The PS3 Heavy Hitters I Still Haven't Played

I keep a list of PlayStation 3 games I want to play. It's long. Embarrassingly long. Hundreds of games, sorted by genre, with review scores next to them so I can pretend I'm prioritizing.

The funny thing about a list that size is that the most famous games are the ones I keep skipping, on the theory that I already know what they are. So this is me calling myself out: the heavy hitters of the PS3 era that are still unchecked, and why each one belongs at the top.

The event games

These were the ones everyone was talking about, the games that sold consoles.

Game	Year	Why it's on the list
The Last of Us	2013	Naughty Dog's survival story, still the benchmark for character-driven action games
Red Dead Redemption	2010	Rockstar's Western, and a lot of people's favorite Rockstar game
Grand Theft Auto IV	2008	The grimmer, heavier Liberty City, plus two excellent expansions
Batman: Arkham City	2011	The superhero game everything after it copied
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots	2008	Kojima's big finale for Solid Snake, and a PS3 exclusive
God of War III	2010	The end of the original trilogy, and an early showpiece for the hardware

Batman: Arkham City. Screenshot from the PC release's store page.

Arkham City is a good example of the problem. Its whole approach, the rhythm-based brawling, the gadgets that open up the map, the city you can glide across, turned into a template the next decade of open-world action games used. I know all of that without having played it, which is exactly the problem.

The ones that were better on PS3 than you'd think

A few games from this era were multi-platform, but the PS3 versions have their own reasons to exist:

• Portal 2 (2011) came with a free PC copy through Steam, and the PS3 version could play co-op with PC players. That's still a lovely bit of goodwill.
• Mass Effect 2 (2011 on PS3) came over a year after the other versions, but it arrived with an interactive comic that let you make the first game's big choices.
• BioShock (2008 on PS3) got extra content in its PS3 release.

Portal 2. Screenshot from the PC release's store page.

The ones that changed what games could be

• Demon's Souls (2009). FromSoftware's first Souls game, the one that started a whole genre. The original's online servers shut down in 2018, and the 2020 PS5 remake is a new game built on the same design.
• Journey (2012). Two hours or so across a desert, with a stranger you can't talk to. It's the one on this list people describe with the least cynicism.
• LittleBigPlanet (2008). A platformer that was really a toolkit, where players built millions of levels.
• Persona 5 (2016 in Japan, 2017 elsewhere). It came out on PS3 as well as PS4, which people forget.

Note

The review scores in my notes put almost everything here in the 90s. Scores don't always line up with what you'll actually enjoy, but when a whole list lands that high, the list is probably onto something.

Where to play them now

Game	Easiest way now
The Last of Us	The Part I remake on PS5 or PC, or the Remastered version on PS4
Red Dead Redemption	The 2023 re-release on PS4 and Switch, or on PC since 2024
GTA IV	The PC version, or the PS3 original
Arkham City	Return to Arkham on PS4, or PC
Metal Gear Solid 4	As far as I know, still only the PS3
God of War III	God of War III Remastered on PS4
Demon's Souls	The PS5 remake, or the PS3 original offline
Journey	PS4 or PC
Portal 2, Mass Effect 2, BioShock	PC, or the later console collections

Heads up

The PS3 is notoriously hard to emulate. RPCS3 has come a very long way, but it wants a strong CPU and results vary game to game. For a lot of this list, a real PS3 is still the most reliable option.

If you want the other end of the PS3 library, the quieter games that deserved bigger audiences, that's PS3 hidden gems. And for games time mostly forgot, there's PS3 games that aged out of the conversation.