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Racing as a contact sport: shunt a rival into the wall, watch the wreck in slow motion, then steer your own flaming chassis into the next car for another Takedown. Criterion's September 2004 racer and its hundred-junction Crash mode took Game of the Year from both the official PlayStation and Xbox magazines, ahead of San Andreas and Halo 2.
The first Final Fantasy where the characters actually spoke — and the awkward forced-laugh scene became legendary for all the wrong reasons. A summoner's doomed pilgrimage, a sport played underwater, and an ending that broke a generation of PS2 owners.
Kratos, a Spartan warrior betrayed by Ares, tears through Greek myth with chained blades and rage. Santa Monica Studio's 2005 PS2 epic scored a 94, sold millions, and turned the quick-time finisher into an industry standard.
The gloriously weird PS2 game where you roll a sticky ball that picks up thumbtacks, then cats, then cars, then whole skyscrapers. A candy-colored oddity with an unforgettable soundtrack that became an instant cult classic.
A PlayStation 2 action RPG born from an unlikely collaboration between Square and Disney, where you wield a key-shaped weapon called the Keyblade and travel through Disney film worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy. You play as Sora, fighting shadow creatures called the Heartless across an imaginative mashup of Disney magic and Final Fantasy gameplay. The franchise grew into a beloved epic across multiple platforms and sequels.
Sixteen giants, one horse, no other enemies and barely any dialogue. Team Ico's October 2005 PlayStation 2 game sent Wander across an empty forbidden land to climb and kill colossi for a dead girl's sake, and every victory played like a funeral. It became the standard exhibit whenever anyone argued that games could be art.
A raccoon master thief, a turtle who does the planning, a hippo who drives the van, and a stolen book of family heist techniques to get back. Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (September 2002) landed between Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank to form the PlayStation 2's cartoon-platformer trinity, and did it in cel-shaded noir with a stealth rule of its own: one hit and you're out.
IT'S TRICKY! The snowboarding game that traded realism for backflipping off a glacier while Run-DMC loops in your skull. Uber Tricks, a celebrity voice cast, and the loudest announcer in video games — winter sports as a Saturday-morning cartoon.