IGN has released a list of the top 25 list of games for the PS2 now that the last big game for the system has been released. There are some great games on the list that bring back memories.

25. Amplitude. I had some good fun pushing myself to complete this game on harder difficulty levels.

20. NBA Street Vol 2. While I didn’t play the full game, I really enjoyed the demo of this game, which is surprising since sports games are definitely not my thing. The smaller, simpler team structure appealed to me.

19. Rez is a classic game that’s on the short list of games everyone wants remade on their favorite platform.

17. Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. As someone who lacks the patience and discipline to learn a fighting game, I only scratched the surface of the non-Evolution version of Virtua Fighter 4. It was definitely a thing of beauty, and I tried pretty hard to get a meager number of unlockables to put on my saved fighter before giving up.

16. Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening. Once the Special Edition corrected the obscenely difficult continue system I jumped on it and it swiftly became one of my favorite titles of all time for the system. I have over 150 hours across my Dante and Vergil game saves, and the closest I got to beating the Bloody Palace’s 9999 levels was 9210 with Dante. That said, James once famously pegged the only real problem with the game when he described most of the boss battles as “Dante Versus The Camera”.

11. Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando. I’m a big fan of the R&C series and this sequel kept the platforming greatness of the original while adding even more gunplay.

10. Burnout 3: Takedown. Agreed: this is arcade racing perfection.

8. GTA San Andreas. This game stands at the pinnacle of the GTA series, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, so much so that after my save game became corrupted during one of the final missions I started all over again and played it all the way through again. The horrifyingly difficult remote control plane mission has kept me from completing all of the missions…so far.

7. Guitar Hero. This one’s a no-brainer for the best game for the system list. In fact, many people who had long ago left the PS2 for dead now refer to it as their Guitar Hero Console.

6. ICO. To me this game was beautiful but boring. I used a guide to walk through and see the sights and follow the plot, which were both wonderful.

5. Metal Gear Solid: Subsistence. The best Metal Gear Solid yet, Subsistence was a tour de force of storytelling and extra content. While his messages are still heavy-handed, Kojima delivers with excellent gameplay and thoughtful themes.

2. Grand Theft Auto III. This title put the PS2 on the map hands down. It took a series that wasn’t too well known and launched it to superstardom.

1. God of War. There’s no denying this game’s popularity, but I think GTA3 should be in this spot. Yes God of War is a fantastic game, but I’d wager that GTA3 sold more copies and was played by more gamers. That said, we haven’t seen anything new from GTA since San Andreas, so perhaps this is IGN’s way of poking Rockstar to give us something truly next-gen in the crime spree sandbox space when GTA IV shows up later this year.

What games did you love that made it on the list or didn’t make the cut?

Via IGN’s Top 25 PS2 Games Of All Time