Count yourself fortunate if you have a PlayStation 3. You're in for a good time.
Sony's home console hasn't enjoyed the same kind of sales dominance as the Xbox 360 or the Wii during its life cycle, but it's home to great exclusive titles generated by what's arguably the best development studio network among the big three console manufacturers.
Want a solid PS3 game library? Start with these titles below.
Assassin's Creed II
For the second trip down Desmond Miles' DNA helix, Ubisoft Montreal introduced Ezio Auditore and gave players more options for mayhem in the urban centers of the Italian Renaissance. You can hire courtesans to distract guards or use mercenaries to do the dirty work for you. The swordplay showed increased flexibility and depth, too, with more weapons and tactics than before. Underneath it all, the game's virtual Italy sported a more varied, vibrant population than any other free-roaming game so far.
A Good Match for: Fans of serialized fiction. With a conspiracy fetish tying everything all together, the Assassin's Creed games represent a journey through history and iteration, where you get to see how things were in the real world and where ideas are going in game design. Do follow through and continue Ezio's story in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed Revelations.
Not for Those Who Want: A harmonious whole. The framing story of Assassin's Creed is the franchise's biggest problem. The present-day world that ordinary dude Desmond Miles walks through just isn't as lushly imagined as those that his hooded predecessors prowled. The pieces of the game don't sync up in terms of appeal and you might start getting involuntarily annoyed when you start to hear Desmond actor Nolan North's voice again.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Also available on Xbox 360 and PC.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
The game that started Call of Duty on the road to becoming record-breaking phenomenon took players by surprise when Activision first unveiled it in 2007. Infinity Ward's recipe for high-speed action changed perceptions of what a contemporary shooter could feel like and fostered a new generation of rabid competitors as a result.
A Good Match for: Fans of taut military thrillers. Later installments of Modern Warfare never reached the heights of COD 4's surprising events and Modern Warfare's narrative—while still very popcorn—seems more focused than the games that followed.
Not for Those Who Want: Robust online multiplayer. The COD community tends to migrate to each new entry in the series, so you may not find a huge population playing this six-year-old game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
Also available on Xbox 360 and PC.
Demon's Souls
In an era when even the biggest, most bad-ass games hint and handhold you to death, From Software developed an unlikely hit by making a hostile, figure-it-yourself RPG where other players could pop into your game and make you miserable.
A Good Match for: Masochists. You can almost hear the developer's gleeful snickers at how helpless they render you. But when you crack the rules—especially if it's via the message left by a poor sod (some other real PS3 player) who died before you—and craft a winning strategy to take down a big bad, the satisfaction's like nothing else in video games at the moment.
Not for Those Who Want: To feel powerful. You know that thing where, about two-thirds of the way through a game, you feel like you can kick anything's ass? Don't go looking for that in Demon's Souls, where you feel like the runt of the video game hero litter the entire game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Flower
There's a reason that Flower gets cited as a seminal artistic video game: it's freaking beautiful. Then, it gets dark and, still later, it finds a way to soar.
A Good Match for: Painters. Since it's a wordless experience, Flower leans heavily on color, light, detail and composition to call forth emotional response from players.
Not for Those Who Want: Fauna. You'll never see a human or an animal while riding Flower's winds and the closest thing to characters that the game has are the plants you encounter in the game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: The PlayStation Store
Heavy Rain
Quantic Dream's cinematic experiment evolves the adventure genre, starting off with an everyday reality that gets warped through an eerie lens. Depending on how you progress, the thriller's story and point-of-view bifurcates into divergent tangents, pointing out a provocative new path for an entire genre.
A Good Match for: Indie film buffs. Heavy Rain's gameplay is a kind of active watching—the opposite of mindless button-mashing—that should prove inviting to cineastes curious about gaming.
Not for Those Who Want: Combat. You'll do lots of unique quick-time events to get through Heavy Rain's chapters but cravers of intense action won't find what they want here.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
LittleBigPlanet 2
Video games often glorify a player's reflexes but LittleBigPlanet 2 stands apart by energizing an individual's creativity, too. Media Molecule's hit PS3 exclusive bundles a whimsical first-rate platformer with the world-building toolset to make games just like it. The sequel includes the ability to make more different types of games and to share them socially with other player/creators.
A Good Match for: Artsy craftsy types/Lego fanatics. If you like building stuff that can take on a life of its own, no console game presents as lively a tableau as LittleBigPlanet 2. With miniature avatar-bots with assignable attitudes to a huge palette of visual treatments and textures, crafting a level in LBP2 feels like making a living, playable microcosm of your own.
Not for Those Who Want: Sharp precision platforming. Like its burlap protagonist Sackboy, LittleBigPlanet 2's physics are warm and fuzzy. Its floaty jumps will prove maddening to anyone craving the ice-cold precision of, say, a Super Mario game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
PixelJunk Sidescroller
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 for Those Who Want: Super-vibrant colors. Sidescroller's commitment to mimicking the vector graphics and scan lines of old gives it a more muted look than other games.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: The PlayStation Store
Portal 2
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
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 for Those Who Want: Mediocrity. People who argue with Portal 2's greatness are like folks complaining that diamonds came from dirt. Their argument is invalid.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Also available on Xbox 360 and PC.
Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time
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 for Those Who Want: 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.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Shadow of the Colossus
Universally praised as a must-play experience, this towering achievement originally debuted on the PS2. But 2011 saw a hi-def re-release that's brought has made Shadow of the Colossus playable on that console's predecessors. Lonely desperate battles against giant creatures stand out as some of the most moving and hypnotic experiences ever to be had in gaming.
A Good Match for: Die-hard Romantics. Love's the reason that Colossus's hero battles the game's iconic creatures. The Colossi themselves embody a mix of platforming, combat and puzzling and you'll grow to have a love/hate relationship with each one of them, too. Plus you get SoTC's spiritual prequel Ico, too, for double the love.
Not for Those Who Want: Gadgets. Dev studio Team Ico's oeuvre puts a high emphasis on minimalism, meaning that you're never going to get a magic satchel full of upgradeable tchotkes.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
Uncharted 2
Naughty Dog's Uncharted games let players become the hero in the kind of cinematic action epics that you've only been able to watch so far. Mechanically, Nathan Drake's feats of jumping/punching/fighting derring-do aren't all that different from other game heroes. However, the attention paid to acting, camera movement and tone create a wholly captivating interactive counterpart to big-budget movies that you don't have to leave home for.
A Good Match for: Mark Wahlberg fanatics. The former rapper may not be in the running to portray Drake anymore, but the Uncharted games center around the kind of roguish, emotive man-of-impulse that the Oscar winner's made a career of playing. This is also a game for people who like Indiana Jones movies, since this is basically those.
Not for Those Who Want: An exploration of consequences. Drake mows down thousands of enemies in the Uncharted games but he cracks wise in hour 10 the exact same way as in hour 1. For a game so focused on character, it's not clear that Drake feels anything about all the carnage.
Here's how it looks in action.
Here's how it looks in action.Purchase from: Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | GameStop
NOTE: This list will be updated if and when we discover better games. We will only ever list 12 games, at the most.
