Game Reviews
PS3 Hidden Gems: The Games That Deserved a Bigger Crowd
- Platform
- PS3
Part 2 of the thread The PlayStation shelf
- Fourteen games that averaged 81 on the review scores in my list, and still never found the crowd they deserved.
- Vanquish and Valkyria Chronicles are the two to start with, and both are easy to play on newer hardware.
- Folklore, Puppeteer and 3D Dot Game Heroes never left the PS3. If you want them, it's the original disc or download.
- Most of them got missed for boring reasons: bad timing, a small install base, or a download-only release.
Every console has a second shelf. It's where the games go that reviewed well, sold modestly, and turned into "wait, you never played that?" recommendations years later. The PS3's second shelf is especially good, partly because Japanese studios were still making strange, ambitious, mid-budget games for it, right up to the end.
These are the fourteen on my list that keep coming up whenever someone makes an "underrated PS3 games" list. Their review scores in my list average 81, which is a lot of good reviews for a pile of games most people skipped.
The shortlist at a glance
The scores are the review scores I keep next to each game in my list. Where it says PS3 only, that's still the only way to play it.
| Game | Made by | Score | Where to play it now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vanquish (2010) | PlatinumGames | 84 | PS4, Xbox One, PC |
| Valkyria Chronicles (2008) | Sega | 86 | PS4, Switch, PC |
| Folklore (2007) | Game Republic | 75 | PS3 only |
| Tokyo Jungle (2012) | Crispy's! and Japan Studio | 74 | PS3, Vita |
| Puppeteer (2013) | Japan Studio | 78 | PS3 only |
| 3D Dot Game Heroes (2009) | Silicon Studio | 77 | PS3 only |
| Resonance of Fate (2010) | tri-Ace | 75 | PS4, PC |
| Catherine (2011) | Atlus | 83 | PC; the Full Body version on PS4 and Switch |
| Dragon's Crown (2013) | Vanillaware | 82 | Vita; the Pro version on PS4 |
| Bayonetta (2010) | PlatinumGames | 87 | PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch |
| Outland (2011) | Housemarque | 83 | Xbox 360, PC |
| Sound Shapes (2012) | Queasy Games | 84 | Vita, PS4 |
| Sine Mora (2013 on PS3) | Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture | 83 | PS4, Switch, PC, as Sine Mora EX |
| flower (2009) | thatgamecompany | 87 | PS4, Vita, PC |
The two to start with
Vanquish
PlatinumGames, directed by Shinji Mikami, the man behind Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4. On paper it's a third-person cover shooter. In practice you spend the whole game rocket-sliding across the battlefield on your knees, dropping into slow motion mid-slide, and leaving cover about half a second after you get into it. It's short, it's very fast, and nothing before or since plays quite like it.
It came out in October 2010, in the middle of a crowded fall full of big shooter sequels, and it got lost in the noise. The 2017 PC port and the 2020 PS4 and Xbox One re-release finally got it in front of people.
Vanquish. Screenshot from the PC release's store page.
Valkyria Chronicles
Sega's strategy RPG, set in a fictional, World War II-flavored Europe. You plan on a map, turn by turn, then take direct, third-person control of each soldier when it's their move, running, ducking and aiming in real time until your action points run out. It's drawn with an engine Sega built to look like pencil sketches and watercolor on a moving page, and it still looks lovely.
At its 2008 launch it sold slowly. Word of mouth, a PC port in 2014 and a PS4 remaster later did what the original release couldn't.
Valkyria Chronicles. Screenshot from the PC release's store page.
The PlayStation-only oddities
These never really left Sony's hardware, which is a big part of why they stay hidden.
Folklore. A moody action RPG split between the Irish seaside village of Doolin and a Netherworld full of fairy-tale creatures. You play as two people, a university student named Ellen and an occult-magazine editor named Keats, and you capture creatures' spirits by yanking the controller upward with the PS3's motion sensor. It came out in 2007, during the PS3's expensive first year, and its studio pitched two follow-ups that Sony never approved.
Tokyo Jungle. Tokyo, after the people are gone, and you're an animal trying to survive in it. You can start as a Pomeranian and work your way up through dozens of breeds and species, including some that have no business being in modern Tokyo, like dinosaurs and a robot dog that looks a lot like Sony's AIBO. It's funny and oddly tense, often at the same time.
Puppeteer. A platformer staged as a puppet show, with a live audience that gasps and laughs along. The hero, Kutaro, has lost his head, so he wears whatever head he finds and can carry three at a time; take a hit and the current one goes rolling. His weapon is a pair of magic scissors called Calibrus that cut through the scenery. It came out in September 2013, two months before the PS4 launched, which is about as bad as timing gets.
3D Dot Game Heroes. A loving, blocky parody of top-down Zelda where everything is built out of voxels, and you can design your own hero, pixel by pixel, in a built-in editor. FromSoftware published it in Japan, Atlus in America.
Heads up
Folklore, Puppeteer and 3D Dot Game Heroes only exist as PS3 discs or PS3 downloads. Grab physical copies when you see them at a fair price. The downloads depend on a store that's already old.
The ones that made it elsewhere
These got a second chance on other hardware, which is the easiest way to play most of them now:
- Resonance of Fate is tri-Ace's gun-fu JRPG, with a combat system that punishes button-mashing and rewards learning it. The 4K remaster in 2018 is the version to get.
- Catherine is Atlus's puzzle game about climbing a collapsing tower of blocks, wrapped in a relationship drama. It's on PC as Catherine Classic, and there's an expanded Full Body version on PS4 and Switch.
- Dragon's Crown is Vanillaware's hand-painted beat-'em-up RPG, and it's great in co-op. The PS4 Pro version is the best way to play it.
- Bayonetta was PlatinumGames' other big action game of the era. The PS3 port was famously rough, so it's better played almost anywhere else.
The small downloads
The PSN store in the PS3 years was a strong home for smaller games:
- Outland (2011): Housemarque's platformer where you switch between light and dark, soaking up bullets of your own color, a trick it borrows from the shooter Ikaruga.
- Sound Shapes (2012): a platformer where the level is the music, and every coin you collect adds a note. Some stages were built around songs by Beck and deadmau5.
- Sine Mora (2013 on PS3): a gorgeous side-scrolling shooter where time is your health bar. Getting hit takes seconds off the clock.
- flower (2009): thatgamecompany's game before Journey, where you play the wind carrying petals across fields.
Why they got missed
Looking at all fourteen together, the reasons are mostly boring:
| Reason | Examples |
|---|---|
| Bad timing | Folklore in the PS3's pricey first year; Vanquish in a packed fall; Puppeteer two months before the PS4 |
| Download-only in the West, or close to it | Outland, Sound Shapes, flower, Sine Mora |
| Too strange to market | Tokyo Jungle, Catherine, 3D Dot Game Heroes |
| Great games, rough ports | Bayonetta on PS3 |
None of that has anything to do with how good they are. Which is the whole reason a second shelf exists.
Try this
If you only have a weekend, play Vanquish and Tokyo Jungle. They're about as different as two games can be, and both are over before they wear out their welcome.
The big-budget side of the same console is in the PS3 heavy hitters, and the games that faded out of the conversation are in the PS3 games time forgot. If you're setting up a PS3 or an emulator for them, the arcade-flavored ones also show up in the PlayStation arcade lists.