The PlayStation 2 was a lot of people's first DVD player, but did you know the PS2 could also play video games?
But before we talk about the games, I want you to know that this list is in no particular order. So if there's any games that you are wondering, hey, how come that one wasn't ranked higher than that one? The answer is because none of them are ranked. They are not supposed to be ranked. They're just games that I'm talking about. And if there is a specific game that you're wondering why it didn't make it into this list of the best co-op PS2 games, well, that's because you have bad taste.
Gladius
All right, let's talk about the PlayStation 2 Gladius. So, this is a turn-based tactical RPG. You can play in two-player co-op. Each player takes control of their own character. There's a lot of goofy voice acting and story here. But the combat itself is pretty solid. So, both players just take turns moving their character around and then they're able to choose an attack. If you attack from the side or behind an enemy, you do more damage. You can do elemental attacks. And whenever you do an attack, it has this little meter and you want to try to get it right into the red zone to do the most damage. So, that really forces you to pay attention. And it’s a rare RPG where you actually have to have some quick reflexes.
This is one that nobody's talking about these days. And if you're looking for a co-op RPG, I would definitely recommend it.
Gradius V
Gradius 5 still has that classic Gradius shoot 'em up gameplay where you collect these power-ups and the more you get it changes your abilities. This one was developed by Treasure. It's an exclusive to the PlayStation 2 and I think for that reason it probably went under a number of people's radar. I think everyone knows the arcade games and the 16-bit era games, but this was an era where old school shoot 'em ups just weren't that popular. But this one's excellent, even though it's incredibly difficult. But if you're a fan of the series, that really shouldn't be a surprise to you.
The Adventures of Cookie & Cream
Adventures of Cookies and Cream. This is an asymmetrical co-op game. You play it in split-screen and both players have their own path. Whenever there's an obstacle, you have to work together in order to solve them. Sometimes one player just jumps on a switch and then that will give a platform for the other player on the other side and sometimes you have to move a lever or push an object over to the other side. So sometimes that clears a path for the other player or gives them something to jump on. This is an excellent co-op game that was built from the ground up to be a co-op game. And it's another one not many people are talking about it these days. And I just love asymmetrical co-op. They did it really well here.
This actually feels like it could be a modern indie game.
Contra: Shattered Soldier
Contra Shattered Soldier. So, this is the one Contra game that I don't hear anybody ever talk about, and I think it's the most underrated game in the series. It kind of feels like a continuation of Contra 3 just because of how fast-paced the action is. It pretty much just never stops. Of course, you have the running and gunning and platforming like classic Contra games. You can climb on walls as well, but then sometimes the gameplay breaks up. Like early on there's a whole section where you're on a snowboard, but this version of Contra has a much darker tone to it and some of the enemies are pretty grotesque. Like there's this boss that's just vomiting on you and then it has this massive disgusting face, which, you know, that's not a problem to me.
I actually kind of like that style. I think it's kind of cool. The other standout feature here is this game has a really cool metal soundtrack. If you like the old school Contra games, you should definitely play Contra Shattered Soldier. It's an exclusive to the PS2 and it's one that I don't hear many people talk about today.
Darkwatch
Let's talk about Dark Watch. This is a first-person shooter with a western horror theme. PS2 version is the only one that had co-op gameplay. This game came out on the original Xbox as well, but it didn't have co-op. Of course, the visuals here look very dated, but gameplay-wise, it holds up really well. It moves pretty fast. The controls are responsive and just feel pretty good overall, which is good because you never really know what you're going to get when you're playing any kind of 3D game from this era. This is a great first-person shooter and you can play through the entire campaign in co-op.
Obscure
Obscure is a survival horror game that you can play in co-op. That's definitely a rarity. There are very few survival horror games that you can play locally with a friend. So, this is definitely one of the best in the genre. I remember playing the demo of this on PC when it first came out, but then I didn't really play it for years. But then years later, me and my friend Casey, we played through this entire game start to finish in just a few sittings. And of course, some of the gameplay does feel a little bit dated. Some of the controls and some of the puzzles aren't exactly intuitive, but once you get the hang of it, overall I think it's a really great experience. One of my favorite co-op horror games ever made.
TimeSplitters 2
TimeSplitters 2. I love all of the TimeSplitters games, but I think two is my favorite. So, this has some of the original members that worked on Perfect Dark and GoldenEye. And when they left Rare, they went on to make the TimeSplitters games. And you definitely feel GoldenEye and Perfect Dark in the DNA here. The music definitely sounds familiar. A lot of the sound effects and voice acting sound familiar. But the most important thing is you can play through the campaign in split-screen co-op, just like Perfect Dark. One of my favorite first-person shooters ever made.
Half-Life: Decay
And Half-Life Decay is another really great first-person shooter, but this one's different from the other ones. Instead of just going around destroying every enemy in sight, this one's a little bit slower. There's puzzles, and it was built from the ground up to be a co-op experience, and that's exclusive to the PS2 version of this game. There's a lot of story here. There's some horror elements. And even though there is definitely some action here, it just feels a little bit slower and more methodical than other first-person shooters of the era. If you like the Half-Life games and you haven't played Decay yet, you definitely got to get a friend and give it a try.
We Love Katamari
The Katamari games are just incredibly insane. They feel like a fever dream. And we love Katamari on the PS2 is no different. But this one, you can actually play the entire story mode in two-player co-op. And this is truly a co-op experience. You actually have to both move your characters in sync, and you're both working together to push the Katamari and build it up by running over various items. I actually really enjoyed this game. Previously, my only experience with a Katamari game was one of the newer ones on the Nintendo Switch, but I do think this works incredibly well as a co-op game, and I just love the visuals here. I love the humor. I love the music. Everything about this game. It just feels way ahead of its time.
This actually just feels like a new weird indie game. But that kind of makes sense because Katamari probably influenced a lot of those weird indie games.
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. So, this game plays a lot like Gauntlet or Diablo, but with a lot more story and choices that you get to make. You get to pick your class in the beginning, but there's only a few. There's an archer, a sorceress, and a dwarven fighter. But this is a pretty standard hack-and-slash dungeon crawler where you're just going around destroying enemies, leveling up, and upgrading your gear. This game originally came out on the PS2, but then was later ported to the Xbox and the GameCube as well. So, it's not an exclusive, but when it comes to dungeon crawlers, this is definitely one of the best from the era.
Champions of Norrath
Okay, so while we're talking about Dark Alliance, I wanted to talk about Champions of Norrath. This one came out a few years later, but it's actually developed by the same team, Snowblind Studios. They're both action RPGs with some hack-and-slash dungeon crawling. The combat feels very similar and graphically they look similar and the map is very similar, but Champions of Norrath added a few things as well. Now you can play it with up to four players co-op. You can create and customize your character. Now there's five classes over those three in Dark Alliance. And there's a larger skill tree and overall the game is just much bigger. But yeah, if you like Dark Alliance, you're definitely going to like this one too.
It's just more of the same, plus a bunch of other stuff as well.
Dynasty Warriors 5
When I was putting this list together, I knew I had to include a Dynasty Warriors game. My personal introduction was Dynasty Warriors 3, and that's the one that I played the most back when it first came out. Me and my friend who lived down the street, we would play it together in split-screen and then we'd go play it independently in our own homes and try to unlock all the characters and then we would call each other and then talk about what we learned. So 3 was the one that I was really obsessed with. And then I went on and played Samurai Warriors and Hyrule Warriors years later, but I didn't really keep up with the series. But recently I've gone back and I played four a bit and I played five.
And I think five is widely considered to be the best when it comes to the classic Dynasty Warriors games from that era. The combat's a lot more refined and it's a lot smoother. The performance is better. There's even more characters. This one actually has 48 characters total and there's more moves. There's more enemies and there's more of a complex weapon progression. So, Dynasty Warriors 3 basically established the foundation of what a co-op Musou game felt like. And then four expanded on that and then five basically perfected it. You can't go wrong with any of them, but this is the one that I think is the best.
Ratchet: Deadlocked
Ratchet Deadlocked. So, this is one of the few games in the Ratchet and Clank series that you can actually play in co-op, and it's basically a third-person shooter mixed with a 3D platformer. I don't really have a lot of experience with this series. The most I've really done is just pick up and test out a few of the titles here and there. So, I'm no expert on Ratchet and Clank, but this one you can play through the entire campaign in split-screen co-op. For me, the main downside is there are a lot of cutscenes. I played this for a couple of hours, and probably half of that time was just sitting there watching cutscenes. But, of course, you can skip it if you want. And honestly, for the time, the voice acting is not too bad.
It feels kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon from the '90s or early 2000s. But the gameplay itself is solid, and the controls feel like a modern game. And that's the main thing going for it.
Project Eden
And let's talk about Project Eden. So, this is a game that a lot of people seem to not like. So, when I went into playing this for the first time, I had zero expectations, but I have to say I think this is an incredibly underrated game. On its surface, it looks like it's just going to be a third-person shooter, but it's actually a lot deeper than that. There is definitely some action. You're going to run around and shoot here and there. At its core, this actually feels more like a mystery adventure type of game, and it's built from the ground up to be a co-op game. If you have a multi-tap, you can actually play it with up to four players, which is definitely the best way to do it. So, each character has their own abilities.
And if you're playing it with one or two players, you're going to have to switch between characters based on the obstacles in front of you. So, of course, if you have four players, it's really fun to just communicate and work together to use each character's abilities accordingly. The graphics are incredibly dated. The voice acting is not very good, and the overall story and vibe of the game is just cheesy. This game just looks bad. Even by PS2 standards, this looks barely better than PS1, honestly. But if you can get past all of that, I think the core gameplay here is really solid. I think that maybe the negative reputation of this game is because people had the wrong expectations for it.
Maybe people thought this was going to be a more fast-paced third-person shooter, but it's just not that. This is meant to be a slow-paced co-op mystery where you and your friends all work together trying to accomplish all the various objectives and trying to solve these murders. So, if you dismissed Project Eden, I definitely think you should give it another try, especially with a few friends. I think this is a really underrated game.
Hunter: The Reckoning - Wayward
So, on the PS2, we had Hunter the Reckoning and Hunter the Reckoning Wayward. The original Hunter the Reckoning is probably the better game, but Wayward was a PS2 exclusive, so I wanted to talk about that one. Ultimately, the game play feels about the same with some differences here and there. So, if you don't know Hunter the Reckoning, it's basically like a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, but with a horror theme. So, you're going to fight zombies and ghosts and werewolves and stuff like that. The main negative addition to this game, though, is it starts out with this really annoying tutorial. You can't really skip it and they just overexplain things way too much. It didn't feel like that in the first game.
And then also in this version, your main weapon has limited ammo, but in the first game, your ammo was unlimited. At least for your main weapon, not the secondary weapons that you pick up. But other than that, the gameplay feels the same. It plays like a twin stick shooter, but you also have a close-range weapon as well. You can't go wrong with any of the Hunter the Reckoning games. But if you have a PS2, you should definitely try this one out.
Time Crisis 3
Time Crisis 3. So, you can actually play Time Crisis 2 and 3 in split-screen co-op on PS2. You can play it with two controllers where you just move a cursor around and shoot, or you can actually use a light gun, which of course is the preferred way to play it, and it works really well. The GunCon on PS2 is one of the best light guns I've ever used. It just has really great accuracy, and as you move it around, you can move a cursor. It's kind of similar to using a Wii remote, but it works really well for this game specifically because there's buttons on the sides and you're able to push that button to take cover and then to jump out and shoot the enemies.
And that's just a simple mechanic that you wouldn't think adds that much, but having that extra little gameplay mechanic in a light gun shooter, it does really break things up and it makes it feel much more interactive. Time Crisis 2 is excellent and Time Crisis 3 is pretty much just more of the same. I think they just leaned into the action and it's just really fun and over the top. So, that's the one that I'm picking, but I love both of them.
The Red Star
The Red Star. This is a console exclusive to the PlayStation 2. Although there is a version that also came out on the PSP and there was a version that was supposed to come out on the original Xbox, but it got cancelled. However, there is a pretty much finished version of it that's leaked, so you can play it on original Xbox still. So, that's a long way of saying officially this is the only way to play this game on a home console. If you haven't played this game, it basically plays like a 3D beat 'em up mixed with a run-and-gun shooter and then there's some bullet hell shooting as well. This is a great game. It's another one that's just really fast-paced. You have a lot of moves. You can strafe and shoot.
You have all of your close combat moves as well, and you have a special move. The best way to describe this game is a mix between Contra and maybe Diehard Arcade. But there's a lot of bosses here, and I think the bosses are some of the most interesting parts of this game. So each boss basically has a set pattern of attacks that they do. And this is where it looks like a bullet hell shooter cuz they shoot out these waves of bullets and you got to watch the patterns and try to dodge them. And then you're mostly going to be trying to shoot their weak point. Some levels have multiple bosses. Some bosses have multiple forms and then there's some levels that are just a boss fight and then after that you move on to the next level.
I think this is a totally underrated game. I love the variety of gameplay and just meshing together all these styles feels really unique for its time.
Twisted Metal: Black
And a PlayStation staple, we got to talk about Twisted Metal Black. This is kind of like a reboot of the series coming out onto the PS2. Personally, I think Twisted Metal 2 is my favorite in the series, but this one's pretty close as well. However, this one moves really fast, and it took me a while to get the hang of it again. I beat this game probably like 10 years ago with my friend Will, and I got together with him again to play it. And yeah, this just feels a lot faster than I remember. But of course, this is a really great vehicle combat game. You pick your character, you go around, you get upgrades, you destroy all the enemies in sight. That's basically it. It's very simple, and that's what I love about it.
You just jump in and you start driving, and you start shooting.
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
Gauntlet Dark Legacy. So, Gauntlet Dark Legacy is kind of the sequel to Gauntlet Legends, but it's a little bit more complicated than that. I think it probably should have just been titled Gauntlet Legends Definitive Edition or something like that. So, it basically has the original four worlds of Gauntlet Legends, but four new worlds as well. So, it kind of just feels like Gauntlet Legends with a bunch of DLC. So, ultimately, if you want to play a Gauntlet game from this era, Gauntlet Dark Legacy is probably the best way to play it as it's pretty much like the definitive version of Gauntlet Legends. I played Gauntlet Legends a ton on Nintendo 64, so that's where most of my nostalgia is.
But like I said, Dark Legacy is just like that, but with a lot of extra stuff as well. Some of my favorite co-op memories with my friends, especially four player sessions, are playing these Gauntlet games. So, even though I appreciate dungeon crawlers with more depth, like Diablo or Dark Alliance or Champions of Norrath, I kind of just prefer the more simplistic style of Gauntlet. It's a dungeon crawler that still has some RPG elements, but it doesn't have the complicated skill trees or anything like that. You pretty much just pick your class, pick the color of your class, and then you just start going through the levels one by one. You destroy enemies, you level up, you gather loot, you gather keys, and then you fight a boss.
And that's pretty much it. And to me, that simple pick up and play gameplay style is definitely more of what I like.
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. So, this game came out when I was in high school, and I remember picking it up at launch and playing through it with my friend. I don't think we actually ever finished it, but we got pretty close. So, that was actually the last time that I played this game until recently, and that was over 20 years ago. So, my memory of this game was that it was a pretty fun beat 'em up. And that's pretty much it. I didn't think it was anything special, but now I have a lot of experience playing all sorts of beat 'em ups, 3D beat 'em ups, 2D ones, modern ones, retro ones. And I got to say, playing it now, this game kind of blew me away. It's just really fast-paced. You have tons of moves. You have special moves.
You can even do fatalities on any enemy. I think this is without a doubt the best 3D beat 'em up ever made. It's just so good. And in my opinion, I think this is the best Mortal Kombat game as well. But of course, you know, I'm biased because this is one of the only Mortal Kombat games that actually has co-op and it's not just a one-on-one fighter. But that really doesn't change the fact that this is an excellent beat 'em up and it's one of the only beat 'em up I've ever played that has platforming sections that aren't terrible. In fact, I like the platforming sections and I look forward to them, especially once you get the long jump. It just feels really satisfying to run and jump across a huge gap.
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks is one of those rare examples of a game that I played when I was younger and then revisited it and it's actually much better than my memories of the game. And when it comes to the current conversation about beat 'em ups, I feel like this is one that is often overlooked. Definitely one of the best co-op games on the PlayStation 2.
Final Thoughts
Okay, so there are my top 20 co-op games on the PlayStation 2. I know that there are a ton of games that I could have included, but I didn't because they're not good games. But actually, the PlayStation 2 has one of the biggest libraries of any console ever made. And I know there's a bunch of great games that I haven't even played yet or even heard of. So instead of just talking about co-op games that I missed, why don't you just tell me, "Yeah, these are great games that you already talked about. Here's some other great games. I like that. That would be cool."