I got this game for about $3 at Game Crazy. I'm glad I didn't pay more. The difficulty level is over the top. The graphics and sound are good (turned off the annoying music, though), and the controls are good, but I was unable to win the second race of the tournament mode with ANY of the available ATVs. The AI seems to cheat. For instance, they will often land on you after they jump, which knocks your rider off his ATV, and causes you to lose the race. Don't think for a second that you can return the favor. Landing on another ATV also causes your rider to fall off his ATV, while your opponent drives on unscathed! Almost any contact at all with another ATV or sides of the track will cause your rider to fly off. I tried to beat the second race many times, but finally gave up out of frustration. I'm officially done with ATV Offroad Fury. I give it 2 out of 4 stars, because you can play the individual races, and play against another human, which is more fun.

I enjoyed this game. It's gameplay is basically the same as Ape Escape 1 on PS1, but with updated graphics. That's a good thing, though, because I enjoyed the first one as well. You basically spend the game solving puzzles to get through levels so you can capture runaway monkeys. It has a unique control scheme that uses the left control to move, and the right control to swing your equipped weapon, such as the net to catch the monkeys. It's quite fun and challenging, but I was able to complete it with some work.

This one is even better than the last. In addition to the gameplay that existed in Ape Escape 2 and the original, this one adds the ability to morph into different character types, such as a knight or a ninja. Each type has its own special abilities. Another outstanding Ape Escape game. I believe the crude humor mostly refers to one of the boss battles, where the monkey passes gas as a weapon. I enjoyed this game so much that I completed it 100%.

This was the first of the Burnout series. It's pretty outdated now, but the racing is nearly as good as Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit 2. My biggest complaint is that the races can be really long. It can take 20+ minutes to finish a single race. If you crash in the final stretch and end up losing, it's more than painful to have to do another 20 minutes over again. The later Burnout games are much better.

Burnout 2 was a major upgrade from the prequel. It adds the fun Crash Mode, where your goal is to create a car wreck with the highest possible insurance cost. It has better graphics, better controls and physics, and the gameplay is a lot more fun. It also adds two-player split-screen racing. Very good game.

Burnout 3 is even better than the second game, except for the music, which earned it the T rating. Turn off the music! This game adds the Takedown, which is where you cause a competitor's car to crash. This will earn you a ton of boost. But you still have to be very careful, because ANY contact with traffic other than competitors will cause an instant crash. It also has the Aftertouch, which lets you steer your car in slow motion after you have wrecked so you can try to hit the other racers. In most other ways, it is similar to the previous games.

This is my favorite racing game on the PS2. Each Burnout game has been better than the previous, and this one is no exception. Like the previous Burnout games, you need to complete challenges in order to open up new challenges and earn new cars. The challenges include racing with a pack of cars to see who can survive to the finish line (wrecking the other cars is encouraged, even required), racing for the best possible time (no wrecks), and crash mode, where you have to rack up insane amounts of damage costs in a single wreck. Burnout Revenge keeps the Aftertouch of Burnout 3, where you can steer your car after it crashes and try to take out other racers. It also adds the ability to use other cars as weapons by crashing them into your opponents. In earlier Burnout games, contact with non-opponent vehicles would crash your car. I like this new feature. It makes the game much more playable. I must say that I have been unable to beat the game completely. This is true of all the Burnout games. The difficulty ramps up too much toward the end. But then you can always play with another human to keep things fun. The graphics and sound improved a bit over the last one, although I still recommend you mute the music. It supports DPLII and progressive scan, which is nice. I should note that if you were to purchase just one Burnout game for PS2, this is it. Burnout 5 (Dominator) is not as good. Burnout 3 is nice, but lacks the ability to use other cars as weapons. Burnout 1 and 2 feel archaic compared to this one.

This game is pretty much just Revenge minus the Crash Mode and traffic checking. It is still a great game, though. As usual, do yourself a favor and mute the music. What ever happened to instrumental background music in games? As with all Burnout games, the difficulty ramps up to impossible toward the end of the game. Also as with all the Burnout games, the AI cheats like crazy, and there are tons of glitches that cause Takedowns to not be registered, allow your competitors to drive through cars and obstacles unscathed, cause you to crash into things that aren't there, and even cause you to fall through the ground into nothingness. But it still manages to be fun to play.

This game is a continuance of the first game, which is fine. Compared to the GameCube, the PS2 version has a lot of issues. It takes about 35 seconds to load a level, load a cut scene movie, or save. When you save, it saves two different files at 35 seconds each, so after finishing a level, it can take 2-3 minutes before you are playing again! That's terrible! Loading and saving takes only a few seconds on GC. The graphics are also very choppy compared to the GC version. It runs about 10 FPS, which makes it hard to play. But the gameplay is fun, if you can get past the technical issues. I recommend the GC version.

Although not as good as the PS1 Crash games, since it was made by Universal Interactive instead of Naughty Dog, it is still quite fun, and maintains the feel of the older games. It's pretty much more of the same, gameplay-wise, but with much better graphics. I was able to beat all of the challenges, which is something I was unable to do in any of the previous Crash games. If you liked the older Crash games, you'll like this one.

This was a bit of a departure from the earlier Crash games. The gameplay is similar, but it adds the extra dimension of having Dr. Cortex attached to Crash at certain points, which adds lots of new moves. It is WAY more difficult than the earlier Crash games. I have been unable to make it to the end so far. My kids can't even make it past the first level. The music is great, adding a zany feel to the game, as opposed to the generic jungle beat music in the earlier games, which was pretty forgettable. The humor is more crude than in earlier games, which is a major turn-off. Ultimately the extreme difficulty level ruins the game.

The first RPG I ever played was Dragon Warrior (which was renamed from Dragon Quest due to trademark issues) on the NES. A lot has changed from the original game. I was disappointed at the gratuitous sexual content in the game, but I found the game to be generally quite good. The story line kept me interested the whole time, and there was plenty of depth. The voice acting is a mixed bag, and it kind of sounds like one guy did most of the voices, including some females. It definitely doesn't take itself too seriously, which helps.

I'm not usually a big fan of survival horror games, but I got a demo disc for this one, and liked it enough to get the full game. I enjoyed the beginning, but the difficulty ramps up too much toward the end. Even using GameShark to cheat, I was unable to beat one of the bosses toward the end! The game had a lot of potential, but was just too hard.

This is one of my favorite Final Fantasy games, right up there with FFVII and FFVI. There were a lot of changes between FFIX and FFX. One of the biggest was that the graphics level was turned way up, thanks to the PS2's capabilities. Most of the game uses the game engine for cut scenes. Only a few use pre-rendered movies. In the past few FF games, the backgrounds were pre-rendered, but in this one, everything is rendered in real time. The music is great. More outstanding musical work from Nobuo Uematsu, although a few other composers helped out this time around. This is the first FF game with voice acting, which is a mixed bag. There was some EMBARRASSINGLY bad voice acting a few times. But overall it was pretty good. There is no overworld in this game. You have to travel through each land to get to another, at least until you get an airship. The Experience Point system was replaced with a "Sphere Grid" that lets you upgrade your character however you wish with earned Ability Points. The battle system is also new, using the Conditional Turn-Based Battle system, instead of the Active Time Battle system that has been around since FFIV. Overdrives take the place of Limit Breaks. Aeons take the place of Summons. You fight with 3 characters at a time, but you are now able to swap out characters during battle, unless they are dead. The plot is very deep and engaging. You really care about the characters and their destinies. There are enough plot twists to keep things interesting as well. It has a futuristic feel, like FFVII and FFVIII. It's a must-own, must-play game.

I enjoyed this Final Fantasy game, although it isn't my favorite. I found the politics-based story a lot less engaging than the usual save-the-world story in past FF games. I also wasn't impressed with the MMORPG feel of the game. Most of the game was spent doing meaningless side quests that didn't further the story line. If you didn't do these quests, you wouldn't be leveled-up enough to move forward in the game. The actual story is pretty short, and because of all the political intrigue, it is rather confusing. That said, it was still a great game, and I enjoyed playing it. I've certainly played worse. The graphics were good, although a bit hard to look at on my HDTV. The PS2's graphics capabilities are looking a bit dated. The music wasn't very memorable, but there were a few highlights. Nobuo Uematsu is no longer involved. :( The voice acting was fairly good, though. Overall, I'm giving it 3 1/2 stars. As for the ESRB rating, I never came upon any nudity. "Suggestive Themes" refers to the way certain women dress. There are some characters that could certainly wear more clothing, including all of the Viera.

I loved Grandia 1 on PS1 and Grandia 2 on Dreamcast. They had great graphics, music, storyline and gameplay. What happened here? The graphics are sub-PS1-quality. The music is forgettable. There is NO storyline. Seriously. It's more like a scenario than a storyline. And the gameplay is stupid. Basically, you start off from a central hub, and from there you can enter various dungeons. The dungeons are primarily about fighting bad guys. The combat engine is the same as the earlier Grandia games, so the fighting is easily the best part. Sadly, there are NO SAVE POINTS in any dungeon. If you need to stop playing, you have to return to the hub and save, and then return to the dungeon and start over again from scratch. I guess the idea is that you can level up as you go through a dungeon, and if you haven't leveled up enough to complete the dungeon, you can return to the hub with all your experience and do the dungeon again, hopefully leveling up more this time around. But each dungeon takes 3+ hours to complete with no saves. I don't have that kind of time, and experiencing the same lengthy dungeon multiple times is just not fun. I suppose if you had a lot of time, really enjoyed the fighting part of RPGs, and didn't care for a story to keep you going, you could enjoy Grandia Xtreme. I couldn't.

Grandia 3 is much better than Grandia Xtreme, but not nearly as good as the first two. First off, the voice acting and writing is terrible! Why can't game developers let me have Japanese voices with English subtitles? I'm pretty much convinced that Disney is the only company that can do decent voice acting for games (e.g. Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2). But the story line is pretty good. The graphics are also nice, although they suffer from the same shimmering that plagues all PS2 games. The difficulty is high throughout. You'll need to do a lot of level grinding in order to keep up. Overall, it's a pretty good RPG.

Ico is an amazing game. The graphics and animation are outstanding, as well as the music. You're basically escorting a mysterious girl through a castle by solving puzzles, while fighting off creatures that are made of black smoke. You really care about the characters, and it makes you want to do your best to keep them out of trouble. The atmosphere is tranquil, yet chilling when the smoke beasts show up. I highly recommend it.

Jak and Daxter was created by Naughty Dog, the guys that brought us the Crash Bandicoot games on PS1. There are some similarities. The gameplay is fun. The graphics, sound and music are exactly what they should be. You can move between areas without any loading involved, which is nice. The only downside is that the main female character is a sex object. They have her wearing skimpy clothing, and even her movements are suggestive. Daxter makes a lot of sexually suggestive comments in the game, and generally has a potty mouth, although there is no harsh language. At least Jak is disapproving of Daxter's ill behavior. Sadly, the sexual innuendo and suggestive themes get a LOT worse in the following Jak and Daxter games, so I can't recommend them. They become a lot more dark and "gangsta" in the later games as well. This one is the only good Jak and Daxter game, and the sexual content keeps it from being great.

Katamari Damacy (which rougly translates to English as "clump spirit", and that's "spirit" as in "team spirit") is a very unique and enjoyable game that has you rolling up junk to create new stars. You start with a small katamari that can only pick up small items, but as your katamari grows, you can pick up larger items. You usually have a goal to create a katamari of a certain size within a time limit. It has interesting music and the story line is very entertaining.

This is NOT a kids game! It is dark, scary, and fairly difficult to play. I enjoyed how they wove together Disney stories and characters from past Square games, like Cloud and Aeris from Final Fantasy VII. But it kind of didn't know its audience. It seems like they wanted to appeal to kids with the settings and characters, but failed by making it too scary and difficult to play. As a result, only a teen or adult could play it, but they might feel uncomfortable with the cutsie Disney content. The voice acting is top-notch, though. I can't think of any video game with the same quality level of voice acting. They got the original Disney voices to do all the acting, and it shows.

Again, this is NOT a kids game! Like the prequel, it is dark, scary, and fairly difficult to play. This game starts after the GBA game Chain of Memories, so its a bit confusing at first, but not too bad. I found the game to be even better than the first. I completed nearly 100% of the side quests because I enjoyed it so much. Unfortunately, this game doesn't stand on its own. You really need to play the first game, and it wouldn't hurt to play the GBA game as well. The voice acting is still excellent, as it was in the first.

This is a great sequel to the extremely rare PS1 game. It is a 2.5D platformer, in that everything happens in the 2D plane, but all the graphics are 3D, and sometimes the levels wind around quite a bit. There is plenty to do. You get rewards for collecting all 150 gems in a level, and for finding all the hidden doll pieces on each level. The game has an overworld map that sometimes branches out so you can play the levels in any order you wish. The game incorporates a made-up language that sounds very Japanese, but isn't. The character designs are very cute, and the graphics are presented in a cel-shaded fashion. However, the challenges are quite difficult. I haven't been able to complete it 100%.

Like Legend of Legaia on the PS1, this game is not particularly outstanding, but it is quite good. It has an enjoyable storyline that will keep you engaged to the end. The gameplay is similar to the original, which plays a lot like Final Fantasy VII. It is no comparison to FFX or FFXII, but I found the game enjoyable.

This game is not tied into the movies, so it has different voice actors and music. As a result, it just doesn't quite measure up. It's not a terrible game, but it's not that great, either. My wife Christal didn't like it at all, so I didn't get too far into it.

The original on PS1 was the best of the series by far. This was not a BAD game. Certainly not as pathetic and stupid as number 3. But it wasn't nearly as good as the first. The story line is convoluted and confusing. You spend most of the game playing as a character other than Snake, which was lame, and part of the time your character is running around completely naked. Yikes! The gameplay was the same as the first, but the other parts left a lot to be desired.

What a disaster! While the gameplay from the previous two remain intact, and the story line is much improved from the second game, it still doesn't compare with the first game. And what's up with the female bad guys having to strip half-naked before they fight? Outrageous! The "romance" elements were awkward and forced at best. Other than the game play, this game is terrible! I got rid of this game as soon as I could. What a waste!

This is classic Need for Speed fun. Good graphics, good sound, precise controls and realistic physics combine to make a very playable, enjoyable game. I was able to complete all of the challenges in the game with some work. It was challenging without being frustrating. I rate it 4 out of 4 stars. Note that the PS2 version of Need for Speed 2: Hot Pursuit 2 is the best on any platform. The ones made for Xbox and PC were made by another company, and it shows. Sadly, this was the last NFS game worth playing. The rest are all about being a punk. Why do they have to ruin a good game by adding all the "badness"?

Ratchet and Clank is by Insomniac Games, the people that brought us the excellent Spyro series on PS1. It looks and feels much like Jak and Daxter, primarily because it uses the same game engine. It has an interesting twist to 3D platforming, in that Ratchet can use various projectile weapons to fight with, earning new ones as he goes along. Unfortunately, there is some sexual innuendo in the game, and that gets much worse in the sequels. It's barely tolerable in this one. Not a game for kids.

The game takes place during the timeframe of the Macross Saga of Robotech. You control a Veritech fighter and use it to complete various goals. I'm not entirely sure why it is rated T, given that the cartoon series it is based on was for kids, but I suppose they wouldn't show that stuff to kids these days for fear of rotting their minds. At any rate, I have not yet completed it, but I enjoyed what I played.

SSX stands for Snowboard Supercross. SSX was the best PS2 game for the first year of PS2's existence. I found the experience is better with the music and DJ/announcer turned off. The gameplay is great. I haven't been able to finish all of the challenges. Some of them seem way too hard. But I enjoyed everything I played. If you don't own an SSX game, I'd recommend SSX3 over this one.

SSX Tricky is more of the same. Again, you are better off with the music and DJ/announcer turned off. This time around, you'll also want to mute the player voices, since they say some crude things. The gameplay is great. Again, I haven't been able to finish all of the challenges, because some are too hard. But I enjoyed it just as much as the first. I'd still recommend SSX3 over this one.

SSX3 is the last and best SSX game on PS2, and the last good one of the series. Yet again, turn off the music, announcer and character voices. Some of the characters say some nasty stuff that you wouldn't want your kids picking up, and the music tends to have crude lyrics as well. But the gameplay is great. It's even further polished than the first two. But I still haven't been able to finish all of the challenges because of the difficulty. Don't bother with SSX or SSX Tricky, since each game is pretty much the same as the other. Go for SSX 3, since it is the best of the bunch.

I enjoyed Pilotwings on the SNES. This game has a similar feel, but also adds an Indiana Jones-style storyline where you are collecting artifacts from ancient ruins in your aircraft. It might not be for everyone, but I sure enjoyed it.

Wow. What an excellent platformer! The gameplay has you controlling an honorable thief who steals only from the bad guys. The graphics, animation, sound, music and storyline are top-notch. The only thing better than this are the sequels! The only bad thing about this game was that it is too short. It will leave you begging for more. Which is good, since there are 2 sequels. Highly recommended.

Sucker Punch took everything good about Sly Cooper and made it better. You can now control your partners in honorable crime: Bentley, who focuses on puzzle-solving, and Murray, who focuses on brute force. The game is much longer than the first. The storyline is good, and continues where the last one left off. Another outstanding game.

Again, they made the game even better. This time you can play other characters as well. Each character has their own special abilities, which adds a lot of variety to the game. It brings a nice closure to the series, while leaving things open for future Sly games (I hope). I recommend you play each one in order. It's best that way.

Soul Calibur 2 is a sequel to Soul Calibur on Dreamcast. The graphics are almost the same as Dreamcast, which is a bit of a letdown. I appreciated the Weapons Master Mode which lets you fight your way across a map with various challenges along the way. It's more fun than just trying to beat the last boss with each character. Other than that, Soul Calibur 2 is pretty much the same as Soul Calibur. For the most part, the women are well-dressed. However, there are a few outfits that should be avoided, which earns it the Suggestive Themes rating. At least it doesn't have the jiggly boobs of the Dead or Alive series.

Most remakes of classic games are terrible, but Spy Hunter is a pleasant exception. It does everything right. The gameplay is great, and it is reminiscent of the classic game. The graphics, sound and music are all great. I completed all of the challenges, which was a lot of fun, and added a lot of replayability to the game. If you like racing games with objectives, and/or if you are a Spy Hunter fan, you will like this game.

Ouch. This wanna-be Spyro game was not from Insomniac Games like the 3 on PS1. It shows. The load times are horrendous. Expect to wait 1-2 minutes between levels. How could it possibly take so long? The PS2 DVD drive reads at 5.4 MB/sec, and there is only 32 MB of RAM in the PS2. You should be able to completely fill up RAM in only 6 seconds! There are also many glitches in the game. Did they playtest this thing at all? I found myself falling through floors often, turning upside down in some places, having the PS2 crash and require a power cycle, and a few times dealt with state issues that caused events to be missed, requiring me to restore from my last save point and do things over again. Extremely poor programming, and nonexistent quality control! You'd think it was a DICE game! (Oooo! Burn!) If you can put up with all the problems, there is some good gameplay in there that is reminiscent of the first three games. But expect to be frustrated often by programming defects, and expect to spend a lot of time watching the loading screen. I managed to finish it out of spite.

This game is nowhere near as good as Star Ocean 2 for PS1. Primarily it was the storyline that wasn't as good. I just never really cared about the characters in the game. The voice acting was generally quite bad. The voice of the main character, Fayt, was the only one that wasn't completely grating. Of course, the voice acting in Star Ocean 2 was pretty bad as well, but it had a much better storyline. I wouldn't call this a bad game, but I was glad when I finished it.

This is the sequel to the arcade and Neo-Geo Bust-A-Move (a.k.a. Puzzle Bobble) games. This version uses 640x480 graphics, which is a nice addition. It also adds some new characters. I have to say that I am puzzled by one of the characters, which is a large guy with a smaller, quite phallic-looking guy coming out of his mid-region. I mean, really, what were we supposed to think?!? Anyway, it's a fun action puzzle game. Everyone should own some version of Bust-A-Move.

This game is a departure from the earlier games in the series. Instead of playing Gabe Logan, you now play a recruit that you create at the beginning of the game. You have to complete several missions, and each of the missions have several primary, secondary and bonus objectives. You can replay the missions in order to complete all the objectives, and you unlock bonus items and levels for doing so. Only the control scheme keeps it from being 4 stars.

This Australian-themed game is enjoyable, but not outstanding. I played through the whole game and completed all of the objectives. It won't change your life, but it will provide some good fun. The graphics, sound, music and gameplay were all good. One major benefit is that it has no objectionable content. It's completely safe for kids. Most of the other PS2 3D platformers have some sort of sexual content.

Although the setting is quite dark and disturbing, I found the gameplay, graphics and music to be top-notch. You spend the game piloting a battlemech to accomplish various objectives. It has a strong anime feel to it. You really feel like you are in a giant robot anime. It was challenging, but not too hard. I was sad to see it end, because it was a bit too short. There is a sequel, but it is quite rare, so I have not been able to find it.