Cult Classics: PlayStation 2

In parts one and two of our Cult Classics PS2 series, we danced with the likes of Okami, ICO, Dark Cloud and Dog's Life. For the third (ah but is it final?) instalment, we're in the company of old friends, but friends who could do with a hug. Hold them tight.

Oni

• Developer: Bungie
• Publisher: Rockstar

Can you imagine the feverish anticipation today if it were announced that Bungie and Rockstar were working together? Grand Theft Halo! Master Chief Auto! Oh my! But back at the start of 2001, GTA III and Halo were both unknown quantities. Instead, Oni landed on shelves with the less marketable pedigree of "From the guys who made that Apple Mac shooter and that top-down car crime thing!" Suffice to say, sales records were not broken, even though the game received good to glowing reports in the press.

A conceptually ambitious third-person action game that melded blasting with hyperactive martial arts fighting, Oni drew some fairly blatant inspiration from the Ghost in the Shell anime. With levels that broke the game down into specific days, from 22nd November to 3rd December 2032, and a secondary character that was a human consciousness inside an artificial "life doll", Bungie certainly hit the manga tone on the nose, yet audiences weren't biting. It's hard to blame them - the world was hardly short of female-led action games in the wake of Lara Croft, and most of them were rancid slop - but Oni's balletic action and leftfield story definitely warrant a revisit.

What we said: Not reviewed

Ebay price guide: Less than GBP 5

Project Eden

• Developer: Core Design
• Publisher: Eidos

After Herdy Gerdy, here's another non-Lara offering from Core Design, and another game that few will remember. Hmm. Could there be a connection? Although Project Eden takes the third-person approach, it's actually more puzzle game than action adventure. You command a four-strong squad of futuristic grunts - three human, one robot - and must utilise all their skills to make your way through each maze-like level to achieve your mission objectives. The hacker uses computer systems, the robot does the heavy lifting, and so on. Finding the right combination of skills and tasks is the key to success. Those who recall the Lost Vikings games will probably be nodding in recognition right about now. Project Eden is far from a perfect game - it's a rather clunky PC port, with a steep learning curve - but it has remained lodged in the mind of several of your Eurogamer hosts for the best part of six years so there's clearly something meaty and chewy beneath the sometimes frustrating exterior. For the cost of a Subway footlong, there's no reason not to find out.

What we said: "If you have a penchant for games that test your grey matter, Project Eden should definitely be on your shopping list."

Ebay price guide: Less than GBP 5

SOS: Final Escape

• Developer: Irem
• Publisher: Agetec

By the time this small-fry action-adventure shuffled in and out of European stores in 2003, the survival-horror genre was well-established and starting to show signs of rot. Thematic rot, I mean, not zombie rot. The obvious-in-hindsight approach taken by R-Type creators Irem was to simply chop the word "horror" off the end, and create a straight-up survival game. You're Keith, a rookie journalist caught up in the middle of a cataclysmic earthquake. As well as keeping yourself alive, by avoiding collapsing buildings and not dying of thirst, you find and rescue other survivors while investigating the dubious official story behind the quake. It's a bit like Cloverfield, only with a joypad and without the cruddy CG monster and stupid ending. Actually, the ending to SOS is a bit stupid. But it's also blessed with that charming Japanese earnest streak, which takes clunky graphics and woefully bad voice acting and turns them into something you enjoy despite the obvious shortcomings. It's also worth mentioning that the Japanese version supports the Rez Vibrator for that full-on sexual disaster experience. Oh baby.

What we said: "A neat, refreshing original idea that doesn't quite do enough to tempt £40 out of your hard pressed wallet."

Ebay price guide: Between GBP 5 and 10

Sky Odyssey

• Developer: Cross
• Publisher: Activision

Presumably a little bit inspired by Crimson Skies, back when it was a boardgame and not an Xbox game, Sky Odyssey is a flight simulator where the emphasis is on exploration and daring stunts. At the controls of various aircraft - including a stealth fighter and UFO - you fly around a series of islands on the trail of mysterious treasure. So, Indiana Jones does Pilot Wings then. And if that description makes you go "Ooh, that sounds cool!" then you're right. It is cool. It's also a flight game where entertainment comes more from navigating through awkwardly placed targets rather than blasting MIG fighters with missiles, which probably explains why we're still getting Ace Combat games but no Sky Odyssey 2.

What we said: Not reviewed

Ebay price guide: Less than GBP 5

Sly Raccoon

• Developer: Sucker Punch
• Publisher: Sony

Sometimes a game can vanish because people are uneducated morons who wouldn't recognise greatness if it jumped up their nose and tapped out the works of Shakespeare on their brain stem. Others fail because the advertising was botched, leaving tentative consumers unsure and unwilling to take a full-price punt on an unknown quantity. And sometimes you get something like Sly Raccoon, a game that managed to spawn two sequels and still not make a lasting impact on the gaming community. Produced using the cel-shaded look that was briefly popular for cartoon games, you control the brilliant (and morally principled) anthropomorphic burglar Sly Cooper as he sneaks about, shimmying up walls and sliding down ziplines. Your goal is to retrieve your family heirloom - a book containing the secrets of the master thieves. Ultimately, with Crash Bandicoot going all-formats, Sony's scramble to establish a new PlayStation platform franchise was what stifled Sly's potential. Rushing the market with Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter and Sly Raccoon within a relatively short space of time, it was inevitable that one of the hopeful heroes would get the short straw. Unlucky, Sly. And yet it looks lovely, it plays extremely well, and both plot and characters are surprisingly well developed for what looks like a kiddy platformer. A PS3 version would be most welcome.

What we said: "Superbly judged playability, classy visuals, variety, welcome elements of stealth and replayability."

Ebay price guide: Between GBP 10 and 15

Haunting Ground

• Developer: Capcom
• Publisher: Capcom

Another unsung horror gem, and one that combines elements from two other games on this list. You see, Haunting Ground, originally developed as part of the Clock Tower series, is a little bit Forbidden Siren and a little bit ICO. You're Fiona, a young woman trapped in a spooky castle that she's supposedly inherited. The maniacal inhabitants - a hulking sexual predator and a vicious female cannibal - decide to molest and devour her instead. What follows is basically an incredibly nerve-wracking pursuit, punctuated by typical Capcom puzzles. Your best hope of survival is to evade and hide, with the limited attack options only capable of deterring the stalking loons for a short time. Should your pursuers get too close, Fiona begins to panic, the joypad pounding in your hand as the screen drains of colour. Should she completely lose it, Fiona just starts running and all you can do is steer her away from walls and obstacles. Allow her to stumble, and she'll end up crawling and sobbing on the floor as the bad guys descend on her. The screen fades to black to the sound of wet sticky noises, screaming and chilling laughter. It's a genuinely horrifying experience, a game that perfectly captures that nightmarish feeling of being relentlessly chased by people who want to do very bad things to you. It's not all doom and gloom though, as you can recruit a lovely dog as a sidekick and, should you pamper him enough, he's able to defend you against harm and explore areas beyond your reach. Unless you play on the hardest difficulty, in which case the dog can be slaughtered just as easily as you. Yes, this is the sort of game where even the lovely dog is fair game. Yeesh.

What we said: "It's so nearly brilliant it hurts."

Ebay price guide: Between GBP 5 and 10

Transformers

• Developer: Melbourne House
• Publisher: Atari

Years before Michael Bay reinvented the robots in disguise as explosion-porn blockbuster icons, bringing with it the rather wretched game of the movie, venerable and trustworthy developer Melbourne House transformed (oh I'm good) the Armada cartoon series into this surprisingly great free-roaming action epic. Like a more accessible Armored Core, you choose between Optimus Prime and two other Autobots that aren't famous and set about exploring Earth looking for MiniCons, tiny robots that can grant you additional abilities. Oh yeah, and there are some Decepticons. Smash those, would you? With a nicely judged balance between fun mechanical mayhem and intuitive driving, Transformers is one of the few games to disprove the cry that "licensed games are crap". Most of them are, of course, and that's probably why no bugger bought this one. If you love Optimus, or just dig robots crunching each other to bits, this is one game that certainly offers more than meets t[--snip - Ed]

What we said: "Anyone even remotely into Mech shooters should check it out"

Ebay price guide: Less than GBP 5

War of the Monsters

• Developer: Incognito
• Publisher: Sony

As a long-standing fan of the giant monster movie genre, it pains me no end that Atari keeps shovelling out awful Godzilla fighting games while this absolute gem of a game, from Warhawk developer Incognito, remains sequel-less. Back when he reviewed it, Tom described it as a combination of Power Stone and Rampage, and that'll do for me. You play one of ten giant monsters, and must smash the pudding out of the others in a series of large open-plan cities, towns and islands. You get the obligatory Kong-style ape, and a lizardy Gojira lookalike, but there are also enormous robots, insects and aliens. There's even a giant living statue in what may very well be a tribute to the utterly obscure Japanese movie series, Daimajin. With the ability to pick up and throw cars, buildings and vast lumps of debris, along with specialised attacks for each creature, War of the Monsters is a brawler's dream. It's a weighty, stomping hoot of a game, especially in multiplayer, and one of the PS2 discs I know I will never, ever get rid of. It inexplicably sold about three copies on release, because Sony forgot to tell anyone it was coming out, so I suggest - nay, demand - that they compensate by fast tracking a PS3 sequel. Come on. Get on with it.

What we said: "We want another War of the Monsters, and we want you all to seriously consider buying this one in the meantime."

Ebay price guide: Between GBP 15 and 20

Way of the Samurai

• Developer: Acquire
• Publisher: Fresh Games (Eidos)

Many games have attempted to craft malleable narratives that can be directly impacted by player actions but most end up collapsing in a soggy heap like yesterday's Weetabix. This little-seen ronin adventure actually managed to pull it off, and yet still remained mostly unnoticed. You play a wandering samurai arriving in a small town. There are several rival factions in the area, plus the local military, and sundry civilians in between. What happens next is entirely up to you. Make no mistake, Way of the Samurai is a very short game played across a relatively tiny map. Most playthroughs will last only a few hours, but within this compressed timeframe are an impressive number of different stories and perspectives to discover. Align yourself with any of the rival gangs and you get a completely different story. Play as a noble hero or amoral killer and the game adjusts to suit. Killing characters has consequences, just as helping hands can move certain people in your favour. In fact, the small size of the game is probably what helps it to juggle so many possible outcomes, turning a potential criticism into a compelling selling point. The only slight snag is the rather clumsy control system, but for anyone who ever dreamed of being Toshiro Mifune this is a genuinely unique experiment in videogame narrative.

What we said: "This one really is fresh, and really is worth owning in most respects."

Ebay price guide: Less than GBP 10