Top PlayStation 3 Games 2023

”’Platforms: PC & Xbox 360 – Xbox 360 version through Xbox Live Marketplace at 2,400 points.”’

SEGA Rally Revo is a game made for perfectionists. Working your way through the single player game is a great challenge as you race against ever increasing competition. The gameplay is great and it looks like the visual representation of "happy," but it may not be for everyone as we've been spoiled by racing game after racing game that keep upping the ante in variety and presentation. By any measure, it has solid racing mechanics. But then, variety is the spice of life and this title could use a bit more.

Frankly, in a four-month period when we also see Bioshock, Halo 3, Haze, Call of Duty 4 and Crysis, I was looking forward to seeing this game in the same way that you might look forward to dinner with distant relatives when you could be in the pub with friends: there’s a small chance that you might enjoy it, but the chances of boredom were riding rather high. After all, isn’t this the franchise that introduced the realistic World War II shooter, then milked it to the point of extinction? Hasn’t even Call of Duty seen reason to leave those damn Nazis alone? My personal feeling is that the last couple of console MoHs weren’t nearly as rotten as some would make out, but even I’d have to admit that the series had lost its way. Wasn’t it time to put this old dog to sleep, once and for all?

Black Ops 3 makes up for a terrible single-player campaign with great multiplayer.

One-button hacking might be overly simplistic, but it does give you abilities that make playing through Aiden’s story feel powerful and fun. Doing side missions and multiplayer as you make your way through the dark and lengthy story makes it feel like a huge adventure, and stealth options let you play smart if you prefer. Car chases aside, Watch Dogs would be a great and memorable open-world action game if not for persistent performance problems.

With Quake III Arena, iD Software played a pioneering role in the development of the online FPS. Like its close contemporary, Unreal Tournament, it took the bold step of downplaying the single-player portion to the extent that it became little more than a warm-up. This was bad news for those without a local LANParty scene or a high-speed Internet connection, but at least it left the team to concentrate on building a superbly-balanced, competitive frag-fest. Since then, however, iD seems to have shied away from the genre. While the Unreal, Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises have upped the ante and transformed the scale of online warfare, Doom 3 and Quake 4 put the emphasis back on the single-player experience. You still got a multiplayer element, but one that concentrated purely on providing old-school deathmatch thrills.

I like Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, but I don’t love it as much as I’ve loved previous games in the series. It definitely delivers on the promise of letting me play with charmingly realized versions of many of my favorite DC heroes and villains, and it even presents a setting with lots of great surprises, challenges, and systems that promote variety. As a longtime DC fan, I do wish it had given me the chance to dig into more locations and plot elements from the comics, but the biggest hurdle for me to clear is the bizarre cameos.

Lackluster action sequences, brain-dead AI and limited gameplay features really cripple the port of Army of Two: The 40th day on the PSP. While the game does feature morality moments, good dialogue and a variety of environments to fight through, the action is so basic and repetitive that the fun is completely missing. The console version of Army of Two: The 40th Day is well worth exploring, but spare yourself – and your buddies – from the PSP experience.

Splinter Cell Blacklist is everything you've always loved (or hated) about the franchise with the addition of new competitive multiplayer Spies vs. Mercs modes.

”’Platform: Xbox 360”’