Best PS2 Superhero Games

Nowadays, nobody is surprised when a game about superheroes is amazing. Many active players were, however, just getting into games when they saw the release of Superman for the Nintendo 64, which turned out to be one of the worst games of all time. It was so egregious of an experience that it tainted the entire superhero genre for many years, not that those years needed it, as many other terrible superhero games came out at that time as well.

Then, Neversoft pretty much saved the world of superhero games with the release of the original Spider-Man for the PS1, and things would only get better in the subsequent generation as the PS2 era would see superhero games soar to never-before-seen heights. To celebrate that shift, these are the best superhero games on the PS2.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Way Better Than PS4’s Avengers

• This is how to pull off team action.

Before the MCU got the gang together in cinemas, Marvel Ultimate Alliance got players to pick between many of the most popular characters on the Marvel roster—or at least, the most popular characters before the MCU resuscitated many of their careers—and have them team up against hordes of enemies in action-RPG fashion.

Ultimate Alliance remains one of the best ensemble superhero titles, and is also a game many would definitely still enjoy nowadays. Anyone who liked the amazing and incredibly underrated Marvel’s Midnight Suns should definitely give this one a go.

The Punisher

The Necessary R-Rated Super Hero Game

• A great game, just not for kids.

There are two excellent gritty superhero games from this generation, which are this one and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Yes, unbelievably, one of the worst superhero movies of all time gave birth to one of the best superhero tie-ins of all time, but the PS3 and Xbox versions of that game were much better than the PS2 one, so the choice was made easier here.

PS2’s The Punisher gives players exactly what they want: a superhero whose superpower is his arsenal of firearms and the moral and ethical flexibility to use them to stop his enemies. The gunplay is a lot of fun, enough to make it better than any of the Punisher movies fans have gotten so far.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame

How Do Batman and Lightheartedness Go So Well Together?

• The best comic book adaptation for kids.

Batman is easily the darkest mainstream superhero, so he’d likely be the one least suited for a funny LEGO re-imagining, but nothing is what it seems in the world of superhero adaptations. LEGO Batman is a lot of fun, both in terms of gameplay and when it comes to giving this character’s dark world a different vibe.

Whether or not the developers somehow expected this to be a huge hit from the get-go, it paved the way for the massively successful series of LEGO-ified games that have been coming out for over two decades now. And no one is tired of them.

Ultimate Spider-Man

A Different Spidey Sauce

• The best comic Spider-Man adaptation to date.

The first Spider-Man game for the PS1 was amazing in many ways, but mostly for proving that superhero games could really rely on the hero’s superpowers to create fun mechanics. The simple act of swinging on webs was made incredibly fun by that game, and was further improved upon by Spider-Man 2 (the game tie-in to the movie).

With that revolution already in place, Ultimate Spider-Man would do something different, which was to try and make the game look as much like a comic book from the (then) current Ultimate series as possible. Though it never reaches the heights of Spider-Man 2, it remains an interesting re-tinkering of the formula. Iit also has Venom as a playable character, which absolutely rocks.

Batman Begins

An Underrated Tie-In

• This is where great Batman games began.

When gamers wonder when the start of the golden age of Batman games began, chances are they’ll immediately picture Batman: Arkham Asylum. Although the first true games in the Arkham series are the best that the Caped Crusader has ever felt in video game format, that’s not where the great Batman games started. A lot of those successful mechanical decisions can be traced back to Batman Begins.

This tie-in to Christopher Nolan‘s reboot of the series cleverly mixed combat and stealth elements worthy of a Splinter Cell title in a game about a character that had sadly been no more than a brainless brawler in every single one of his prior video game appearnces. Batman Begins showed a clever new path for Batman, one he could very well take once again in a future game.

Still One Of The Best Fighting Games

• One of the greatest ensembles of all time.

Marvel Vs. Capcom is one of the best fighting game series in existence, and most of that weight is carried by a game from the PS2. For featuring both one of the best rosters from Marvel and Capcom, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes automatically has one of the greatest ensembles ever put to a game; with no microtransactions, no less.

The amount of fun contained within that disk doesn’t stop at just its roster, either. Anyone looking for a fighting game where all-out fun takes the reins that are usually held by technique—though there’s still a lot of skill involved—this is absolutely still the fighting game to try.

Spider-Man 2

Still The Best?

• Also possibly the greatest movie tie-in of all time.

Video game to movie tie-ins tend to be one of the worst video game genres of all time. Still, the superhero genre has space for many miracles, and this might just be the greatest of them all. The video adaptation of Spider-Man 2, the one by director Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, remains both as fun and fast as it has ever been.

It also has significant historical value, as it enables gaming historians to pinpoint exactly when the web swinging in these games transitioned from fun to the exhilaratingly fun and relaxing experience it is in today’s Spider-Man games. Yes, the mechanics have been improved upon in more recent Marvel’s Spider-Man games for the PS4 and PS5, the DNA of what makes them great can all be easily experienced here.