middle and he was pretty pissed at me for a while. I can say these games are fun when playing alone, but having someone to share with makes it tons of fun, that's why they're some of our most-played.

SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom, this game was one of my favorite back then, the world was just so big, they're all based on the show, Bikini Bottom Downtown, Jellyfish Field, Rock Bottom, my favorite Flying Dutchman's Ship and many more. This game also has tons of collectibles and side quests I found interesting, but somehow I find them tedious now. Nothing much to say about this game, just one of my most-played back then but now I find this game downright tedious and uninteresting.

Sonic Unleashed is also one of my favorite PS2 games, that's the first time I was ever introduced to that fast playstyle, although it didn't run on the Hedgehog Engine like the HD version because the PS2 is just not powerful enough, I enjoyed it. I never finished the game though due to my memory card being corrupted twice when I was so close to the end. Back then I was so amazed by the HD footage in the game trailers and I found out that's the HD version and the standard version is so different, I wanted a PS3 badly, I'm not saying there's no fun to be had with this version, I was just still a kid who always wanted the hot stuff (I can pretty much say I still am)

There's this one moment that pissed me off. Once I was in a game rental place where I can play games for some time and the place had 3 PS3 and a Wii, I picked a game I can't really remember what, and a couple of kids with their dad came in, they wanted to play Wii but the console was in use or under maintenance I can't remember, the kids decided to play the PS3 instead, and then their dad said "what if the PS3 is the same as PS2?" I just felt like I wanna show the comparison in quality at his face so much. The only games that I really wanted from the PS3 at the time were Sonic Unleashed, GTA IV and the infamous Sonic 06, you'll see my pain later with this one.

I had tons more games than this but these are pretty much some of the memorable ones in my PS2 days, the first time my memory card got corrupted, I was devastated I swore I didn't wanna play again, but I came back after a few weeks, the second time it happened, I stopped playing for real.

Yes, I feel like I missed out on a lot, I'm a Devil May Cry fan now but back then, I was just a kid and not interested in those games, besides, those games are so tough I think if I had played it, it would scar me hard and actually be afraid of sucking in the games which result in never wanting to get the game ever again and I wouldn't be the fan I am today, I played the first 3 games that were released on PS2 from the HD collection instead, later released for PS3 and XBOX360. I also missed out on Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3, again, I was just a kid... and something else I love is Persona, I missed them out, probably for the best, I wouldn't have understood the arcana relationship system and stuff, I was all about gameplay back then and Persona games have so many talks where you can only press X to continue, I would've skipped all the conversations with all the vital story elements and not understand a thing.