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[PS2 On] Party's over time for me to show up
lowlylowlycook
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I think the $100 price and the GiantBomb Persona 4 Endurance Run, have convinced me it's time to buy a PS2. Naturally I have some questions:
If I don't really plan to use it a ton (I'm more of a PC/DS gamer), do I need an old PS2 and a HD or will the DVD drive in a slim hold up for casual use? Are there any "must have" games where the loading times are terrible?
Is there a reasonable way to hook it up to a monitor via VGA or will it be expensive and still look like crap?
I take it that staying with Sony memory cards is the only way to go? Two 8Mb cards for $20ish is about right?
Right now my plan is to buy a PS2 slim, monoprice component cable, memory card, Persona 3 FES and SotC. Seems like there should be no regrets.
Thanks in advance for any advice. Next up I plan to start using fire and/or wheels so get ready for that thread.
If I don't really plan to use it a ton (I'm more of a PC/DS gamer), do I need an old PS2 and a HD or will the DVD drive in a slim hold up for casual use? Are there any "must have" games where the loading times are terrible?
Is there a reasonable way to hook it up to a monitor via VGA or will it be expensive and still look like crap?
I take it that staying with Sony memory cards is the only way to go? Two 8Mb cards for $20ish is about right?
Right now my plan is to buy a PS2 slim, monoprice component cable, memory card, Persona 3 FES and SotC. Seems like there should be no regrets.
Thanks in advance for any advice. Next up I plan to start using fire and/or wheels so get ready for that thread.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
lowlylowlycook on
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Persona 3's loading times annoy me, but they're not bad.
I got a 16mb mem card, but that 3rd party anyway. Cheaper too. edit: It's called max memory.
Check CL for people getting rid of systems and game collections, they normally include memory cards.
Get God of War and God of War 2 too. Assuming you like fun, brutal games.
If you have the old style PS2, the fat kind, you get a network adapter and it has a port for an IDE hard drive. I have a 120gig WD drive that holds a decent number of games.
The component cables are like $4 on monoprice.com so it's not like they are expensive. My TV seems to handle SD content well enough so I don't foresee a problem.
Anyone use a VGA adapter?
As for games, certainly I'll get more later but in my experience buying too many at once just leads to me ignoring some of them.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Just a warning guys, but we're not supposed to talk about that stuff here.
The best wireless controller for the PS2. If you can find one it's well worth buying.
A HDD changes the PS2 from best console ever to.... best console ever just with really fast loading. I won't say specifics here if it really is taboo but I will say it's absolutely worth the extra (minimal) cost especially for RPGs.
Talk about what stuff? Taking a game I legally own and playing it from the hard drive? That is not warez, nor has anyone even suggested as much.
Zell, we're not talking about FFX or other games that require the hdd, we're talking about using a bootable dvd or memory card to rip the game to the hdd and play it directly from there. The compatibility list for this is huge, but its only PS2 games, not PS1 games. Most games show improved load times, some drastically.
So far I have:
Shadow of the Colossus
Resident Evil 4
Onimusha: Warlords
Killer 7
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Oni (Fuck you, I love it!)
Max Payne
and
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
I just got MGS3 and RE4 today, having played them before. I've wanted to play MGS all the way through for a while, but I've played Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots already, and will have to work hard to get into the first or second ones because of that.
Onimusha is something I've had for a while, and just started today; I already love it. I'm going to go through this entire series in order, since it's so much fucking fun. Just the right amount of old-school Capcom charm with good combat and a cool story. Gotta love those pre-rendered backgrounds.
Other than ICO and Red Dead Revolver, I don't know what else to get. Given the list I've posted so far, what are some games you guys recommend as must haves? I'll play any genre.
tl;dr - I have a PS2, no current gen games to buy until August, plenty of free time and an employee discount. Recommend away!
It will suck your time away from you.
God hand.
Okami for more clover goodness.
The whole shin megami tensei range, but mostly the Persona series.
and finally...
:whistle:naaaah nah nana nanah na naah Katamari damacyyyyyyyyyyy.:whistle: :P
PREPARE TO RELEASE YOUR ANGER GRARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Okami
FF12
FF10
Rogue Galaxy
Sly Cooper
God Hand
Psychonauts
Jak and Daxter
God of War
God of War 2
Devil May Cry
Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria
Dragon Quest Journey of the Cursed King
Kingdom Hearts
Silent Hill 2
Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Xenosaga
I haven't played the Fatal Frame series, but I've heard good things so you could check those out. Maybe I should try them myself.
Liar.
Well, they're pretty much on the same level for me.
edit: and yeah, I'd totally recommend the silent hill series for 2-3. I'm also starting to like 4 now, so there's that.
Devil May Cry and God Hand are not, and arte fantastic games.
Okami is amazing, as are the Katamari Games, Klonoa 2, the Shin Megami Tensei series and the Silent Hills.
Devil May Cry
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Final Fantasy XII
God of War
ICO
Makai Kingdom
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Persona 3 FES
Persona 4
Shadow of Memories
Shadow of the Colossus
Silent Hill 2
Yakuza
Yakuza 2
Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner
There are a lot of other good games on the series (Jak series, Ratchet series, Sly series, KH series, Onimusha series, etc) but those are the games I'd recommend the most.
Everyone needs to buy Yakuza 1 and 2. They have a fantastic fighting engine (Batman Arkham Asylum looks to have ripped 90% of its fighting system off Yakuza 2), it has RPG elements (you learn new moves and level up your abilities) and adventure elements too (plenty of side-quests and mini-games). Brilliant games.
Yeah sorry, 3 has abhorrent music. The intro song and the music for the first real cutscene are fantastic, but the rest falls short. On the other hand, SH2 has the music box, the intro song, and Promise. The intro song alone blows all of SH3's music out of the water. I'll probably catch some shit for this, but 4 has better music than 3 for me as well. Yamaoka seemed to try some different style with 3 and it just didn't work for me.
Anyway I don't want to get off on a tangent here so I'll spoil my little music detour. I will second the recommendation of Yakuza though. I bought that game last month and while I'm a little behind on playing it, that game is incredibly good. It's the next Shenmue, that's all that needs to be said about it.
And i've seen yakuza for cheap nowadays, so I'll look into that. How long is it on average?
Because if I could play all of it as if it were the first time forever I would.
I am looking into borrowing FFX or FFXII from a friend. I played most of the pre-PS ones, and of course VII, didn't get into VIII or IX for whatever reason. I'm thinking X and XII will get me back into RPGs, if I time them right. I haven't played those for the same reasons I haven't played any of the Shin Megami or Disgea games - I haven't been in the mood for a turn based RPG since the damn 90's.
Kingdom Hearts I will definitely get, but God damn, does the story get stupid in 2.
I saw Okami today and thought about it, having seen it played at a friend's house years ago. I'll give it a shot.
I do like horror games, even though I puss out sometimes and can't handle them. I already have the original Silent Hill (in kind of rough shape, but I bought it for like 8$ at a Movie Gallery like three years ago), and SH2/3 are both on my list. How was the PS2 port of Origins?
This was all you had to say. Shenmue is one of my favorite games ever, since it's the only thing I had on the Dreamcast for a very long time. Actually, I've got the second one on Xbox and still haven't finished it.
I'm making a Word file with all these recommendations in it, and I'll track them down either at work or online as I beat stuff and get some more money. The way I see it, even if I have a huge fucking backlog, I'll have a collection of awesome fucking games.
EDIT: Does it make a huge difference in having the Substance/Subsistence versions of MGS2/3? 'cause I bought the regular MGS3 today, without giving it an extra thought.
I finished both at the start of the year but lost my saves when my PS3 YLoD'd on me. They're pretty long though, I think ~20 hours without doing any of the side missions, add another 5-10 hours including them.
And it's only similar to Shenmue in a pretty loose sense, since it's a brawler at heart, not an adventure game.
Edit: MGS3: Subsistence had the Metal Gear 1 and 2 ports included, alongside Metal Gear Online (which doesn't work anymore anyway) and a mini-game or two. It's not a huge deal.
For MGS2 though, you really should get Substance. It comes with the normal game, all the stuff they added for the European release (like European Extreme mode, a couple of cutscenes, etc), Snake Tales (which are short 'what if' scenarios you can play) and the VR Missions (which are always fun).
Awesome, thanks.
I need to get MGS4 again, too. Buddy of mine in the Air Force finally has his PS3 online, and we would tear up some MGO together.
Does the metal gear anthology come with the substance and subsistence discs?
I already had substance so that's ok, but I'm kinda interested in metal gear 1-2.
I like to think of Yakuza as Shenmue with better combat in exchange for some of the more boring adventure stuff. Nobody really liked grinding for cash on a time limit, they just wanted to spend that cash on capsule toys. Well Yakuza basically said, "Fuck crate moving and lucky hit, go beat up these punks to get cash instead, which you can then use on pointless stuff like UFO Catchers and buying gifts for hostess bar girls!" I guess it's Shenmue-lite. More action, a bit less "in-depth" adventure. Of course I'm still at the beginning of the game so maybe it becomes non-stop fighting later?
Off-topic but what's Yakuza 3 like? I don't know much about the Yakuza series but your write-up really intrigues me.
The only impressions I've got is of the Japanese demo, which I had a lot of fun in. The graphics look great and the fighting system is a bit more refined. It's hard to tell a lot from just a demo though. There's rumours floating around that it's going to get a US release, so hopefully it won't be too far away. I'll import it straight away if it does.
Gilder: Yakuza 1's fighting system gets better as you learn more moves but Yakuza 2 is where the fighting system really shines. They speed it up two fold and it gets insanely fun.
Antihippy: I'm pretty sure it comes with MGS2 Substance but only the first MGS3 Subsistence disc. So you miss out on the MG1 and MG2 ports and the funny 'joke' trailers Kojima released on the MGS3 website after release.
043: No problem.
backing up games is not always legal in every country/state/province. I'm not sure on the process of booting games from PS2 HDD but it might also require distribution of copyrighted software. Finally, I'm pretty sure DMCA says no-go on bypassing hardware copyright protection, but I may be mistaking that for the proposed Canadian DMCA equivalent.
I think it's okay if you perform the backup yourself.
If you don't make the backups yourself, it's definitely illegal. If you DO make the backups, it's a big ol' legal gray area that I'd tend to say leans towards legal.
Can we just continue listing off fuckawesome PS2 games that this guy should be ashamed that he missed out on? :P
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I still have and use mine religiously. It cost me like 60 bucks but was totally worth it. I've never had a problem with it.