PlayStation 3 Retrospective — Geoff’s Picks

The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 both contained some of the best software libraries in video game history, with a wide variety of titles from plenty of developers and publishers around the world. There was also variety in their budgets, and a fair share of them were quirky and innovative. In that sense, the PlayStation 3 felt like an in-name-only sequel. It was part of the generation where video game budgets ballooned, and the gap between low-budget titles and high-budget “AAA” games widened. This didn’t leave as much room for those in between the two extremes, which did a number on mid-tier software development and developers. The PS3’s lineup, in the end, did not match up to those of its two predecessors.

It didn’t help that Sony felt far too hubristic at the start of the generation, which came back to bite them. Sales improved for the PS3 later in its life, but it served as a textbook example of how extremely difficult it can be for consoles to overcome early hurdles.

Don’t take any of this as me saying it didn’t have a number of good games. It wasn’t as difficult to come up with a list of five favorite games for PS3 compared to previous PlayStation platforms, but that’s not to say it was easy. There were nonetheless plenty of great games, several of which were exclusive to the system.

5. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

It’s tough to remember the time when Metal Gear Rising was having development issues, when it was initially in development as Metal Gear Solid Rising. It was given to PlatinumGames to develop within a short time when a team not helmed by Hideo Kojima within Kojima Productions came up short. The result was Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, one of the best action games released during the generation. The moment-to-moment action sequences between Raiden and an array of mechs and humanoids were all a lot of fun, and the game contained some of the best QTEs I’ve seen in a title of this type. The pacing also never lets up, and leaning into the Metal Gear cheese worked for this type of action game compared to the traditional stealth-focused installments.

It’s a pity we’ll never get a sequel due to Konami pulling back on game development and the Metal Gear franchise itself being in the grave with Kojima and team leaving the company in 2015. But this was a great solo title.

4. Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Tekken games have almost always come packed with content (the first game being an understandable exception), but this reached its zenith with Tekken Tag Tournament 2. This tag-team fighting game successor to the original arcade/PlayStation 2 launch title included every character from the franchise from the first game to the sixth installment, including faces that were missing in action for years like Jun Kazama and Kunimitsu. Several bonus characters and stages were even included for free after launch, including faces like Violet (a disguised Lee Chaolan) and a thin Bob. The game was difficult to play, which turned off potential players — imagine having to learn the complicated combo strings from Tekken 6, and then imagine needing to learn the move sets for two characters. But the level of content and its fun factor make it one of the best fighters released during the generation.

3. Assassin’s Creed II

The first Assassin’s Creed title was a nice attempt, but didn’t nail the concept of the battle between the Assassins and the Templars in a satisfactory-enough way despite the good setting. Hunting for targets eventually felt repetitive because of the lack of variety, and other quirks hampered the game’s flow. Assassin’s Creed II fixed all those problems, and gave the team enough time to realize its concept. Main character Ezio Auditore was a far better protagonist than Altair, and the world of Renaissance-era Rome was beautiful to explore. The repetition was also gone, with far improved quest design in its place. This was the game that showed how the Assassin’s Creed franchise had lasting power, even though some in its progeny were a little too rudimentary.

2. The Last of Us

The PlayStation 3 era was the console generation in which Naughty Dog came into its own, following years of making quality titles in the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises. The Uncharted games were good (especially Uncharted 2), but the developers came as close to perfecting their formula of a linear adventure with a focus on narrative as they could with The Last of Us.

The game’s story wasn’t on par with the hyperbole that surrounded it for years, which laughably likened it to Citizen Kane and other fine cinema throughout history. But it’s one of the best written and most well told tales to grace a video game. It helps that the game itself is a quality product too, presenting far more approaches to gameplay, including stealth and combat, than the Uncharted games. It’s a tough game for Naughty Dog to top, partially shown through the divisive reaction to sequel The Last of Us Part II.

1. NieR

To say NieR is a weird game would be putting it lightly, and the reasons why it was such a memorable experience are hard to put into words. Every element of it is unpolished. It’s not a looker, the gameplay can often feel clumsy and awkward despite being more than tolerable, and the quest design isn’t the greatest around. It’s the combination of the story and characters, the superlative soundtrack, and the atmosphere that put the overall experience over the top. The area design is good, which makes environments worth exploring multiple times over multiple playthroughs to obtain all the endings. A low-budget action RPG from Cavia somehow became one of the most memorable games of the generation, but credit that primarily to the storytelling and worldbuilding, and the way the story was told within the confines of a video game.

I can only hope that the NeiR Replicant remaster/remake can nail the storytelling and character development in the same way, despite father NieR being swapped out for the considerably younger brother NieR. That means the particular version described above will remain exclusive to the last console generation, and it’s worth cherishing and listing here.

The PlayStation 3 didn’t measure up to its console predecessors, and both the system and the succeeding PlayStation 4 confirmed that we’ll never receive systems like the PSOne and PS2 again. But I still had good memories with the PS3, enough to make creating a list more difficult than expected. It had serious hurdles, especially early in its lifetime, but I’ll always look back on the PS3 fondly.