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What’s great about the PS2 back catalogue is that it’s too vast to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything in there. The defining 20 or so games on the platform—God of War, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy 10 and so forth—are very well known, and maybe Millennial players can recall a weirdo game or two like Mr Mosquito or Global Defence Force. One look at the games in the Japan-only Simple 2000 series, however, shows you just how deep the library goes. When’s Demolition Girl getting a HD remaster, eh?
Still, we’re in an era where it’s not hard to rediscover the key games of that generation, partly because many platform highlights have found their way to Steam in various forms. Intriguingly, we’ve also reached a point where developers who grew up with this generation are designing great new games inspired by the classics.
Below you’ll find six modern games that are inspired by what’s known as the ‘sixth generation’ of consoles, plus six ports of Dreamcast/PS2/GameCube/Xbox-era favourites. I’ve kept the latter to games that didn’t get a PC release at the time (so GTA: San Andreas would be ineligible, for example). All of the games in both lists are discounted in the Steam Autumn Sale.
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PS2-inspired
Promise Mascot Agency
Promise Mascot Agency (40% off at $15/£13) is an open world game built around a novel management simulation layer. You send Japanese mascots off to various events while exploring an island that may or may not be cursed. It’s actually one of the better open world games of recent years because every sidequest offers something meaningful, like additional mascots to manage or upgrades for your truck (culminating in flight capabilities, as pictured). It’s also deeply PS2-pilled in its overall presentation, with its creators citing everything from Disaster Report to Persona 4 as its influences. “6 and 7 out of 10 PS2 games are what I live for,” director Oli Smith told RPG Site. It shows in the marvellously unique finished product.
Hi-Fi Rush
Hi-Fi Rush (55% off at £12.14/$13.49) is at the intersection of several great PS2-era phenomena: innovative rhythm action games, cel-shaded visuals and Devil May Cry-style 3D hack-and-slash combat. Tango Gameworks weaves in many other influences besides, including the way director Edgar Wright matches music to visuals in films like Shaun of the Dead and Baby Driver. It’s not exactly at DMC or Bayonetta’s level when it comes to hardcore combat credentials, but it’s presented in an appealing and often breathtaking anime wrapping, and playing to the beat sets it apart. It captures the flavour of the PS2 era without being exactly like any single game.
Denshattack!
A leading candidate for my top 10 games of 2026, Denshattack! (25% off at $15/£12) draws inspiration from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but perhaps more crucially, blue skies Dreamcast classics like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. It’s a speedrunning game of stunt jumping, grinding and rapidly boosting your train through regions of a corporate-owned version of Japan. Except the vision of it just keeps expanding, until you’re eventually using said train to battle enormous robots and smash massive baseballs at bosses. Again, it’s not exactly like any one of its inspirations—this is a special game because the developers draw something original from those sources.
Sifu
Capcom’s God Hand is one of my favourite PS2 games. It was a true cult classic, riffing on Fist of the North Star with ludicrous cutscenes, but having one of the best third-person combat systems ever (and getting an infamous IGN 3/10 review for its trouble). There aren’t many games that have been able to capture the physicality of its hand-to-hand brawls or customisable combos, but developer Sloclap has specifically called the game out as an influence on 2022’s wonderfully brutal Sifu (75% off $10/£8). It’s tonally a far more serious proposition, but its enthralling and beautifully animated fistfights did reawaken my God Hand muscle memory.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
Outside of its well-known franchises, Capcom made a lot of random stuff for the PS2, like Chaos Legion, Auto Modellista, Gregory Horror Show and Clock Tower 3 (if you know what all of those games are, we are the same person). Kunitsu-Gami (25% off at £30/£25) feels like a lost stablemate to those: you recruit villagers to help you defend against hordes of demons that come at night, which are dead set on attacking the maiden you’re charged with protecting. You also have a suite of hack-and-slash abilities to use, so it’s an inventive hybrid of action and strategy. While there’s no way it would’ve looked this handsome as a PS2 game, it’s exactly the sort of thing you’d have expected from the publisher behind Killer7 and P.N.03. We gave it 86%.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
“Oh, these guys really like Final Fantasy 10,” I thought when I first played Expedition 33 (20% off at $40/£34). To be fair, you feel it more in the world-building and story than the actual bones of its turn-based combat, which feel more like they’re drawn from Lost Odyssey on Xbox 360 and Sekiro. The world-ending threat is so similar in Clair Obscur and FF10: the Paintress erases adults of a certain age on an endless cycle, and Final Fantasy 10’s giant destructive whale Sin always comes back even if it’s destroyed. The melancholy denizens trying to get on with life in a doomed but beautiful world is something crucial that the games have in common, too.
And now, some actual PS2 games
A few years ago, you couldn’t even play MGS3 on PC without an emulator—and now you have two decent ways to play it. The original version comes in the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 (50% off at $30/£25). Delta, the remake, is also 30% off. Take your pick, but I personally think the PS2 aesthetic holds up. MGS3 was the less hyped of the two PS2 Metal Gears, mostly because Sons of Liberty was used as an early tech showcase for the platform. But Snake Eater is a more complete game with superior boss battles and the best story in the series.
Final Fantasy 10/10-2 HD Remaster
RPG purists may argue Final Fantasy 12 is a better game—it certainly has stronger localisation and voice acting, and aims for mature storytelling over anime nonsense. It’s the easy-to-parse combat and progression systems that keep me coming back to Final Fantasy 10 (60% off at $12/£8), not to mention how distinctive the world of Spira is. The soundtrack is loaded with bops, and might be the part of the game that’s endured the most for me. If you like PS2-era Japanese RPGs, you’re actually spoiled for choice on Steam: Phantom Brave, Tales of Symphonia, Grandia 2, Kingdom Hearts (if you don’t mind stretching the definition) and more are also on sale.
Rez Infinite
I always think of Rez as a Dreamcast-first game, but it was actually released simultaneously in Japan on both PS2 and Sega’s final console. Still, it feels Sega to its core. This Panzer Dragoon-style rhythm shooter where you’re fighting evil viruses in a computer network has a beautiful Y2K aesthetic, and Rez Infinite (70% off at $8/£6) brought it to modern platforms with a well-received expansion to the original game. It’s not a long experience, so the price here is spot-on.
Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster
It goes without saying that Persona 3 Reload and Persona 4 Golden are easy recommendations from the Atlus RPG stable, since both games started their lives on PS2. Persona 4 Revival seems like it’ll keep to the same standard, too. The publisher’s other games were always a bit weirder and more impenetrable, though, like Nocturne (70% off at $15/£13), an atmospheric and hardcore monster battling game from the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series. Known as Lucifer’s Call in the UK, it was my first exposure to Atlus. I never finished it and lost my save when my launch model PS3 died, but 20 years after I first played Nocturne, the specific dour feeling of its post-apocalyptic Tokyo still sticks in my memory. An acquired taste, but the people who love this game really love it.
Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny
“I wonder what PC Gamer gave one of my favourite games of all time,” I asked myself this morning. Turns out the answer was 65%. Oof! I love Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny (50% off at $15/£12.49), because it offers a branching path at numerous points in the story based on how friendly you are with the four different warrior companions in the game. Samurai’s Destiny is at the midpoint between old school Resident Evil’s fixed camera survival horror and Devil May Cry’s hack-and-slash combat (except more methodical and less acrobatic). A great Steam Deck game, as you might expect.
