20 Best Licensed PS2 Games

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has more than 120 playable characters, the biggest roster any Dragon Ball game had at the time. Its Dragon Adventure mode tells the story from the Saiyan Saga, the very first arc of Dragon Ball Z, all the way to the Dragon Saga at the end of Dragon Ball GT. That is a lot of yelling and a lot of hair changing colour, and the game covers nearly all of it.

It sits at the bottom of this list for one reason: its own sequel took everything it did and added more. For a lot of fans the two games are a pair, and this is the one where the series found its feet. If you grew up with the show, it holds more of it than almost any other game.

Ghost Rider is based on the Marvel comic and the 2006 movie starring Nicolas Cage. You play Johnny Blaze, a stunt rider who made a deal with the devil to save his father, and you spend the game fighting demons with chain attacks and a shotgun. Finish it and you can unlock other riders, including Classic Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider 2099, plus Blade the vampire hunter, who fights with only his sword. An Xbox version was planned and then cancelled.

Critics gave it mixed reviews. Players who love Devil May Cry and God of War tell each other to try it anyway, since the fighting is the whole point and the game knows it. It is the kind of movie game that turned out better than the movie.

Shrek 2 was made by Luxoflux, the studio behind Vigilante 8, and it follows the plot of the film as Shrek goes to meet Fiona's parents. You control one of four characters at a time and swap between them whenever you like. Each one has a special trick. Donkey has a "Burro Blast" that can knock down large objects, Shrek picks up and throws heavy things, and Fiona can slow down time, Matrix style, in a nod to her fight scene in the first movie.

Most of the game mixes light puzzles with a lot of enemy bashing, and it is better than it had any right to be. By July 2006, the PS2 version had sold 850,000 copies in the United States. Players still tell each other to pick it up, and a remaster is in development at Aspyr.

X-Men Legends came out on the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox in 2004. Magneto has a plan to put mutants on top, and you stop him with a four-person team picked from a roster that includes Storm, Gambit and Wolverine. Hit the same enemy with your mutant powers at once and you get a combo. One of its project leads called it "basically Final Fantasy with X-Men", and more action and combat went in as the game was built. Patrick Stewart came back to voice Professor Xavier from the films.

Reviewers praised its take on cel-shaded graphics, and it still looks good. Players tend to recommend it together with its sequel, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, and treat the pair as one long X-Men game. Bring a friend if you can.

Enter the Matrix came out for the PS2, Xbox, GameCube and Windows at the same time, in May 2003, to go with The Matrix Reloaded. You play as Niobe or Ghost, two side characters from the films. The Wachowskis wrote and directed one hour of live action footage just for the game, shot on 35 mm film. The fight moves were motion captured from the films' actors and stunt doubles, under the supervision of the series' fight choreographer, Yuen Woo-ping.

IGN said it "could have been much better with a few more months in development", and that is fair. It is clunky in places and the camera has its own ideas. Players still recommend it, flaws and all, because doing Matrix kung fu yourself is fun in a way the clunk cannot spoil.

Ultimate Spider-Man is based on the comic series of the same name, which writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Mark Bagley started in 2000. That comic was Marvel's way of starting Spider-Man over for new readers. The game lets you play as either Spider-Man or Venom, and each one has his own abilities and his own way of fighting. Its look is influenced by the comic's creators, so it plays like a comic book that moves.

It sits behind Spider-Man 2 on this list, and that makes sense, because that game is the better pure Spider-Man game. This one is the stylish one. It is also the one to pick if you have always wanted to spend an afternoon as the villain, throwing your weight around the city as Venom.

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a turn-based RPG with seven playable heroes made just for the game. The famous characters only drop in now and then, with Gandalf and Aragorn among them, while scenes from all three movies play with new narration by Ian McKellen as Gandalf. The battles work a lot like Final Fantasy. You have a party, each character has their own skills, and they get stronger as they level up. Only three party members can fight at once, but you can swap them in and out.

Electronic Arts released it worldwide in November 2004. Some reviewers felt it was too close to Final Fantasy X, and they had a point. It is still the only Final Fantasy style RPG set in Middle-earth on the PS2.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai was the first game in the Budokai series. It was made by Dimps and published by Infogrames. It has 23 playable characters, and its story mode follows the first three arcs of Dragon Ball Z, from the Saiyan Saga and the Planet Namek saga to Gohan's final battle with Cell. There is also a World Tournament mode where you buy new moves, and if you collect all seven Dragon Balls you can summon Shenron.

The fighting is simpler than in the later games, and the roster looks small next to them. That said, this is where Dragon Ball Z on the PS2 started, and the sequels built on what it set up. It is still a good, quick fighter to share with a friend who loves the show.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 came out in North America on November 16, 2004, with a Limited Edition that added a DVD about how the game was made. It rebuilds the fighting, so now you can teleport and fly around the arena. When two beam attacks collide at close range, they cancel out and hurt both fighters. Hyper mode is the only way to pull off a Dragon Rush or an Ultimate Move, and a lot of a match is about building up to it. You can unlock up to 40 bonus characters from the show.

The Greatest Hits version in North America later added the extra costumes and the option to play with the Japanese voices. Players keep putting Budokai 3 on their PS2 must-have lists, and it ranks above the first Budokai here.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie was made with the film's director, Peter Jackson, working alongside the game's director, Michel Ancel. The human levels are played as Jack, in first person. The game plays down the heads-up display on purpose, so you watch the world instead of a health bar. Then it switches to Kong, in third person, and you punch, grab and use whatever is lying around as a weapon.

It came out in November 2005, including on the Xbox 360 as a launch title, and critics praised how cinematic it felt. Players still recommend it as one of the good movie games, and they are very particular about its name. As one put it: "Please use the full title in the future, it deserves it."

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is a one-on-one fighting game based on Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, and it follows the main story of the manga. The headline is the roster: over 162 characters, each with their own moves and combos. Stages also change with the weather and the time of day. You can fight a friend or the computer across a long list of modes.

Of all the Dragon Ball Z games on the PS2, this is the one players recommend most, ahead of Budokai 3 and the earlier Tenkaichi. Fans still put it on their lists of PS2 favorites. If you only buy one Dragon Ball game for the console, buy this one. It has the most characters and it is the one that feels most like the show.

Spider-Man 2 came out on June 29, 2004, and it follows the plot of the movie, with Doc Ock as the main villain. It is the sequel to the 2002 Spider-Man game. The big change was the city. The game is set in an open world based on New York City, made up of Manhattan, Roosevelt Island, Ellis Island and Liberty Island, and you can swing anywhere in it. Along the way you also run into Vulture, Shocker, Rhino and Mysterio in stories the film never had.

Critics praised the realistic Manhattan and the web-swinging, and swinging is still the reason to play it. It ranks ahead of every other Spider-Man game on the PS2, and players still put it on their own lists of PS2 favorites.

The Godfather came out in March 2006 for Windows, PS2 and Xbox, and it puts you in the Corleone family as a new recruit. You start as an Outsider and climb the ranks, all the way up to Don of NYC. James Caan and Robert Duvall returned to voice their characters from the film, and Marlon Brando's likeness is in it too. Francis Ford Coppola condemned the game, saying Paramount never told him about it. It was also EA's first M-rated game.

Players who love crime sandboxes put it on the same shelf as Scarface and Grand Theft Auto. It is the closest the PS2 came to letting you walk around inside the movie, and that is reason enough to play it.

Star Wars: Battlefront was made by Pandemic Studios and LucasArts and came out on September 20, 2004, the same day as the Star Wars Trilogy DVD set. It is a third and first-person shooter built around battles from the movies, with troopers from different factions fighting across different planets. On consoles you can play offline with up to 4 players, and it also had online play.

Its sequel came out only a year later, and players rank that one much higher. Even so, this is where the series started, and the big ground battles were already here. If you have friends and a multitap, it is still a good night in.

The Punisher came out in 2005 for the PS2, Xbox and Windows, and you play Frank Castle cleaning up crime in New York City. The fights are close and nasty. You can grab enemies and throw them through doors, and the ones highlighted on screen can be interrogated for information. The interrogations are what everybody remembers, because you control how much a captive suffers.

That nearly got it in trouble. Volition showed an early cut to the ESRB in January 2004, a year ahead of release, and the ratings board confirmed it would get an Adults Only rating, which most stores will not sell. Players keep recommending it, and it ranks above every superhero game on this list.

Star Wars: Battlefront II came out on October 28, 2005 in PAL regions and on November 1 in North America. It is the sequel to the first Battlefront, and it added space combat and let you play as Jedi and other heroes, across over 16 new battlefronts. The campaign follows a veteran of the 501st, a clone trooper who serves the Republic and then the Empire, and reviewers praised its story.

It ranks far above the first game, and players still name it all the time. On March 14, 2024 it came back in Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, together with the first game, which tells you people never stopped wanting it.

Scarface: The World Is Yours starts at the final scene of the 1983 film, then changes it. Tony Montana survives the attack on his mansion, escapes, hides out in a safehouse outside Miami and swears revenge on Sosa. From there you rebuild his empire. To keep your money safe you launder it at a bank, which takes a cut that grows with how much heat you have from the cops.

The game uses Al Pacino's likeness, but he does not voice Tony; he felt his voice had changed too much since the film, and he picked André Sogliuzzo himself. Critics compared it favorably to Vice City and San Andreas. Players love it, and plenty of them expect to see it on any list of the best PS2 games.

The Thing is based on John Carpenter's film, and Carpenter endorsed the game and even has a cameo in it. A rescue team goes to the Antarctic to find out how a group of American scientists died, and runs into a shape-shifting alien that copies the people it kills. Gunfire weakens the creatures, but only fire kills them for good. The clever part is your squad. Engineers fix fuse boxes and medics heal, and every one of them has a fear level. Push them too far and they crack up, and they might attack you or die of a heart attack.

It sold over one million units across all platforms, and a sequel was in the works until Computer Artworks went into receivership in 2003. Few horror games make you this scared of your own team.

The Simpsons: Hit & Run came out in North America on September 16, 2003, made by Radical Entertainment. It began as a follow-up to Road Rage, but the team kept only the driving and took the open world from Grand Theft Auto. You explore 3 areas of Springfield as the family, in cars from the show, trying to work out why there are wasp-shaped cameras everywhere and a new Buzz Cola everybody is a bit too excited about.

It is often considered the best Simpsons tie-in game, and it sold over 3 million copies worldwide by June 2007. Players still bring it up all the time. It also won Fave Video Game at the 2004 Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards, which is the kind of trophy you keep on the fridge.

The Warriors is based on the 1979 film and came out in October 2005 for the PS2 and Xbox, with a PSP port by Rockstar Leeds in February 2007. Rockstar Toronto made the original. The gang is wrongly accused of killing a rival gang leader, and every gang in the city is after them on the way home to Coney Island. The game expands on the film's plot, with the first half covering events three months before the movie. Several cast members came back, including Michael Beck as Swan and James Remar as Ajax.

Critics praised its controls, design, sound, music and plot, and many called it a worthy adaptation of the film. Beat the story and you unlock Armies of the Night, an arcade game heavily based on Double Dragon. Players recommend it more than any other licensed game on the PS2, and it still comes up all the time when they share their favorites.