20 Best PS2 Stealth Games

Prisoner of War puts you in a World War II prison camp, and your job is to get out. It is quite different from other stealth games, because it portrays little to no violence. Most sneaking games hand you a way to knock a guard out. This one hands you patience. You are a prisoner, not a commando, and the game never lets you forget it.

The escape is a team effort, too. Real escapes in the war often depended on people working together towards a final escape, and the game lets you choose from a number of dialogue options when you talk to your fellow inmates. It is slow and closer to a puzzle than an action game. We think it makes a fine double bill with The Great Escape further up this list, and the people who played it as kids still tell newcomers to try it.

Rogue Ops is the PS2's own attempt at a Splinter Cell, starring a special agent named Nikki. Her war is against a terrorist outfit called Omega 19, and her first mission sends her to the Spanish countryside to retrieve a journal full of their crimes. Later she finds out they plan to set off a nuclear weapon in space, with a pulse big enough to wipe out every computer in the United States.

Critics compared it unfavorably to Metal Gear and Splinter Cell, and it did not fare well commercially. That is the whole story of Rogue Ops: a decent game released right next to two giants. It still turns up in players' PS2 picks, usually from people who still have a soft spot for it.

Shinobido exists because of a lost license. Acquire made the early Tenchu games, and when Activision bought the publishing rights, the studio could no longer continue the series. So Acquire started a new one with a similar style, to keep its ninja fans. You play Goh, a ninja who starts the game with only a sword lying next to him.

Goh is a capable fighter, but he is at a disadvantage in a straight sword fight, because his enemies outnumber him. Stealth is the point. The game never came out in North America, and Acquire apologized on its website that there was no planned release there. The players who found it anyway still recommend it. If you liked the old Tenchu feel, this is the closest thing to a lost sequel.

Fatal Shadows is the follow-up to Wrath of Heaven, and it uses the same engine. This time a young ninja named Rin gets her turn in the spotlight. The ability to drag dead bodies out of sight after a kill returns, which matters a lot in a game where a guard finding his friend on the floor ruins your whole evening.

The enemies have more style than usual. One of them, Shou, is a vain assassin who poses as a musician and carries a shamisen with a powerful gun hidden inside it. Fatal Shadows plays a lot like its big brother, which is good news if you finished Wrath of Heaven and wanted more of it. A PSP version later came out in Japan only.

This is where the Sly Cooper series started, and the game was praised for using a variation on cel shading to create a film noir feel while still looking like a hand-drawn cartoon. It was also criticized for being too short, which is the nicest complaint a game can get.

There is a lovely reward for speedrunners, too. Finish a level's Master Sprint and you unlock a developer's commentary for that level. The first three games were later remastered together as The Sly Collection. The two sequels rank higher on this list, but players still recommend the original, and it is the best way to meet Sly, Bentley and Murray before the series gets bigger.

The Great Escape is an action-adventure stealth game based on the 1963 film of the same name, made by the UK studio Pivotal Games. It opens with the same scene as the movie, and the early levels tell the stories of the camp's famous prisoners before they arrive. One level follows Hilts escaping the camp through the blind spot between two guard towers.

The biggest change is the ending. In the film only one of the four heroes gets away, and in the game they all make it out, which is either a happy fix or historical vandalism depending on how much you love Steve McQueen. Players who grew up with it remember it fondly, clunky parts and all. It is a good pick for anyone who wants their sneaking with a war movie soundtrack.

Red Ninja is set in 16th century Japan during the Sengoku period, and you play Kurenai, an orphan fresh out of ninja training. The game is built around running along walls and killing quietly. You can drag bodies to hide them from enemies, though only whole ones. Kurenai cannot pick up two separate halves of a body to hide them, a rule someone at the studio had to write down.

The game was poorly received and was Tranji Studios' only published title. It is rough, and the wall running only works at full speed, which takes some getting used to. Even so, it keeps a small band of fans who still put it among their PS2 favourites.

Contracts is a strange one. It serves as both a remake of the first Hitman and a sequel to Hitman 2, taking missions from the original and rebuilding them with the newer game's tools. The frame story is a fever dream: Agent 47 is shot and badly wounded in Paris, and he relives his old jobs while he bleeds.

The game grades you at the end of each mission, and the lowest rank is "Mass Murderer", awarded to players who kill large numbers of people and do not use stealth. It is a darker game than Hitman 2, and its score won the BAFTA for Best Original Music. Players tend to recommend the Hitman games as a set, and this is the one that makes the set feel complete.

Forbidden Siren 2 is the sequel to Siren, and it was not released in North America. It takes place on Yamijima Island, cut off from the mainland after a severed undersea cable knocks out all power in 1976. The people trapped there include soldiers whose helicopter crashed and a schoolgirl from a ferry that vanished decades earlier.

The sequel fixes a lot of the first game's rough spots. It adds a crouch-walk, a proximity alert that warns you about nearby enemies and an optional first-person mode. It also adds the yamibito, a new enemy that is more resilient and more intelligent. Horror fans almost always recommend the two Siren games together, so treat this as the second half of one long nightmare.

Siren, known as Forbidden Siren in Europe, is a survival horror stealth game from Sony, directed by Keiichiro Toyama after he wrote and directed the original Silent Hill. A cast of characters is trapped in the village of Hanuda, which is full of the shibito, zombie-like creatures that used to be its people. The trick is sightjacking: you can see what a nearby shibito sees, then plan a route around it.

The game encourages you to avoid the shibito rather than fight them, and while you sightjack you cannot move, which leaves you open to attack. Critics liked its story and atmosphere, but the gameplay drew criticism, and it is genuinely hard. Ask for PS2 horror that is a little different, and Siren is the name players give you.

Hitman 2 opens with Agent 47 retired, working quietly at a church, until his only friend, Reverend Emilio Vittorio, is kidnapped. That pulls him back into the killing business, and the missions take him to Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Afghanistan and India. The game added the option of a first-person view and missions with multiple possible approaches, so you could plan a hit your own way.

The disguises are the heart of it. Knock out a guard, wear his clothes, and you can walk through places you were never meant to see, as long as you look the part. Critics considered it an improvement over the first game in every respect, and one set of editors called it "one of the best games of last year in any genre." It is the game that made Hitman a series worth following.

Sons of Liberty was developed over four years by a team of more than 100 people, and it shows in every room. Guards call for a strike team when they spot you and try to flank you. The new first-person aiming means you can blind a guard with steam or distract one with a flying piece of fruit.

Then there is the story. It takes place around New York City and ends somewhere very strange, with a conspiracy built by a secret group called the Patriots. The new hero, Raiden, drew backlash from fans, but the game is now often called ahead of its time for dealing with fake news and post-truth politics. Players usually recommend it and its sequel in the same breath, as a pair you should play back to back.

Manhunt 2 follows Daniel Lamb, a mental patient with amnesia, and Leo Kasper, a sociopathic assassin who guides him through his escape. The twist is that Leo lives in Daniel's head, put there by a brain implant meant to create the perfect assassin. The stealth works like the first game, though the shadow system has been tweaked.

It is best known for the trouble it caused. The controversy started two days after it was announced, before anyone had even seen footage, and the British film board rejected it. The released version blurs the executions. It still earned a nomination for GameSpy's PS2 Game of the Year. Players usually recommend the two Manhunt games together, and this one makes sense once you have survived the first.

Blood Money is the fourth Hitman. The story is told in flashback, as a former FBI director describes Agent 47's career to a journalist. It also introduces rival assassins, so for once 47 is not the only professional in the room.

Critics loved it, and it was a hit too, selling more than 2.1 million copies. It has never really gone away, either. A port called Hitman: Blood Money, Reprisal came to phones in 2023 and to the Nintendo Switch in 2024. When players recommend the PS2 Hitman games, Blood Money is the one they single out.

Wrath of Heaven brings back Rikimaru, the hero of the first Tenchu, who had been reported missing after Stealth Assassins. This time the enemy is Tenrai, and the game was published in Japan by FromSoftware as Tenchu 3. You crawl across rooftops, wait for a guard to turn and finish him without a sound.

The cast is wonderfully odd. One playable hero, Tesshu, is a village doctor by day and a vigilante assassin by night, who uses his acupuncture needles only for killing enemies in stealth. Another character carries a puppet called Mahime with a Gatling gun built in. Rikimaru even gets a secret mission against an evil company boss in the present day. Players still recommend it, and it is the Tenchu to start with.

Snake Eater was meant for the PlayStation 3, but Kojima moved it to the PS2 because the wait for the new console was too long. It is a prequel to the whole series, set in a jungle that was so hard to build that it needed a new collision engine. You live off the land this time, and staying alive is part of staying hidden.

Food matters more than you would expect. Some of it rots, and eating rotten food can give Snake a stomachache that drains his stamina faster. Critics praised the story and the survival ideas, and many think it improves on Sons of Liberty. Ask players for the essential PS2 games, and Metal Gear Solid 3 keeps turning up on the list.

Sly 3 was the last Sly game made by Sucker Punch, and it is considered one of the best PlayStation 2 games. The gang is broken at the start: Murray has left after blaming himself for Bentley's injury in the last game, so the first job is getting him back. Then Sly sets off to find his family's vault.

It gives you more ways to play. Carmelita Fox is playable in some missions, and treasure hunts replace the clue bottles of the earlier games. The original also had 3D features, and those were removed in the re-releases. Players love to recommend the Sly games as a set, and this is a grand finale for the trilogy.

Manhunt is the darkest game on this list. You play Cash, a man everyone thinks is dead, who was only sedated and wakes up to a voice in his earpiece called The Director. If Cash kills the gangs sent to hunt him in areas of Carcer City filmed by CCTV, The Director promises to let him go. Executions only work if you approach a hunter from behind, undetected.

The scoring tells you exactly what Rockstar was going for. The normal difficulty is called "Fetish", and you earn more stars for more brutal kills. It was not a commercial hit, but it built a substantial cult following. Players tend to name it in the same breath as Bully, and it is as far from Bully's school pranks as Rockstar ever went.

Splinter Cell introduced Sam Fisher, an NSA black ops agent voiced by Michael Ironside. He is sent to Georgia to find a missing agent, and the trail leads to a cyber attack on North America and a war that could pull in China. The PS2 version was made by Ubisoft Shanghai, and it is generally easier than the Xbox original.

That is not a bad thing for a game this tense. One critic called it one of the few games to create suspense without resorting to shock tactics. Another said it is sometimes reduced to frustrating bouts of trial and error, which anyone stuck in a lit hallway will understand. A remake is in development by Ubisoft Toronto, but the original still holds up.

Sly 2 took everything from the first game and made it bigger. Sly now has a health meter instead of dying from one hit, and the levels are hub worlds full of missions. His friends Bentley and Murray got their own gameplay too, so the gang finally feels like a gang. The job is to steal back the parts of the villain Clockwerk before the Klaww Gang can put him back together, starting with a nightclub in Paris.

Critics saw it as a significant improvement over the first game. There are small touches everywhere, like valuable paintings and vases you can steal and sell at the safe house. Players call it a PS2 classic, and one summed it up as "a legitimate masterpiece". Players recommend it more than any other PS2 stealth game.