17 Most Unique PS2 Games

Robot Alchemic Drive is set during an alien invasion in Japan, and you control a giant robot that stands as humanity's last line of defense. The twist is where you stand. You control the robot from the perspective of the hero, a person on the ground, and you switch between moving the robot and moving the hero. That means finding a good spot in the city to see the fight without getting too close. Whole buildings come down either way.

You choose between two male leads and one female lead, but the game only ever calls you "Chairman" and the choice has no effect on how it plays. Players who go looking for strange PS2 games keep finding their way to this one.

Siren was made by Project Siren, a team inside Sony Computer Entertainment Japan with people who had worked on the original Silent Hill. Its big idea is called sightjack. Your character can see and hear what a nearby Shibito sees, which tells you where the undead villagers are and what they are doing. The catch is that you cannot move while you look. The Shibito cannot be killed either, and they get back up after a short time, so the game pushes you to sneak around them.

Stages sit on a table called the Link Navigator, and something you do in one stage can open up an objective in another. Critics praised the story, the atmosphere and the originality, and picked at the gameplay. Players call it weird and ambitious, and they still recommend it.

Okage: Shadow King is a role-playing game about Ari, a boy with a demon living in his shadow. The demon is a 300 year old "Evil King" called Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, or Stan for short. To free both Stan and himself, Ari sets out to rid the world of seven other rival demons. When Stan tries to bring terror to the town, people either laugh at him or praise him because they think he is some kind of god.

The look gets compared to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, with characters that move like stop-motion puppets. It never came out in PAL regions until the PS2 classics on the PS4 in 2016. Players who want an RPG that feels different keep pointing to this one.

We Love Katamari is the sequel to Katamari Damacy, and it is also a prequel. Its creator, Keita Takahashi, did not want to make it. He believed the industry's focus on sequels was bad for creativity, and he only agreed to direct when Namco's executives said they would make it with or without him. Its Japanese title means Everyone Loves Katamari Damacy. In one flashback an Emperor throws his son's second place boxing trophy into the river.

Critics liked that it kept the style of the first game, and Game Informer called the dogs barking the theme song brilliant. A remaster came out in June 2023. Players who like showing friends quirky games tend to put both Katamari games in front of them.

Seek and Destroy is a vehicular combat game set in a world called Quewar, which has no people in it. Everyone is a tank. The story follows the Q-Stein Empire's invasion of the Proton Kingdom, and Proton's army fighting back while it holds only twenty percent of its land. The evil empire's army is mostly German and Russian tanks, and its elite units wear the Q-Stein insignia on their armour.

Reviews were mixed, and Famitsu gave it 27 out of 40. The players who found it remember it fondly anyway. They talk about the tanks with personalities and the strange pile of parts and weapons you can bolt on.

Raw Danger! is the sequel to Disaster Report. Irem released it in Japan on March 30, 2006, and Agetec and 505 Games brought it to other countries in 2007. You play through several people whose stories cross. One escapes Geo City with a co-worker and tries to evacuate Del Ray by bus, until a collapsed highway forces them to find another route. Another drops off a client at Geo City and picks up a woman named Sophia Briggs, who wants to go to the Norcal laboratory.

Like Disaster Report before it, the North American release was changed from the Japanese one. Players who like odd games keep recommending the two together. The jank is part of the fun.

Rule of Rose is a survival horror game set in England in 1930. You play Jennifer, a young woman who is led to an abandoned orphanage by a small boy. Punchline made it after Sony Computer Entertainment asked for a horror game, and the team wanted a new type of horror game built on psychological horror. The story draws on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, and the look draws on Silent Hill. Studio musicians, including the Hiroshi Murayama Trio, played the whole score.

Before it came out in Europe, rumours about its content set off a moral panic. The game was cancelled in the United Kingdom, even though the Video Standards Council called the complaints "nonsense". Critics were mixed and went hardest on the gameplay. Players looking for strange horror on the PS2 name it often, usually next to Kuon and Haunting Ground.

Space Channel 5 came to the PlayStation 2 as a port. You play Ulala, a reporter who investigates an alien invasion, and every fight is a rhythm battle. Ulala copies the moves of her rivals in time to the music. Mizuguchi got the idea from the rhythm troupe Stomp, from a piece where a performer has the audience copy their clapping as the rhythm gets harder.

The look borrows from the 1950s and 1960s and from Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson music videos, and Michael Jackson makes a cameo appearance in the game. The theme song is "Mexican Flyer", written by Ken Woodman in 1966. Sales were low, but reviews were good. Players still call it an odd one.

Shadow of Memories came out on the PlayStation 2 in 2001, and North American players know it as Shadow of Destiny. It was ported to the Xbox (in Europe only) and to Windows in 2002, and a PSP version followed in 2009 in Japan and 2010 in North America. The story has eight endings. Six are open from the start, and the last two unlock once you have seen the first six.

Not everyone was won over. Edge gave the Japanese import four out of ten. Players are kinder, and they keep naming it when someone asks for a strange PS2 game.

In Dog's Life you play Jake, a puppy who sets off across the USA to stop a plot. Miss Peaches does not like dogs. She sees them as a way to make money, so she has dog-napped Daisy. Smells show up as lines of coloured smoke in a mode called Smellovision, and you use it to find footprints too. You learn tricks to win treats from humans, and you meet 15 breeds of dog.

To win a dog over you either have more bones than it or beat it at a minigame. One has you digging up bones, and another has you marking territory until you own the whole screen. Kerry Shale voiced 39 of the characters. It came out in Europe in 2003 and in North America in 2004. Players sum it up as the game where you play as a dog, and say it is not what you expect.

In Mister Mosquito you are the mosquito. You live in the Yamada family's home in Japan, and you have to drink enough of their blood to store up food for the winter. They are in bed, on the phone, watching TV or taking a bath while you do it. You can only bite a set part of the body at set times, and the family knows you are there. They fill the air with insecticide and will crush you if they catch you.

It came out in Japan in June 2001, and Fresh Games brought it to other countries in March 2002. On September 17, 2024, it was re-released on PS4 and PS5. Players say it is a lot more fun than a game about a mosquito has any right to be, and a few call it their favourite PS2 game.

Chulip starts with you and your penniless father moving to a rural town with an old legend. A couple who kiss under the old tree will live happily ever after, and the girl you want to kiss lives in a nearby pipe. You swear to do whatever it takes to kiss her under that tree. Director Yoshiro Kimura, who used to work at Love-de-Lic, wanted the game to be about kissing in public in a Japanese setting.

It sold badly and holds 57% on GameRankings and Metacritic. Reviews liked the quirkiness and charm and found the mechanics tedious. In North America, Natsume released it on February 13, 2007, as a GameStop exclusive. Its atmosphere and characters have won it a small cult following, and players call it charming and strange in the same breath.

Under the Skin is a Capcom game, made by the company's Production Studio 4 and released on the PlayStation 2 in 2004. You play an alien called Cosmi, who goes about in disguise. A disguise can take two hits. The first leaves Cosmi in his underwear, which Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer called "a Capcom fetish dating back to Ghosts 'n Goblins". The second turns him back into his alien form, where he is easy to hurt.

The game opens with "Little Green Bag" by the George Baker Selection, the 1969 song that Reservoir Dogs made famous in 1992. Players who list weird PS2 games tend to name it right next to Stretch Panic.

Gitaroo Man is a rhythm game where U-1 faces a string of opponents in musical battles. You press and hold a button as a phase reaches the center of the screen and let go at the end, and that is how you play the music. Japanese band COIL wrote the soundtrack, and Mitsuru Nakamura handled the visuals. Good ranks after each level earn items that unlock character bios.

The story has room for a twist. U-1 befriends a girl named Kirah and later finds out she is Zowie's gladiator. He refuses to fight her and uses the power of music to talk her into standing up to Zowie. It reached North America on February 18, 2002, and a PSP port, Gitaroo Man Lives!, followed in 2006. Players say nothing else plays quite like it.

Gregory Horror Show is an adventure game set in a hotel full of undead guests. Each guest holds a soul fragment inside a milk bottle, and your job is to steal them. Death has told you that doing so is your way out of the hotel, and maybe the way to learn why you were walking in the forest in the first place. You get the bottles by talking to guests and solving puzzles, and the game ends when your spirit meter runs out.

Capcom published it in Japan and Europe, but it was not released in North America. A cat called Neko Zombie explains the game to you and hands over your first lost soul. Players call it bizarre and love it anyway.

Stretch Panic was a landmark for Treasure. Before it, the studio had only made 2D games, and this was its first game with movement in three dimensions. You play Linda, a girl with a magic scarf that can stretch and bend objects and enemies, and you use it to battle her evil sisters.

It came out in Europe first, on July 27, 2001, then in North America in August and Japan in December. Europe knows it as Freak Out. The EX levels have only one enemy type: women with comically enormous breasts. Nobody at Treasure was aiming for good taste. Players keep calling it weird, and they mean it as praise.

The King of All Cosmos has destroyed the stars, and he wants his son, the Prince, to rebuild them. The Prince stands a little less than half a foot tall, so he gets a Katamari, a ball that collects whatever it rolls over as long as it is small enough. You start with push pins and paper clips. By the end you are rolling up people and cars. You steer with both analog sticks, a bit like the arcade game Battlezone.

Keita Takahashi had a hard time pitching it to Namco's bosses, and it was made for less than US$1 million with help from students at the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory. He wanted to show a game could be fun without violence. It became a surprise hit and won several awards. When someone asks for a weird PS2 game, this is the one players name first.