It was not difficult to decide on the best games on the PlayStation 3.
The first test was to try to remember which ones I really liked.
The second test was to try to write about them. Some couldn't summon strong memories. Others were pungent with feeling, really slathered in emotion, you know? The PS3 was a strong system. If somebody asked me which games they should buy for it. This is the list.
These are the essential PS3 games.
The Best PS3 Games of the Generation (Alphabetical)
BAYONETTA
— Bayonetta is your first crush ever.
Forget about Bayonetta's narrative. Bayonetta herself certainly has. She is impossibly-proportioned, seriously, her giraffe-neck legs are about twice the size of the rest of her torso, for some reason, the artists chose to draw her like those oddly-figured visualizations fashionistas pencil together to show how the swooshing, dramatic clothing is appearing in their minds, and it isn't until they actually try to put thread to cloth that people are usually people-shaped, not Bayonetta-shaped.
But Bayonetta is Bayonetta-shaped. She has stepped out of a Japanese woman's brain into a Japanese man's world. Forget about why she's stepping, and she steps hard, often, and with amused contempt, the best thing about Bayonetta is that it feels like she doesn't want to be there. The entire adventure wearies her. So she mocks it, the adventure, the setting, the challenge, rolling her eyes and sighing. Bayonetta would be the Tina Fey of videogame characters if she wasn't so coy about how much she loved dismantling the world around her. Searing clockwerk angels made of fire and porcelain annoys and excites her her. Surfing on top of a missile is a burdensome way to get from point A to point B until she starts whooping with excitement.
It's a nuisance that God wants to kill Bayonetta.
She punches Him into the sun.
Bayonetta just wants to dance. She wants to be laugh and be womanly, and fuck you if you think she can't or shouldn't, she is more than capable of kicking your head off, not out of rage, not because she wants to prove she can hang with the boys, but because it's already obvious that no boy can hang with her, no man can satisfy her.
That's the challenge issued by Bayonetta as an action game. Can you, the player, even imagine the most charming, powerful, and blatantly-feminine character into being? The game gives you the tools and the moves and the guns, my god, the guns, to make Bayonetta, Bayonetta, so, will you answer the call, overcome the difficulty, and let her keep on dancing?
Her main antagonist aren't the angels. It's her rival Jeanne. Each bloody rumble upon the bizarre decaying earth in Bayonetta elicits an, "oh, if I must," shrug from the character, as if she really wasn't just begging to be given this opportunity. She wants to remind everybody what it means to fuck with a witch.
It is not the weirdness that makes Bayonetta appealing. It's the obviousness of it. It's how plain she makes her actions.
Of course that's what she'd do! Of course that is what Bayonetta, or anybody else equally-capable, would do! It's inassailably illogical.
Bayonetta is your first crush ever.
BORDERLANDS 2
— Borderlands 2 is the interactive Oscar-winning documentary: "Videogame: 2012"
There's a certain type of person whose body grows into their intelligence at just the right time to give eighteen year-olds such terrific boners. They hold an extended grill-lighter to your pants. It's a marvel geekiness can grow into individuality and an uninspired exterior to sprout into irrefutable hotness.
Borderlands 2 is hot, and ready, and is exemplary in its observation and interpretation of modern videogames.
With a well-read comeback for every situation and a wry, wild-man grin, Borderlands 2 is what videogames have grown up to be. Borderlands 2 is shooting. It is math. It is self-deprecating. It is admiring the sunset of its own young-adulthood.
Borderlands 2 is not satisfied with a gun being such a serious thing. Contra was a tremendous experience for reasons that most can't really explain. Those types scratch their heads, flicking between guns in Battlefield 4 to watch the *chick-CHICK* animation that accompanies the shotgun being selected. It's a virtual gun, but it looks so damn real that people between the ages of 12-16 can't help but let their jaws go slack, gasp-mumbling, "so realistic," and then instead of following realistic military tactics, they coat an ATV-quad in C4 explosives and launch it off a building into a helicopter, not realizing that their own imagination is better than any super-real rendering engine, and really, if a game is going to let you be imaginative, it had at least better offer some stiff competition for your brain to go up against, like purple guns, guns that ejaculate acid, guns shoot a spread of 6 rockets at once, or guns that SCREAM!
Being more imaginative than the guns in Borderlands 2 is the game's challenge to you. Being imaginative, and wanting to hang out in Borderlands 2's imagination, is a promising proposition.
Borderlands 2 is the interactive Oscar-winning documentary: "Videogame: 2012"
DARK SOULS
— Dark Souls is a digital-fantasy hero-simulation for humans.
Kill monsters, get souls.
Souls are the only currency in the game and allow you to buy statistical upgrades, spells, keys, and equipment. Be thankful that that's all the Dark Souls takes from you upon death. Be thankful that the game has woven logical context into your avatar's infinite un-life. It is assumed that you will die and that revival is an even meaner punishment.
You are being encouraged to learn how to die. But what is death in videogames, or in Dark Souls, specifically? And who is really dying? And is that a bad thing? You are getting all of death's benefits and so few of its negatives.
In an odd twist, you are bound quite intrinsically to your avatar's emotions because you suffer consequences. When you overcome, ya'll overcome. When you suffer, ya'll suffer.
What you see in Dark Souls is what you see. You see monsters. You see you. You are you in Dark Souls, and you are learning to be a videogame hero. It is a digital-fantasy hero-simulation for humans. It's like Assassin's Creed: The Movie: The Game. If you, person, wandered up a hill and saw a zombie with a sword and a shield, you would be fucking terrified. You, human, would die hundreds of times before gathering the bravery and skill to subdue even the simplest monster. You, human, would not be able to pick up a plasma rifle and start shooting aliens, and therefore, by comparison, nearly every other videogame is a fucking liar.
Every animal in Dark Souls looks like it was raised on a diet of raw meat and poisonous razorblades.
There is no map in Dark Souls, no easy teleporting, no pause button, and no excuses for getting in over your head. You'll die because you're stupid. You'll win because you're shrewd. You won't need a map because you'll know every nook in every level—you'll have run to each one for safety to set up your ambushes. You won't want to teleport because it will deprive you of souls you could be collecting. The game is fair because the rules apply to the monsters the same way they apply to you—both sides can parry and riposte, get pushed off cliffs, activate traps, and nobody can pause the game.
The odder design choices in Dark Souls can be answered by the statement: "Because otherwise you won't learn anything."
Why does it feel like I die in three hits? Why do you take all my money and experience points from me when I die? Why don't you explain what the fuck I'm supposed to do? How do I get around this? Why didn't you tell me that pit was bottomless? Why does my guy move so slow? Why does my guy suddenly move fast? Why does that guy's shortsword swing faster than my claymore? Why are the guys down that way really strong and the guys up that other path are weaker? Would fire be effective against that slime-demon? It's likely that rat will poison me, won't it? I need to get across this lava, who mentioned fire-immunity a while back? Okay, these guys are metallic, they'll be weak to lightning. I'll lure these fire-spitters out, find a bonfire, revert to human, kindle, equip magic-resistant armor, and summon a fellow adventurer from the spirit world (read: Internet) for some help with this boss.
You've arrived. This is your brain. You might have forgotten about it. It'll help you overcome challenges.
Dark Souls is a digital-fantasy hero-simulation for humans.
PORTAL 2
— Portal 2 is the great American videogame romantic comedy.
At the atomic level, videogames are about pointing. Then, after you point, who knows? While a lot of things can come next, pointing is the first thing.
It was after the release of Portal that this game generation was unshackled from a need to kill— especially if one's first need was to point—from a first-person perspective. Portal 2 asks you to point, and to shoot, and to be propelled by a grasp of physics. Knowledge well-earned.
The rules were simple—an aimable device in your hands can create entrances and exits. You are in a decayed industrial space, perhaps underground, that you must escape. A malicious entity guides and lies to you. The lies were humorous, almost loving and warm, planning to smother your sleeping face with a pillow if you became too relaxed. Then you team up with the liar after a different liar lies to you. That's funny, lots of laughs to be had.
In the end, the worst offenders were sucked into space. A few admitted they were happy to be there. Your character survives. Or not. It doesn't really matter.
Portal 2 is the great American videogame romantic comedy.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION
— Red Dead Redemption is a good man's dying plea for sanity.
This was a game where the pacifist protagonist understood violence to be an inevitable part of human nature, and in an age in games where being a totally-buff man-slayer is the prime fantasy, accepting that slapping iron ought to be a last resort is a brilliant maneuver. John Marston was an easygoing man. A man. A father. His cause was his own, above all else.
He was a fun kinda fella to hang out with. He possessed humanity that was assured, and rare, and good.
The wild west is the ideal setting for a videogame, and for an open world videogame, particularly a Rockstar Games-developed open world. You could experience dawn, as a cowboy would, and it made you bold. The Housers—the half-maniac, half-craftsmen, and one hundred percent Scottish overlords of Rockstar—love to write lonely, on-edge men trying to stay sane in a world zig-zagging about, and the old west was full of these sorts of disenfranchised souls. The fit is flawless.
The game punctuates long horseback journeys with panicked action. Men shoot men, and after the violence was done, you would return to town to explain why this was a necessity, and then you would climb back onto your horse and ride into the distance, knowing this would not be the last time you would explain to the lone lawman you had dealt in words, and then dealt in lead. The situation demanded it.
Red Dead Redemption's landscape is craggy, and endless, and empty, except for the life you discover. The story was an honest, simple thing, and the setting was liberating, and romantic, and private. Grand Theft Auto 5 was still far off. The open-world timesinks such as Skyrim, Far Cry 3, and Assassin's Creed redundancies and hegemonies had not taken hold—for a while, there was Red Dead, and it is still accomplishing the task it was created for.
Red Dead Redemption is a good man's dying plea for sanity.
RESISTANCE 3
— Resistance 3 is the terrifying food of the future, way ahead of schedule.
Miles and miles later, looking across New York City's snowbound ruins, he pulled his gun tighter over his shoulder, hands sticking to the straps a little bit from the blood spilled from a number of different species, it was hard to tell anymore, to think about it, it had been days since he'd spoken to a person that hadn't put a weapon in his face, and now it wasn't a matter of if he would die, but if what he had done would mean a thing, or if he would just collapse in this frozen America mausoleum, to be picked apart by scavenging humans, aliens, and machines, half a continent away from his wife and son.
He'd lost his son's mitten. The boy had dropped it back in Oklahoma. Somehow, somewhere around Pennsylvania, he had lost his son's mitten.
Hoping to put them out of his mind, he trudged on, ever on, gun in hand, refusing to die, not even knowing how to die anymore. He'd gotten awfully good at it, that mean, little trick. Never would have imagined he could have had that talent. Kept him alive, all those dead to shoot through and walk over. Dead aliens that had ruined the country, ruined the world, poisoned the air and brought the cold.
This wasn't supposed to be the way these things worked. He wasn't supposed to face this alone. He wasn't supposed to have to make these decisions by himself, over and over. What would there be, at the end of all this? At the center? Would he get there?
Would all of this resistance to the inevitable mean anything? Didn't matter. The resistance sustained him.
Resistance 3 is the terrifying food of the future, way ahead of schedule.
THE LAST OF US
— The Last of Us is probably your dad's favorite videogame, he just doesn't know it yet.
Videogames are often re-enactments of emotions and motivations we can't engage with in real life. Shooting a gun and see what happens, for example. It's the consequence-free glory of action and reaction. It's a hyper-real society where you are given the power to see the results, take note, and continue on. We've seen places in real life, angular, interesting buildings, for instance, that you think, "hey, I've played a videogame, I bet I could climb up the side of that thing. If society would not frown on such action."
The Last of Us casts you as yourself -- no, on second thought, it casts you as your dad, who has seen you play videogames before, and is forced to live the real-life version of unspeakable violence.
The Last of Us takes place in what's left of our real society where you are forced to do videogame-things. Shoot a gun and see what happens. Smash a man's head with a bottle, see what happens. What will happen is that the guy will bleed and maybe die, shit, done that a dozen times in a videogame. It's become mundane. The Last of Us makes you do it anyway. It's the only way to endure in this ill, future-America, with her wilderness and her abandoned swing-sets.
The action in The Last of Us is inglorious. The environments staging the action give you latitude to be gloriously cunning, sickening, even, with your manipulations. The enemy is always after you, be it human or fanged, bipedal beast-oid. The LISTEN feature is beautiful. You hold your breath and squeeze the trigger, gazing across the stage with semi-echo location, hoping for a good report, that the enemy is where you hope he would be, or at least far off. Armed with that information, you move, hopefully to an optimal location, perhaps to cover, perhaps to a weapon.
You scrounge to survive in The Last of Us. The plan is to scrounge through these houses, dressers, kitchen drawers, for as long as you can. Last time you ran into trouble, you used up precious resources on a group of bandits that should have been easy work if you had just been smart and patient, and now, as a consequence of simply not smashing a man on the head with a bottle, you have to step lightly through this auto-repair shop that is much too quiet (can't you feel it?), searching for oily rags.
With scrounging, with resources, opportunities to approach your enemies become not just possible, but obvious. The game opens itself. The crafted environments, the levels, where your battles take place, begin to reveal themselves, the very game itself, shows more ways for you to be ruthless, more windows to leap through, more angles to snipe from, more complex thoughts are up for auction.
How risky can you be? Well, you can sprint across the open space, hopefully nobody gets a good shot off, climb up the side of this house, throw a hand-crafted Molotov cocktail in a window, kill 3 men, shoot the fourth with one of your last 2 shotgun shells, hurry down the back steps through the back yard around the jungle gym, and take your baseball bat to the biggest fella of all. Knock him out in one stroke. The scissors taped to the bat will break, but it's a worthy trade.
The Last of Us is probably your dad's favorite videogame, he just doesn't know it yet.
VALKYRIA CHRONICLES
— Long, brutal, occasionally boring, always intense, and above all else, never really in your control, Valkyria Chronicles is the best game ever, unfortunately, about war.
Valkyria Chronicles is Japan's stylized interpretation of European nationalism in the late 1930's on the eve of World War II, set in a dramatized, and renamed, and rearranged version of the conflict. It focuses on war, and the people fighting it in, better than any game ever created. It terrorizes you with a swelling, banal dread that somehow accelerates beyond mere fear. The game gives you control over battle, because it's a videogame, and it gives you control of your squad's base camp, because it respects you. The story impresses upon you that the objective in war is to survive, but you will because you have you control over the battles, you can't help but be compelled to win the war. You never even had the chance to remember that people in stories don't have to wait until the end to die.
Some have recently suggested that there should be a war game where the first twenty levels involve your character waking up and manning a machine gun nest for days on end with nothing happening, because that's what 90% of war is -- magnified boredom punctuated by magnified horror, the likes of which most of us will never have to experience in life. Nor will we ever have to comprehend or retell that horror for the people that are transcribing the history books. Actually, one of the best books ever written, Catch-22, is all about men in World War II doing their best to simply survive and maintain their sanity on an airbase in Italy while periodically bombing mostly-inconsequential targets. They seemingly have the power to stay safe on the base if they insist to their commander that they're mentally unstable, but if you have the wherewithal to say so, then you have self-preservation, and cannot be insane.
So these men have freedom and control that does them no good.
To kill time, some of them make a game of their letter-censoring duties. Others volunteer for ditch-digging duties on the base, reiterating that time, and life, never passes slower than it does when you're doing difficult manual labor. They're grasping for even the most meager control, and when they are able to claim just a shred, it's defiance, and it's life. Then Snowden dies. Seriously, ready it, it's brutal.
Valkyria Chronicles' true genius is the simple skirmish missions—modified, re-issues of story missions with extra twists. Your squad is not simply pursuing the main mission, it continues to participate in sorties when command demands it. And these skirmishes help your squad members, all of whom are actual people with faces and names and backgrounds, become accustomed and used to war. They get faster and stronger. It all happens gradually and it becomes routine.
And then the routine breaks so fast it gives you whiplash. Some battles involve careful planning and desperate engagements that inevitably end with the enemy claiming a smothering victory. And that's just how it happens sometimes, you'll lose, and the story forces you to deal with the loss. The softest battles are often the most intense. There's one where you have to assist the limping scout, Alicia, through the woods at night. There's the one where you return to your home town to find it blasted apart and overrun by snipers. There's the beach-head storming mission where you cut through an entrenched barricade to seize a bloody victory, only to have one of the best characters finally settle a grudge in the mission's closing mini-movie, the same kind that happens at the end of every mission -- and then the character is shot dead, and you have no chance to avert it. This is an interactive war that you can and must win, but it will take control away at the worst moments, exactly how it should.
Long, brutal, occasionally boring, always intense, and above all else, never really in your control, Valkyria Chronicles is the best game ever, unfortunately, about war.
-- Alex Crumb (originally published 3/3/14)
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