The 12 Best Games For the PlayStation 3 (original) (raw)

Count yourself fortunate if you have a PlayStation 3. You’re in for a good time.

If you want a solid PS3 game library, start with the games below.

Naughty Dog’s violent, heartfelt, emotionally exhausting epic The Last of Us is the studio’s crowning achievement, and easily one of the most impressive games on the PlayStation 3. Its story of survival in a post-apocalyptic world may be built on a foundation of zombie-movie clichés, but the tale of the embittered smuggler Joel and his relationship with a young girl named Ellie is so full of heart and wrought with such subtlety that any concerns about overfamiliarity quickly fade away. Better still, in addition to its beautiful art, gorgeous soundtrack and eye-popping cutscenes, the game itself is quite well-made. It’s an often terrifying, exhilarating mixture of stealth, action and horror that plays out over sprawling levels and is unafraid to make the player feel disoriented and disempowered.

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A Good Match For: People who like their games intense—The Last of Us is relentless, and the intensity of its narrative is matched by its discombobulating, often panic-inducing combat. This game is also great for those who like cinematic, movie-like games, and it’s a good game to show off to your friends, roommates, or significant others. It’s the rare game that looks so good (and is written so well) that it’s fun to watch as well as play.

Not a Good Match For: Anyone looking for something fun or lighthearted. The Last of Us is a ceaselessly grim, often emotionally wrenching experience. Very bad things happen to good people, and it never gets easier to watch. Its closest literary analogue is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and in terms of grimness, The Last of Us matches and sometimes exceeds McCarthy’s often horrifying novel. The often difficult combat is exceptionally violent, so this game is not for the squeamish.

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Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

After years of changes both minor and major, the Assassin’s Creed series had begun to feel in a rut. (For example: We’d had Assassin’s Creed II on this list since its inception.) Finally this year, with the pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the series has taken a major and unequivocal step forward. It doesn’t lose all of the series’ bad habits—hello follow missions—but it improves many longstanding problems with better stealth, easier-to-navigate cities, and sidequests that actually feel like they help make your character more powerful. Best of all, it adds naval combat and a vast Caribbean overworld that make the game feel like, in the words of Luke Plunkett, “Wind Waker for grown-ups.”

A Good Match For: Pirate fans; history buffs; anyone who’s ever wanted to pull up alongside a British frigate, grab a rope and swing from one deck to the other before fighting your way up the deck to take on the captain. So basically, anyone who’s ever wanted to be a pirate.

Not a Good Match For: Those who demand precision controls. The on-foot controls in Black Flag are probably the best of the series, but they’re still a far cry from where a third-person stealth/platformer should be. It’s time for a crouch button, Ubisoft.

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Purchase From: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop

What if you could do relive high school but do it way, way better? That’s the promise of Persona 5, and Atlus’s killer social sim + dungeon crawler more than delivers. You’re a high school student spending a year at a new school in Tokyo, but you’re anything but ordinary. You and your motley crew of friends have the ability to infiltrate the subconscious “palaces” of the various villains and tormentors who challenge you in the real world, changing their hearts and bringing them to justice. As the days tick by, you’ll spend your afternoons deciding whether to go shopping, hang out with your friends, or head into a dungeon to slay some demons. The more you play, the more the cast expands, the story unfolds, and the mystery deepens. What’s really going on? Where do these mystical powers come from? How’s it all gonna end? And will you finally be able to get Makoto to go out with you?

A Good Match For: Fans of previous Persona games, along with anyone who likes stylish art and killer music. Persona 5 is overflowing with both.

Not A Good Match For: People who hate turn-based JRPG combat, people who don’t like games with a lot of text to read, anyone looking for a game they can finish in a single weekend.

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Purchase From: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop

Grand Theft Auto V is an impressive crime game. Not perfect, but impressive. The game gives players one of the richest, most beautiful open worlds we’ve ever been able to play in. In this case, the landscape is a fictionalized version of Los Angeles and the California desert. Go anywhere in this vast game. Grab a car, plane, truck, bicycle, boat or tank. Head off in any direction. You’re bound to see extraordinary sights and stumble into some sort of good and probably violent time. The game looks amazing even on the old Xbox 360 hardware. It also plays better than any GTA before it. GTA V’s innovative, swappable three-protagonist system creates the feel of a true ensemble adventure, though crazy man Trevor steals the show.

A Good Match For: Players who like to go into a game to break the rules. GTA is still at its best when it’s a playground for virtual misbehavior.

Not a Good Match For: Anyone who can’t stomach the game’s mockery of, well, pretty much everyone.

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How do you top the beautiful, poetic experience that was ThatGameCompany’s Flower? Easy, just make a game that strips away everything annoying of maddening modern online gameplay and set it inside a lush gameworld that looks like a living painting. The travels that you undertake in Journey culminate in an incredibly touching moment. It’s not just one of the best PS3 games. It’s one of the best games ever, period.

A Good Match for: Shy people. Just like Flower before it, Journey is a wordless experience. The limited set of gestures you use to communicate means you won’t have to worry about embarrassing yourself by saying something awkward.

Not a Good Match For: People looking for conversation. If you spent a big chunk of time sand-surfing with another person, you’ll probably want to learn a bit more about him or her. Journey never lets you do that, though, and that enforced silence makes up much of its impact.

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Purchase from: The PlayStation Store

Does a great game have to be fun? Does it have to make you happy? The beautifully sad Papo & Yo is one of the most personal games you’ll ever play. On the surface it’s about a boy and a monster who can be helpful but who can also fly into harmful rages. It’s all a metaphor for the lead game creator’s own experiences with his alcoholic father. This brief third-person game will put your brain to the test from time to time, but it’s mostly a game that will touch your heart.

A Good Match For: People looking for something personal and moving and for those who will enjoy the distinct visuals of a game with a South American look.

Not a Good Match For: Gamers looking for something they can play for dozens of hours. Papo & Yo will linger in your mind, but there’s not a lot to play and not much reason to play it again.

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Purchase From: Available digitally from the Playstation Store

Sure, yes, Dark Souls is hard. For better or for worse, its difficulty is its defining characteristic. But Dark Souls is also so much more than hard—it’s an expertly crafted, fiendishly smart game that refuses to hold the player’s hand and as a result, forces a level of engagement almost unheard of in modern games. There’s a reason that so many modern games are described as “It’s like Dark Souls, with…” One of the most influential and flat-out great games of the last several years, Dark Souls is like no other game ever made.

A Good Match For: People who want their games to ask a lot of them, and expect a lot in return. Dark Souls is one of the most rewarding games ever made, provided you’re willing to put in the time and really, really pay attention.

Not a Good Match For: The easily frustrated. If you like your games to be fun, breezy ways to blow off steam after work, Dark Souls probably isn’t the game for you. You’ll die, you’ll lose progress, and the only way you’ll continue forward will be by the skin of your own teeth. Which is the designers’ intent, but it’s not for everyone.

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Part stealth-action game and part crazy sci-fi film, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the type of nutty experience that can’t be neatly categorized into a genre. The premise: you’re Solid Snake, a super-spy-soldier who can either shoot or sneak his way through missions en route to saving the world before he’s killed by the cells in his body, which are aging at an accelerated rate. (Don’t ask.) Check out the Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection, which gets you MGS4, the HD versions of MGS2 and MGS3, the original MGS, and a few others.

A Good Match For: Anyone who likes stealth games, shooters, and crazy stories involving guns and nanomachines.

Not a Good Match For: People who hate cutscenes. The Metal Gear Solid games are full of elaborate cinematics and long monologues, and if you’re just

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Purchase From: Amazon | Best Buy

The latest in Q-Games’ wonderfully stylish offerings pays homage to memorize-the-sequence shoot-em-ups of the 80s and 90s, and add modern twists that provide even more challenge. Check out PixelJunk Eden, PixelJunk Shooter and PixelJunk Monsters for more Q-takes on tried-and-true genres. They’re all brilliant. Really.

A Good Match for: Galaga fans. Defender fans. Sinistar fans. If you ever stuck a quarter into an arcade stand-up machine to fly a spaceship, this game will bring back old joys and introduce you to new ones like co-operative blasting.

Not a Good Match For: Retro-haters. The games feel like modern-day versions of old-school games. You’re not getting a complicated 3D adventure here.

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Purchase from: The PlayStation Store

Call it the Superman 2 or Empire Strikes Back of video games. Valve’s follow-up to a classic improves on the humor, characterization and puzzle-solving of its predecessor to deliver a tight, focused experience full of poignancy and humor.

A Good Match for: Comedy lovers. The voicework alone—performed in stellar fashion by Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain—will make you laugh out loud but the brain-teasing puzzles and embedded gags keep the chuckles coming even when everything else in the game goes quiet.

Not a Good Match For: Mediocrity fans. People who argue with Portal 2's greatness are like folks complaining that diamonds came from dirt. Their argument is invalid.

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Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

Arguably the best outing in Insomniac’s buddy adventure franchise, A Crack in Time still offers the prankish cool of the dev studio’s witty weapons but also throws in mind-bending time-manipulation platforming to blaze all paths in an all-new way.

A Good Match for: Star Trek fans. Sure, the Lombax-and-robot duo violate the Prime Directive all over the place but _A Crack in Time_’s action should satisfy anyone who liked watching Kirk get into a scuffle as well as pleasing those who prefer Spock’s cool Vulcan logic. This one is also probably the best game on our list for kids.

Not a Good Match For: Fans of busywork. Some of the interstitial space stuff—battles with enemy fleets, blasting asteroids into smithereens—just feels like filler, no matter how good it looks.

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Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop

When you ask game developer Level-5 (Dragon Quest VIII) and animation house Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Totoro) to make a game together, good things happen. Ni no Kuni, the product of that partnership, is charming, satisfying, and one of the prettiest games on the planet. It’s an old-school JRPG with a very modern coat of paint, and although the combat can occasionally be a bit too challenging for inexperienced players, it’s a blast to watch and play.

A Good Match For: JRPG fans, Ghibli fans, cartoon fans, fans of fun and charm and things that are good.

Not a Good Match For: Anyone who doesn’t have the patience for semi-turn-based combat and JRPGish questing. Inexperienced gamers who might find the combat too difficult.

Read our review.

Watch it in action.

Study our tips for the game.

Purchase From: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop

How has this list changed? Read back through our update history:

Update 4-27-17: What’s this? An... update? Indeed it is! Years after our last PS3 update, we’ve made one last change: Valkyria Chronicles has left in order to make room for Persona 5. Good job, Persona 5. You were the last one through the door.

Update 12-10-13: Our new Bests design brings with it a bunch of new PS3 entries, as we take the opportunity to clear out some old games and add in some others. Gone are Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Demon’s Souls, NBA 2K12, Assassin’s Creed II, _Heavy Rain, LittleBigPlanet 2_and Shadow of the Colossus HD. Taking their place are Valkyria Chronicles, Dark Souls, Metal Gear Solid 4, Papo & Yo, Assassin’s Creed IV, Grand Theft Auto V and Ni No Kuni.

Update 06/17/13: One Naughty Dog game leaves and another enters. It’s only been out a few days but there’s a nearly unanimous sentiment The Last of Us is one of the most well-executed games of the PS3's life cycle. There’s only room for a dozen games on a Bests list and this time TLOU elbows out its Naughty Dog labelmate Uncharted 2. Different games with different goals, yes, but The Last of Us is just more accomplished overall.

Update 11/14/12: The update here is that there is no update. Kotaku’s editorial team talked back and forth about very good recent releases—Papo & Yo, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and The Unfinished Swan, along with others—but ultimately decided that none of these titles would unseat the current PS3 Bests list. We’re still going to factor in games like Call of Duty: Black Ops II and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale for Sony’ s home console but need more time to see if these game really belong on a list of The Bests.

Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:

The Best PC Games • The Best PS4 Games • The Best Xbox One Games • The Best Nintendo Switch Games • The Best Wii U Games • The Best 3DS Games • The Best PS Vita Games • The Best Xbox 360 Games • The Best PS3 Games • The Best Wii Games • The Best iPhone Games • The Best iPad Games • The Best Android Games • The Best PSP Games • The Best Facebook Games • The Best DS Games • The Best Mac Games • The Best Browser Games • The Best PC Mods

Note: While some games on this list are download-only, all of them can be purchased on the PlayStation 4’s online store. If you buy any of these games through the retail links in this post, our parent company may get a small share of the sale through the retailers’ affiliates program.