14 Best PS2 Beat 'Em Ups

This Altered Beast has almost nothing to do with the old Sega arcade game. The original is set in the Greco-Roman world of Ancient Greece, and this one has a modern setting. It was released in Europe and Japan in 2005, and the North American release was cancelled, so a lot of American players never saw it.

You play Luke, a test subject the government sends back into the facility that made him after someone releases the Genome Mist in the city. The story gets busy, with a rival test subject called Brad and a jealous Anastasia who wants to absorb Luke to fix her own flaws. None of that matters much once you turn into a monster and start throwing people around. It is the oddball of this list, and the players who found it still recommend it.

Friend or Foe was first announced on the back of the Spider-Man 3 game's instruction booklet, and it has a very different engine and style from the film tie-ins before it. Spider-Man recruits new sidekicks as the story goes on, and some of them are villains he has to beat in a boss battle first. In Cairo, for example, Spider-Man recruits the Lizard, here an antihero. It was developed by three different companies depending on the console.

Critics gave it mixed reviews and found it too repetitive and easy. That is fair. Easy is also why it works so well with a younger brother or sister holding the second controller as the sidekick. It is a game for a slow afternoon on the couch, and it earned its spot on players' picks alone.

Rise of Sin Tzu is a beat 'em up based on the television series The New Batman Adventures, and the show's voice cast came back for it. You can play as Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, or as Batgirl, Robin or Nightwing. Ubi Soft made it with Warner Bros., and it was the final Batman game based on the DC Animated Universe.

The big draw was a brand new villain, Sin Tzu, introduced the way Batman: The Animated Series introduced Harley Quinn. Reviews were mixed, and it never became a Greatest Hits release on the PS2. Still, a brawler with four heroes and that cast is a treat for anyone who grew up on the cartoon. Players kept it on their lists anyway, and it beat a lot of bigger licensed games to get here.

Viewtiful Joe 2 was made by Team Viewtiful at Capcom's Clover Studio, produced by Atsushi Inaba and directed by Masaaki Yamada. Hideki Kamiya was signed on as director of Ōkami at the time, but he still wrote the story because he wanted it to ensure continuity with his first game. Joe and Silvia fight their way through Movieland together, starting in a prehistoric film with a Tyrannosaurus rex soldier called Big John.

Like the first game, it sold modestly and got considerable praise from critics for its stylish graphics and gameplay. Metacritic lists its versions at 86 and 85 out of 100. Players nearly always recommend the two Viewtiful Joe games as a pair, so if the first one clicks, this is your next stop.

Streetwise is the sixth and final game of the Final Fight series, and the only one that never came out in Japan. It was made by Capcom Production Studio 8, the American team behind the Maximo games. It took the series back to its beat 'em up roots, with you as Kyle Travers, the younger brother of Cody from the first game. Between fights, the story mode has ten minigames, from cockroach stomping to arm-wrestling.

The save system is strange: you can only save when you decide to quit the game. Plan your evenings around that. Players still recommend it, and one put its appeal perfectly: "It has the exact same energy as the 90s live action Street Fighter movie." Whether that sounds like a warning or a promise says a lot about you.

Rise to Honor stars Jet Li as Kit, an undercover cop, and the majority of the game is a beat 'em up played from a third-person view. You use the right analog stick to direct blows at enemies, a lot like the Xbox game Star Wars: Obi-Wan. Kit works his way through Boss Chiang's crime world until a final hand-to-hand fight with Kwan.

The game is full of nods to Jet Li's films. One fight lets Kit team up with Michelle in a scene inspired by Romeo Must Die, and another moment references the start of Cradle 2 the Grave. Reviews were average on Metacritic, though Playboy gave it 88% and called it "a story you experience." Players still recommend it, usually by name alone, as if the name says enough.

Viewtiful Joe was first released as part of the Capcom Five, under director Hideki Kamiya and producer Atsushi Inaba. The same team ported it to the PS2 under the name Clover Studio, and the PS2 version adds an easier difficulty called Sweet plus Dante from Devil May Cry as a playable character. Enemies come at you from all directions, including the foreground and background, and Joe's VFX Powers copy camera tricks from films. The first, Slow, slows time so your hits land harder and dodging gets easier.

Its look earned it a number of awards. None of Clover Studio's games became a big seller, though, and Capcom closed the studio in March 2007 after its final two games, Ōkami and God Hand. Players still put Joe on their must-play lists for the PS2.

Yakuza 2 puts Kazuma Kiryu back in the violent Japanese underworld, and this time you explore Osaka as well as Tokyo. Its over 16 chapters were written by Hase Seishu, the author who also wrote the first game. One of the main aims was improving the fighting engine, and fights against groups got the most attention. It became much easier to attack enemies coming from multiple directions and to switch targets in the middle of a combo. The team added more Heat moves, too.

The western release kept the original Japanese audio instead of an English dub. Reviewers praised the presentation and the fighting system, and a remake, Yakuza Kiwami 2, followed in 2017. Players often recommend the first two Yakuza games together, as one long story.

Urban Reign is a Namco-produced 3D brawler, made in the tradition of Double Dragon and Final Fight. It came out without much fuss, and one review summed up how it went: "it's just a sleeper."

The players who did find it have kept it alive. When someone asks for a PS2 brawler, Urban Reign keeps coming up, often right next to God Hand, and the people who played it back then are not shy about it. It is the most old-school game on this list: no open city, no long cutscenes, just you and whoever is foolish enough to walk up to you. If the side-scrolling brawlers of the 90s are your thing, this is the one that feels closest to them.

The Bouncer was one of Square's early PS2 games, released in Japan in December 2000 and in North America in March 2001. Tetsuya Nomura designed the characters, and the game is a series of short fights between cinematic cutscenes. Three bouncers, Sion, Volt and Kou, chase the soldiers who kidnapped a young girl, Dominique, from their bar, and you can play alone or with three friends.

The English voices were recorded first, because a North American release was planned early on. The English theme song, Love Is the Gift, is sung by Shanice Wilson, and the director said its lyrics carry the game's overall theme. Players still recommend it by name, sometimes in capital letters.

Yakuza was released in Japan in December 2005 and around the world in September 2006. Kazuma Kiryu gets out of prison to find that 10 billion yen has been stolen from the Tojo clan, and a mysterious young girl may lead him to it. The game is split into three connected modes called Event, Adventure and Battle, and winning fights nets cash for equipment and healing items from shops based on real stores.

To pay for the expensive production, Sega set up tie-ins with famous Japanese companies. It worked: Yakuza sold over one million units on the PS2. Critics praised the story and criticized the controls, and a remake, Yakuza Kiwami, arrived in 2016. Players recommend it to anyone who wants something different from the usual PS2 fare.

Shaolin Monks turns the fighting game series into an action-adventure beat 'em up. You play Liu Kang and Kung Lao, solo or in co-op, through a reimagining of the story of Mortal Kombat II. The combat is multi-directional, so you can hit any of the enemies around you, and your combos carry across several of them, even after you launch one into the air. Fatalities are in, and some are 3D versions of ones from the first two games.

It came out in North America on September 19, 2005. Critics liked the move to adventure and the co-op mode, and were less sure about the story and the short length. Players still recommend it, and some of them get very loud about it.

God Hand was directed by Shinji Mikami, who wanted a game for hardcore gamers with a large amount of comic relief. Demonic thugs cut off your arm, and the woman you saved gives you the legendary God Hand as a replacement. Now every undead outlaw and demon in the wild west wants to fight you for it. You attack with the face buttons and dodge with the right stick, which has four dodge moves mapped to its directions, and the fight system lets you build your own combos.

It got a mixed response from critics and sold only modestly in Japan, but it is now considered a cult classic. PlayStation Magazine opened its review with "God Hand is a terrible, terrible game, yet I can't stop playing it." Players back it hard and call it an absolute gem.

The Warriors is based on the 1979 film and came out in October 2005, made by Rockstar Toronto. It expands on the film's plot, with the first half covering events three months before the movie. Several cast members from the film returned to voice their characters, including Michael Beck as Swan and James Remar as Ajax. Rockstar began working on it in 2002.

Critics praised its controls and its music, and many called it a worthy adaptation of the film. Finish the story and you unlock Armies of the Night, an arcade game heavily based on Double Dragon. It is a lovely nod to where the whole genre came from. Players recommend it more than any other PS2 beat 'em up, by a wide margin.