Sunday, December 29, 2019

Ben's 2010's - The PlayStation 3

Like the PlayStation 3! Or more specifically, the game series it brought us. When the PS3 first came out I seriously had little to no interest in it. I mean, why would I? The Wii was Nintendo's next big thing, and the Xbox 360 was clearly the better option between the Wii's two competitors. The 360 had games like Halo, the PS3 had Killzone (who asked for that?) The 360 was a reasonable price, while the PS3 was an overpriced box. The 360 had an online service that was actually good, while the PS3 just thought "why bother?" Seriously everything about the PS3 turned me off from it, and I never thought I'd change my mind on that. Then the early 2010s happened, and everything changed.


I still remember the first time I even considered the PS3. SEGA had announced a brand new tactical RPG called Valkyria Chronicles, and I was really interested in it. At first I thought it would be on Xbox 360 as well, but it didn't take me long to realize it would be a PS3 exclusive. I sorta gave up on the series pretty quick because of this, but when I found out about the anime version I decided to give it another look. Man, I loved it. This is what made me feel as if I "had" to play the original game, but I honestly didn't think it would happen.

Jump ahead a year or so and me and my cousin found a pile of money in my room. You see I had been saving all of my tips from the bakery up until that point, and I never realized exactly how much I had saved up in change and $1 bills. "You have enough to get something like a PS3!" I didn't take this seriously at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. So off I went to track one down! (Easier said than done.)

I eventually found one at a Kmart located in a rough part of a city close by, but for whatever reason they had it hidden behind a support column that was in front of the display case. I wouldn't have even realized the PS3 was there if it wasn't for the website telling me otherwise (which is the only reason I drove to that store to begin with). Anyway I was able to pick up the console itself there, but I had to run over to the mall to buy some games and a controller. Of course Valkyria Chronicles was my first pick, but I grabbed LittleBigPlanet as well. While I loved VC and continued to revisit it off and on over the years, LBP is the one that really stuck with me.

After I got my PS3 I said to myself that I would only use it for exclusives. I didn't know what those exclusives were, but I still preferred my 360 over it. So every now and then I'd check out some games online, and then head over to the store to buy them if I could. One of the first games I tried was actually Infamous. I didn't expect much out of the super hero styled sandbox game, but the electrical powers sounded cool, and I didn't want my PS3 to go to waste. So I ran over to Walmart, bought the thing, and then spent the next month or so playing it non stop. I remember that was also the year Infamous 2 was announced at e3, so I was pretty happy to have gotten into the series when I did. Besides Infamous, I also picked up a copy of MGS4. Not too long after I bought my PS3 I finally gave the Metal Gear Solid series a try, and MGS3 left me wanting to finish the series. MGS4 would end up becoming the last game I'd get on PS3 for awhile, but things would change soon enough.


Uncharted was something I didn't know I wanted, but once I had it I never wanted to put it down. It was given to me as a Christmas gift from my grandparents, and I loved every second of it. I played it non stop the Christmas Eve I got it, and as soon as I finished it I was using my leftover Christmas money to buy the sequel. I know I haven't discussed the series that much here, but that doesn't change the fact that it's one of my favorite game series period. I bought the collectors editions of both Uncharted 3 and 4, and I have an Uncharted shirt I wear pretty much all the time. Uncharted was also the main reason I even wanted a PlayStation Vita (with Golden Abyss and all), and it's one of the few games I'll try to talk people into at least trying. Honestly I could've filled an entire post explaining how much Uncharted has meant to me over this past decade, but I'll just leave it at this for now. It was just so good.

Anyway, after playing through some story based games like MGS and Uncharted, I decided to try out others as well -- this is what made me give Heavy Rain a chance. (Well, that and the fact I loved crime dramas like Bones). I guess I don't really need to say it, but I loved that game too. It was unlike anything else I had played up until that moment, and I never wanted it to end. Thankfully we'd get "follow up" games in the future (like Beyond), but Heavy Rain still remains my favorite. By this point I had already built up quite the collection of PS3 exclusives, but I wasn't done just yet. After playing through the story mode of Dead or Alive Dimensions on the 3DS I wanted more, so I bought the entire Ninja Gaiden series as well. This was the first time I willingly bought something that wasn't completely a PS3 exclusive (as the PS3 releases were ports from the original Xbox and 360), and was the start of my transition over to PlayStation. Man, those games were great too.

After this point I didn't stop playing my PS3. It overshadowed nearly every other console I owned, and I was constantly on the look out for new games. LittleBigPlanet became something I would play a lot as well (thanks to the game creation tools and online play), and I even started spending time in PlayStation Home -- Sony's since canceled online social world. Metal Gear Online was also a thing that was pretty cool, and of course Uncharted had multiplayer as well. Then came along games like White Knight Chronicles which had a full single player story, but also online MMO elements separate from the rest of the game. I really liked that game, and still to this day I'm hoping for some sort of follow up. (Although some of Level-5's others games do have similar elements.) Then came all of the other PS3 RPGs out there. The Tales of series returned with Graces f, and we even started getting collections for other older series like the Sly Collection and the Jak Collection. These were games I missed out on during the PS2 days, so being able to buy them in one place for a low price was pretty amazing. It seemed like the PS3 had an endless supply of games for me to enjoy, and that's something that still hasn't exactly stopped.

(This shelf was nearly empty when I bought my PS4.)

Today my PS3 doesn't get as much use, but that doesn't mean there aren't games on it I still want to play. In fact I have a pretty large backlog for the thing. Quite a few RPGs I just haven't had the time to sit down and play, and I have a pretty large collection of racing games to go along with my race wheel. While some of these games have since been ported to other consoles as well (including the PS4), a part of me still wants to play them on the original hardware I bought them. The PS3 is a special console to me, and I'm just not ready to let it go. I never thought it would replace the Xbox 360, but that's exactly what ended up happening.