Best PS2 Open-World Games

Highlights

• The PlayStation 2 played a pivotal role in popularizing open-world games, giving players an unprecedented level of freedom and influencing the gaming industry for years to come.
• Many of the best PS2 open-world games may not compare to today’s games in terms of size and visuals, but they still offer great fun and deserve recognition for their influence on the genre.
• The PS2 was home to a variety of open-world games, from action-adventure games like The Getaway and Scarface: The World Is Yours to racing games like Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and even sports games like SSX 3.

The open-world subgenre of gaming has skyrocketed in popularity to the point where open-world games now populate the top portion of many sales charts. Even long-running franchises known for their linearity have started to get in on the act, with Halo Infinite and Sonic Frontiers being two fairly recent examples

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Although open-world games have been around since the ’70s, the PlayStation 2 helped popularize the style of game and gave audiences an unparalleled level of freedom that would influence the gaming industry for years to come. It’s hard to deny that the best PS2 open-world games don’t compare to the size, scale, or visual quality of the ones seen today, but many of them are still great fun and deserve recognition for their influence on the genre.

Updated October 17, 2023 by Mark Sammut: While dated by today’s standards, the PS2’s best open-world games helped set the foundations for the genre’s current form. More importantly, quite a few of these projects are still fun to play all these years later, even if some aspects do not hold up especially well.

12 The Getaway

Cut from a similar cloth to GTA, The Getaway plays out like a British gangster movie created by Guy Ritchie. The story is split into two parts, initially following a bank robber and then shifting focus to a detective. The narrative is the game’s strongest point, and it features fairly good voice acting for its era.

While gunplay is part of the experience, The Getaway‘s primary gameplay mechanic is driving, which is facilitated by an impressive recreation of London. Team Soho really put together an impressive sandbox considering the limitations of the PS2. Now, there is not all that much to do within this world beyond story missions, but players do eventually unlock the freedom to just drive around and explore the city streets.

11 Spider-Man 2

Movie tie-in video games played a significant role in the sixth generation of home consoles, with countless major film releases receiving a video game adaptation. Unfortunately, due to the tight release schedules that these games often had to adhere to, movie tie-in games were often a disappointment, which led to the sharp decline of the genre that has made them a rarity today.

Spider-Man 2 is an example of a movie tie-in game with a tight schedule, as it was released on June 29, 2004, one day before the film of the same name was released in conventional and IMAX theaters. Despite this, the game was a major success, largely thanks to how enjoyable it was to traverse the game’s open world with the wonderfully well-designed web-swinging and wall-climbing mechanics.

10 Scarface: The World Is Yours

Scarface: The World Is Yours is essentially a sequel to the classic film Scarface. The game picks up where the film left off, but with Tony Montana surviving the shootout in the mansion at the end of the movie. Like many action-heavy open-world games released on the PlayStation 2, Scarface: The World Is Yours was clearly inspired by Grand Theft Auto and offers a similar brand of gameplay.

The game puts players in the shoes of the iconic Tony Montana and tasks them with taking down rival gangs and trying to regain control of the drug trade in Miami.

9 Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix is the first, but certainly not the last game on this list that was developed by Rockstar Games. The 2005 release is an arcade-style racing game that cares little about realism and simply offers a high-speed, adrenaline-pumping experience as players race through the game’s superbly well-designed cities that looked fantastic for the time.

Following the game’s critical and commercial success, a revised version of the game was released titled Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition Remix, which featured several new additions such as new songs, new vehicles, and an updated version of Tokyo from Midnight Club 2.

8 Mercenaries: Playground Of Destruction

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was developed by Pandemic Studios – the team behind the original Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and Destroy all Humans! – and was released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 in 2005.

The third-person shooter has many similarities to Grand Theft Auto 3, as players can hijack vehicles to drive around an open world and are free to take on missions and side tasks at their own pace. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was well-received by fans and critics, exemplified by the PS2 version’s 84 critic score and 8.7 user score on Metacritic.

7 SSX 3

Despite the open-world subgenre’s rise in popularity, open-world sports games are still a rarity. This is why SSX 3 is still a delight to play today, as the game lets players simply ride about the mountain slopes on their snowboards before taking on events.

SSX 3 was published by EA Sports BIG, a label that was used by EA throughout the 2000s for extreme sports games that cared little about realism and just focused on over-the-top fun.

6 Grand Theft Auto 3

Grand Theft Auto 3 was released in October 2001 and is regarded as one of the most influential open-world games of all time. Rockstar’s game ditched the top-down perspective of its predecessors in favor of a third-person perspective and gave players an open world to explore that felt enormous and incredibly realistic at the time.

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It’s hard to deny that Grand Theft Auto 3 has aged poorly, especially when comparing it to Grand Theft Auto 5, though it can still be good fun today for those willing to look past its visual and technical shortcomings.

5 Final Fantasy 12

Final Fantasy 12 was released in 2006 and was the first entry in the long-running Final Fantasy series to implement an open world. The open world wasn’t the only innovation to the iconic RPG series, however, as the game also implemented a seamless battle system for the first time, as well as a controllable camera.

Along with its impressive 92 Metascore, Final Fantasy 12 picked up a handful of awards, including Game of the Year from Edge and the Japan Game Awards’ Grand Award.

4 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the second but not the final Grand Theft Auto game to make this list. Vice City was released just one year after the ground-breaking Grand Theft Auto 3, and it did a great job of injecting more life and personality into the series with its charismatic cast of characters and colorful Miami-inspired setting.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was considered by some to be one of the greatest games of all time when it was first released. It’s rarely brought up in such conversations today, though just the sight of the game brings a flood of fond memories back to many players.

3 Bully

Yet another title from Rockstar on this list is Bully, a game that is commonly referred to as “Grand Theft Auto in school.”

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Bully was released in October 2006 and took players to a boarding school full of children and teenagers categorized into groups such as Nerds, Jocks, and Greasers. Although the title makes it sound like the goal of the game is to bully kids, the game’s story is surprisingly heartwarming as the protagonist tries to break down stereotypical barriers and unite the divided friendship groups.

Bully‘s missions and classroom mini-games are fairly lackluster, though the game is still beloved for how well the school setting is executed, with simply exploring the school grounds and nearby town providing hours of fun.

2 Shadow Of The Colossus

Shadow of the Colossus was first released in 2005 and initially received a mixed reception due to how jarring its gameplay loop was at the time. Despite featuring a huge open world that players could freely explore, the game featured no standard enemies and only a handful of points of interest, with the goal of the game simply being to defeat a series of colossi. The game initially received some backlash because of this, as people felt that the game was missing core content.

However, Shadow of the Colossus was soon regarded as one of the gaming industry’s first true works of art, and the barren game world became beloved for how it drives home the heartbreaking story. Shadow of the Colossus isn’t for everyone, though those who enjoy it tend to regard it as one of the finest games ever released, even to this day.

1 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

The debate as to which was the best Rockstar open-world game on the PlayStation 2 is one that will likely rage on forever, though generally speaking, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the game that is most often regarded as the cream of the crop.

San Andreas was released in October 2004, two years after the aforementioned Vice City. The game stood out with its gritty story based on LA street gangs, along with its RPG elements and the huge range of side activities that kept players entertained for hours.

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