The PS2 era has its fair share of head-scratchers and mind-benders. Making up for the simplicity in graphics and performance at that time, the PS2 puzzle games instead employed complexity in the mechanics and gameplay design.
It should be noted that the difficulty of puzzles can be a truly subjective metric where some players are more adept at picking up environmental context-based clues while others struggle at the mental gymnastics of quick decision-making and rapid reflexes. With that in mind, the following ranking of thehardest PS2 puzzle gamesis equally dependent on the player’s strengths and weaknesses.
It is easy to track down most woes of players to split-screen cooperative play as the skill gap between the two players can define how challenging or smooth the whole experience will be for them.The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, though not technically a puzzle game,falls into this category with the precise synchronization and strategic planning made more challenging by tough environmental puzzles.
A fair bunch of environmental obstacles involve timed challenges,difficult platforming, and set pieces like the notorious mirror maze. This maze level puts the two players side by side as they navigate through to the end with a slight caveat: the controls are reversed for the other player making a good case of the mental gymnastics that all hard puzzle games encourage.
The premise ofBombasticis deceptively simple and intuitive: move around on a grid of dice and strategically place bombs to clear out a path by demolishing these blocks of dice. Add time constraints, complex grid layouts, and varying types of dice, and each round ofBombasticquickly becomes a game of 4D chess.
Often at times, the many challenging difficulty modes andpower-upswould mean that the player has to be on their toes ready to make split-second decisions, plan ahead, and constantly monitor the grid to look out for extended “chain reactions” of placed bombs for the most optimum results. Mental agility and versatility are essential traits to excel atBombastic,a puzzle game that has well-defined rules but can still become quite puzzling for casual gamers.
I.Q. Remix+: Intelligent Qubeis the enhanced version ofI.Q.: Intelligent Qube(orKurushi) giving PS2 owners the chance to try their hands at the PS1 classic puzzle game. The objective is to survive falling from the platform by activating panels on platforms that will destroy blocks as they continue to move toward the player.
There is a sharp difficulty spike toward the later levels as advanced block patterns, block types, obstacles, and player debuffs are introduced and kicked up a notch. As the blocks start to advance forward quicker than ever and the whole grid becomes more crowded, the tense feeling of minimizing mistakes to achieve a perfect score will wash over any player, even those well-versed in puzzle games.
It might be a little stretch to labelIcoas a puzzle game at face value, given how games of other genres like survival horror also extensively use environmental puzzles as secondary objectives. However, the world ofIcois often a desolate and harrowing one in which most of the interactions and sense of progress directly come through solving puzzles. Whether it’s careful platforming orexploration for clues in the environment, the game’s emphasis is on puzzles with occasional combat in between.
These will put players’ problem-solving abilities to good use with challenges like recognizing particular sequences in the casket room, finding the right combination of levers for power generation, and redirecting reflected beams of light from mirrors at precise angles, to name a few.Icomakes these puzzles feel all the more complex, yet rewarding, by providing absolutely no clues giving full agency to the player.
If the likes of Myahm Agana Apparatus inLegend of Zelda: Breath of the WildandLabyrinth ball puzzles inResident Evil Villagerank 10/10 in some players’ books for sheer frustration and perplexity, thenSuper Monkey Ball Deluxemay take that to 11. Instead of being merely a level, the whole game is based around controlling a monkey enclosed in a glass ball as players tilt the stage to adjust the maneuverability of the ball.
Controls for moving the entire stage while adjusting the camera were janky for PS2’s time, to say the least.Super Monkey Ball Deluxemade such control schemes more responsive to allow for precise movements, which in turn paved the way for complex environmental puzzles. The level designs become increasingly intricate with the entire toolkit of nightmare platforming sections: rotating platforms, narrow ledges, short gaps, and sharp turns.
The conceptual design ofMercury Meltdown Remixrelies on tilting the game’s stage to guide the object to its destination across a series of environmental obstacles. The challenging feat that sets this game apart fromSuper Monkey Ball Deluxeis the titular mercury blob that needs guidance.
Unlike the well-defined and intuitive physics of a round ball, a blob interacts differently with the stage and other pieces of differently colored blobs. The unique characteristic of the blob’s momentum coupled with the added experimentation of mixing different colored blobs of mercury makes the game one for critical thinkers.
A puzzle game list would not be complete withoutTetris. On PS2,Tetris Worldsreceived poor reviews but still provides the classic experience people were familiar with from earlier iterations. Most were well acquainted withthe rules and mechanics ofTetris, soTetris Worldschanged little in that regard. The intensity of the fast-paced gameplay is still here where players are rewarded for using quick thinking to handle the falling tetrominoes.
Needless to say, mastering all the game’s techniques required a thorough understanding of them, and even then, the combos may be hard to execute in the heat of the moment.
