20 Best PS2 Action Games

The Mark of Kri was the first game made under the San Diego Studio name, a studio formed when Red Zone Interactive merged with 989 Sports. Several of its developers came from the team behind Twisted Metal III and Twisted Metal 4, which is not where you would expect a sword game to come from. You play Rau, a big, quiet warrior who can take on multiple enemies at once, even when surrounded. The left stick moves him and the right stick is used for locking on to surrounding enemies, so every swing goes where you point it.

Rau also has a bow, silent stealth kills and a magical bird named Kuzo who scouts the land ahead. The art looks like a Saturday morning cartoon, and the fighting is a lot bloodier than that. A sequel, Rise of the Kasai, followed in 2005 from BottleRocket Entertainment, where the original team had moved.

The 2nd Runner puts you back in Jehuty, the Orbital Frame from the first game, with a new director in charge. Producer Hideo Kojima picked Shuyo Murata for the job and later said most of the game's credit is owed to him. The team listened to the complaints about the first game. You can now fight several enemies at the same time, where the first game kept its fights one-on-one, and the backtracking is gone.

Staff from the Metal Gear series worked on the special effects, and the explosions got a "quasi-toon-shade" to give them an anime feel. Critics praised the graphics and gameplay but criticized its short length. It still sold poorly. A remaster, The 2nd Runner M∀RS, came to PS4 and Windows in 2018, and it ranks one place below the first game on this list.

Midway made Psi-Ops partly as a way to build new game physics, and you can tell the moment you lift your first soldier off the floor with your mind. You play Nick Scryer, a secret agent whose face was rebuilt and whose memory was wiped so he could get inside a psychic group called The Movement. His powers come back as you play. Telekinesis flings soldiers around, Pyrokinesis sets them on fire, and Mind Drain and Remote Viewing round out the set.

To test the mechanics, the developers built a one-room sandbox level filled with items and enemies. Critics lauded the gameplay, but the game sold poorly and Midway dropped the sequel. It even had a tie-in music video, "With My Mind" by Cold. Many of the developers went on to Stranglehold. Sony announced a re-release on PS4 and PS5 in 2026.

Shinobi was developed by Overworks and published by Sega for the PlayStation 2. You play Hotsuma, leader of the Oboro clan, as he looks into the destruction of his clan and fights the demons threatening Tokyo. His main weapon is Akujiki, a sword that eats souls, and he backs it up with shurikens and ninja magic.

The combat rewards you for defeating groups of enemies in rapid succession, so the best way through a room is to never stop moving. Between fights you wall-run and air dash across the stage. It is fast and it is not forgiving. Players still bring it up whenever PS2 action comes up, very often in the same breath as Onimusha. If the bigger names on this list feel slow to you, this is the one to try.

Urban Reign is a 3D brawler from Namco, made in the tradition of Double Dragon and Final Fight. That tradition means a city full of angry men and very few reasons to stop punching.

Players who have played it rate it among the best beat 'em ups on the system, and some of them say it beats the older 3D brawlers outright. It never got the attention of the games ranked above it. For anyone who grew up on Final Fight and wanted the same thing in 3D, it is about as close as the PS2 got.

Red Dead Revolver started at Capcom. After producer Yoshiki Okamoto left Capcom in 2003, the game was canceled, until Rockstar Games acquired the rights and brought it back later that year. Rockstar San Diego finished it, and it came out for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in May 2004. It is set in the 1880s, and you play the bounty hunter Red Harlow, out for revenge after the murder of his parents.

Dead Eye, the aiming system the later games are known for, starts here, and it is used in the duels. The main title theme comes from Luis Bacalov's score for His Name Was King, and other tracks were borrowed from Ennio Morricone. It got mixed reviews and sold moderately well. Then came Red Dead Redemption in 2010, and nobody called the series a Capcom leftover again.

Snake Eater was written, produced and directed by Hideo Kojima, and it is a prequel to the entire Metal Gear series. Kojima first planned it for the PlayStation 3 and moved it to the PS2 because the wait for the new console was too long. The jungle setting was hard to build and needed a new collision engine. You camouflage yourself, climb trees and hide in tall grass, and some food rots over time and gives Snake a stomachache.

It was met with critical acclaim, though the camera got a mixed reaction. The expanded Subsistence edition added a third-person camera and the online Metal Gear Online, and we count both versions together here. The opening theme, "Snake Eater", is a Bond-like song performed by Cynthia Harrell, and it will be in your head for a week.

The Bouncer came out in Japan in December 2000 and in North America in March 2001. Shinji Hashimoto produced it, and Tetsuya Nomura did the character designs. Three bouncers named Sion, Volt and Kou watch soldiers kidnap a young girl named Dominique from their bar, and they go after her. You can play it alone or with up to three friends.

The game is a series of short fights between cinematic cutscenes, and the cutscenes win on screen time. The English voices were recorded first, and the closing song "Love Is the Gift" is sung by Shanice Wilson. Players who played it remember it fondly, and some of them wonder why it gets called a flop. It is short and it is strange. You will want to play it twice to see every route.

Zone of the Enders came out on the PlayStation 2 in March 2001, with Hideo Kojima producing. Leo Stenbuck is a boy from a colony at Jupiter who stumbles into the cockpit of an Orbital Frame called Jehuty while soldiers attack his home. From there it is fast mech combat in the air, with a versus mode for two players on the side.

Every first-run copy came with a playable demo of Metal Gear Solid 2. The main game deserved better than being remembered as the thing that came with a demo. A sequel, The 2nd Runner, followed in 2003, and both games came to the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2012 as the Zone of the Enders HD Collection.

Spider-Man 2 came out on June 29, 2004, for the PS2, GameCube, Xbox and PC, with a Game Boy Advance version alongside. The console version is a third-person action game set in an open world based on New York City, with Manhattan, Roosevelt Island, Ellis Island and Liberty Island to swing around. The story follows the movie, with Doc Ock as the main villain.

Critics praised the realistic Manhattan and the web-swinging, and that swinging is the reason people still talk about it. Vulture, Shocker, Rhino and Mysterio show up in stories of their own. You will skip half the missions just to swing between buildings, and the game is fine with that. It was followed by Spider-Man 3, based on the 2007 film.

Freedom Fighters was made by IO Interactive and published by EA Games. It is set in an alternate history where the Soviet Union has invaded and occupied New York City, and it follows Chris Stone, a New York plumber who ends up building a resistance group. It is a third-person shooter with a squad twist. Heroic deeds fill your charisma meter, and the more charisma you have, the more fighters you can recruit, up to a maximum of twelve.

Orders are simple: follow, attack and defend. GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann wrote that "the only real problem with Freedom Fighters is that there simply isn't enough of it." Players looking for straight shooting action on the PS2 still point to it. It is short, and it is all killer.

Destroy All Humans! is set in 1959 in the United States, and it pokes fun at the lifestyles, pop culture and politics of the era. You play Cryptosporidium 137, a Furon spy sent to Earth to harvest human DNA, because his species needs it to keep cloning itself. It came out on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

The two leads are voiced by J. Grant Albrecht and Richard Steven Horvitz, and Garry Schyman wrote the score. Most of the fun is in being the villain of a 1950s B-movie, and the game never lets you forget how silly that era's fears look now. A remake by Black Forest Games came out in 2020, and the old one is still the funnier of the two.

Shadow of Rome is Capcom's take on the murder of Julius Caesar. Agrippa is a soldier whose father is accused of the killing, and he is forced to fight in the gladiator arenas while his friend Octavianus works to prove the father innocent. Capcom built it on what it learned from Onimusha 3. In the arena you can cut both of an opponent's arms off, and the game calls that move "Disarmed".

Critics praised the gladiator combat, the over-the-top violence and the graphics, and they were unimpressed with the slow stealth sections that Octavianus brings. It sold poorly, and Keiji Inafune scrapped the planned series. Shadow of Rome 2 became Dead Rising instead. Players keep recommending it to anyone who has run out of famous PS2 action games.

The Punisher came out in 2005 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows. You play Frank Castle, cleaning up the crime on the streets of New York City, which in practice means shooting most of it. Frank can grab enemies and throw them through doors, and he can only dual wield when there is a second gun on the floor to pick up.

The interrogations are what people remember. You decide how far to push a captive, and an early cut of the game was violent enough that the ESRB said it would get an Adults Only rating. That makes it the nastiest game on this list, and it holds up better than most licensed games of its time.

Shaolin Monks takes the story of Mortal Kombat II and turns it into a beat 'em up. You play Liu Kang and Kung Lao, alone or in co-op, as they defend Earthrealm from Outworld. It came out in North America on September 19, 2005, and Midway kept the fighting game parts: Fatalities, combos and a versus mode.

The multi-directional combat lets you attack any enemy around you, and you can keep a combo going across several enemies, even after launching one into the air. Each monk has several Fatalities, some of them 3D versions of moves from the first two games. Critics liked the co-op, and players who want PS2 brawlers still put it on their lists. It is the best thing Mortal Kombat did outside a fighting game.

God Hand was directed by Shinji Mikami, who wanted a game for hardcore players with a lot of comedy mixed in. Demon thugs cut off your arm, and the woman you rescued gives you the legendary God Hand as a replacement. Four dodge moves sit on the right analog stick, and you will need every one of them. The English release even renamed a power-up from "Chihuahua Curry" to "Puppy Pizza".

It got a mixed response from critics and sold only modestly in Japan. PlayStation Magazine opened its review by calling it "a terrible, terrible game, yet I can't stop playing it." Since then it has become a cult classic. Players who know it put it at the top of the PS2's beat 'em ups, and they will keep telling you about it until you play it.

The Warriors is based on the 1979 film, and it came out in October 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Rockstar Toronto developed it, and the first half of the game covers the three months before the film starts. Several actors from the film came back to voice their characters, including Michael Beck as Swan and James Remar as Ajax.

It got very positive reviews, and critics called it a worthy adaptation of the film. Finish the story and you unlock Armies of the Night, a small arcade game heavily based on Double Dragon. Players keep recommending it when someone asks for a PS2 action game, and it ranks above every other brawler here.

Devil May Cry started life as an idea for Resident Evil 4. Director Hideki Kamiya based it loosely on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, and some of its gameplay came from a bug the team found in Onimusha: Warlords. The game drops the pre-rendered backgrounds of Resident Evil for a camera that moves with the action. Its big idea is the Stylish Rank, which grades how well you fight.

Every mission is graded on time, red orbs collected, style, items used and damage taken, so you will replay missions just to see a better letter. Dante fights with the sword Alastor and the gauntlets Ifrit. It sold more than 2.16 million copies and is considered among the greatest games ever made. Players keep naming the first and third games together as the ones to play.

God of War II came out on March 13, 2007. Kratos is now the God of War himself, until Zeus betrays him, strips him of his godhood and kills him. The Titan Gaia rescues him from the Underworld and sends him after the Sisters of Fate, who can turn back time. The opening has a giant eagle drain his powers and bring the Colossus of Rhodes to life, which is a lot of game for a first level.

It was 2007's PlayStation Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks and is considered one of the greatest games ever made. It sold 4.24 million copies, the sixteenth best-selling PS2 game of all time. It came out late in the console's life, and it still looked like it belonged on the next one.

God of War came out for the PlayStation 2 on March 22, 2005. Kratos is a Spartan warrior who serves the Olympian gods, and Athena tasks him with killing Ares, his old mentor, who tricked him into killing his own wife and daughter. The only thing that can stop a god is Pandora's Box, so Kratos goes to find it. David Jaffe said the high concept was Clash of the Titans "merging it with Heavy Metal magazine". For about three months early on, he seriously considered making it a first-person game.

It won several Game of the Year awards and sold over 4.6 million copies, the 12th best-selling PS2 game of all time. Ask players to compare a PS2 action game to something, and this is the game they compare it to. Players recommend it more than any other PS2 action game.