You will own nothing and you will be…absolutely furious actually. Good to see. You no doubt heard, but in the midst of decimating the physical market, Sony also recently announced they will be shutting down the PS3 and Vita Stores after doing the bare minimum to keep them alive for the last five years, but at least they told us six months in advance! Thanks, so gracious. Here are some of the mostly digital only games on the PS3 you need to get downloading before Sony lets the door hit them on their way out.
Tokyo Jungle
Does the PS5 have a game where you can fight a crocodile as a chicken? No? Then, what the hell are we doing here guys?
Sony’s wonderfully strange survival game imagines Tokyo after humanity has vanished, leaving the city to everything from lions and hyenas to chickens to documentarians. Sorry, Pomeranians. You pick an animal, hunt or forage for food, mark territory, find a mate and try to keep the bloodline going for as long as possible. Each generation gets a little stronger, while the city gradually becomes a mental sorta ecosystem where turning the wrong corner can put your house cat face-to-face with a dinosaur.
It’s essentially an arcade survival game dressed up as an animal documentary from a pocket dimension, and it’s really worth experiencing at least once. It’s not the greatest game ever, but it’s certainly different, and we should always celebrate that.
There was a physical release in Japan, but Western players largely know Tokyo Jungle as a PSN game. You can actually find Tokyo Jungle as part of this pretty elusive collection alongside three other games, but you can probably already tell before I say anything that the price is going to be just extremely stupid. Now, it is available to stream through PlayStation Premium, but if buying isn’t owning, then what is streaming? Leasing? Through an open window?
If the old storefront eventually takes with it the only affordable way to legitimately own Tokyo Jungle, one of PlayStation’s strangest experiments just becomes that little bit more infamous. But not as inFamous as this.
inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood
inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood is a slightly unusual case, and not because it’s a largely forgotten vampire spin-off. You see, it’s a completely standalone little inFAMOUS game that Sony released digitally for Halloween in 2011, but never physically.
Well, technically it did come out as part of this collection, but it was just a voucher code. Those things expire, and if you want to be sure the code is still valid, you will probably need to buy it brand new and those prices are only going one way.
Oh, by the way, Sony just recently shut down the online features of this and the second game. Sony, please stop walking into rakes.
As for the game itself, professional buzzcutter Cole wakes up after apparently being bitten by a vampire, giving him a new set of powers on top of his usual electrical abilities. The biggest addition is Shadow Swarm, which lets you transform into a cloud of bats and fly across New Marais. Oh, and the bloodsucking.
It’s deliberately silly and nowhere near as substantial as inFAMOUS 2, but that’s also part of the appeal. Sucker Punch could take the existing game, make Cole a vampire for a few hours and just run with it. You can just suck off anyone you want without any karma too. What?
More importantly, there was never a standard physical release. Festival of Blood belongs to that generation of downloadable games that arrived before publishers really started thinking about long-term digital preservation, or loaning them out to Limited Run for them to figure it out at twice the price.
The main inFAMOUS games are already oddly trapped on PS3, but this one is even more vulnerable. Lose access to the PS3 version and you lose an entire standalone entry in the series, and we’ve all lost connection with this brilliant series enough, don’t you think?
Rain
Rain is the kind of PlayStation game Sony used to take more chances on before everything had to cost $300 million to produce.
You play as an invisible boy following an invisible girl through a permanently rain-soaked yet visible European city. Both characters, along with the creatures pursuing them, can only be seen when they’re standing in the rain. Duck underneath a roof and your character disappears, leaving only wet footprints behind. Cool right?
It turns that simple idea into a mixture of stealth, environmental puzzles and light platforming, all wrapped in a nice bit of melancholy. There’s barely any traditional dialogue, the streets feel completely abandoned, and much of the story is told through text incorporated directly into the scenery.
There was eventually a physical Asian release, but for most Western PS3 owners Rain was one of them charming oddities that you’d stumble across on the Store at 11PM and just give it a go. Especially if you were lightning.
It isn’t a huge franchise game that has subsequently been remastered three times. It’s a small, self-contained experiment from Japan Studio’s orbit that Sony could quite easily never revisit. Let’s be honest, modern Sony just won’t, will they?
Now granted, there are technically better stealth games and better puzzle-platformers on PS3, but very few that look or feel like this. If you enjoy the stranger side of Sony’s first-party catalogue, Rain is worth tracking down while accessing it is still relatively straightforward or if you’re rain,
The House of the Dead III & 4
The PS3 ended up becoming a surprisingly good home for Sega’s light-gun games, and The House of the Dead III and 4 are probably the series at its most forgotten. Wish we could forget about those two recent remakes that were made for literally £20. In a shed.
The last two proper House of the Dead games to get out of the arcades were released digitally with PlayStation Move support, effectively turning the PS3 into a not that expensive home arcade cabinet. Sort of. House of the Dead III originally appeared in arcades in 2002, while House of the Dead 4 arrived a few years later using an Uzi-style cabinet weapon and with the simple selling point of “more”.
Neither is exactly a tactical masterpiece. You’re blasting through hordes of mutants, saving civilians, hammering reloads and listening to precisely the sort of voice acting you’d hope for from House of the Dead.
The important one from a preservation standpoint is particularly 4. Despite being a major Sega arcade release, it has never had the same number of home conversions as other games in the series. The PS3 version remains one of the easiest ways to play it outside an actual arcade.
Now, quick thing: it does seem that these games are going in and out of availability as we near delisting, so swoop in while you have the chance, especially if you have a Move controller gathering dust. Jump on the Time Crisis games too.
Ratchet: Gladiator / Deadlocked HD
Ratchet: Gladiator, or Ratchet: Deadlocked in the land of sugared bread, has always been the slightly odd member of the original PS2 run.
Rather than sending Ratchet across a colourful collection of planets, it throws him into a violent reality television show where contestants are forced through increasingly ridiculous combat challenges. Clank takes a back seat, Ratchet gets fitted with heavier armour, and he goes full Danny Devito.
The PS3 version gave Gladiator the HD treatment in 2013, but unlike the original Ratchet & Clank Trilogy, it was released primarily as a digital download. It also arrived with technical issues that mean it isn’t necessarily the definitive version in every respect.
Still, this is an official HD conversion of a full PS2 Ratchet & Clank game that has never been given the same treatment on PS4 or PS5. Once access to the PS3 release disappears, you’re basically pushed back towards the original PS2 game or streaming options where available.
And despite its reputation as the darker, combat-heavy Ratchet, Gladiator is still great fun. The weapon upgrading is a good lark, the arena structure keeps the larking fun, and its grim parody of reality television has aged surprisingly well.
Hate to be the guy to overlook it.
The Last Guy
If you showed someone The Last Guy with absolutely no context, there’s a decent chance they wouldn’t guess it was a Sony-published PS3 game. They might also think it’s that Ryan Reynolds movie. Or that Ryan Gosling movie. Ryans are guys. You heard it here first
The concept is essentially Snake of Nokia 3310 fame mixed with a zombie evacuation game. You move through real-world cities assembled from aerial and satellite imagery, collecting terrified survivors into an increasingly enormous line before guiding everybody back to the escape zone.
The longer your human snake becomes, steady on, the harder it is, I said steady on, to avoid the monsters roaming the streets.
It’s simple, weird and incredibly easy to understand within about thirty seconds.
That also makes it a perfect example of the PS3 Store’s more experimental years. Sony was willing to publish little games like this alongside Killzone, Resistance and Uncharted, without every project needing to become a franchise.
The Last Guy never did become one. There was no sequel, modern remaster or big revival, though it did have that kinda underrated spin-off.
It’s not a 10/10 game, but losing it would mean losing another small piece of the PS3’s identity. It isn’t something you need to play for fifty hours, but it is exactly the sort of creative downloadable game that’s worth preserving while Sony still gives you the option.
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles & The Darkside Chronicles HD
For a franchise as massive as this, it’s nuts that two of the most forgotten Resi spin-offs are pretty in danger of being forgotten in the digital world next year.
Both were originally Wii light-gun shooters, retelling chunks of classic Resident Evil history through an on-rails perspective. Umbrella Chronicles revisits events from Resident Evil Zero, 1 and 3, while Darkside Chronicles covers Resident Evil 2 and Code: Veronica, alongside its own Leon and Krauser storyline.
Capcom subsequently brought both to PS3 in HD with PlayStation Move support, making them considerably sharper while retaining the pointer-based shooting that made sense on Wii. Well, maybe not to your nan. Yes, nan, we won the war, please swing your racket.
These aren’t replacements for the original survival horror games, but they’re surprisingly substantial arcade shooters, packed with unlockables, alternate perspectives and completely new story material. There’s loads of timeline nonsense in Resi, and these two chuck a grenade at the lore meetings at Capcom. Daft but fun.
The PS3 releases are also a peculiar preservation case. Modern Resident Evil collections have covered plenty of the mainline games, yet these two have remained behind. They’ve never popped up on PC either.
If your nan has broken your Move controller, they’re still playable with a standard controller and worth having simply because Capcom seems in no hurry to revisit them. Unlike this next game, which they are a bit addicted to.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Capcom has rereleased Street Fighter II so many times that recommending another version sounds almost pointless. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, however, is different.
Rather than simply emulating the arcade game, Backbone Entertainment completely redrew the visuals in high definition with artwork produced alongside UDON. Characters, stages and interface elements were rebuilt around the original gameplay, producing a version of Super Turbo that looks pretty blood cool.
It also includes a remixed mode designed with input from competitive player David Sirlin, changing character balance and making certain notoriously demanding moves easier to perform. Purists can still play something much closer to the original rules, but the overall package was pretty well received.
Strangely, Capcom has never really brought HD Remix forward.
You can play Street Fighter II on practically every machine imaginable, but later collections returned to the arcade graphics rather than preserving this particular remake. One of the most ambitious versions of perhaps the most famous fighting game ever made is just sitting on PS3 and Xbox 360. I don’t think you can get it on 360 anymore actually.
So yeah, like the 12th ultimate version of Street Fighter 2 getting lost forever won’t be a shame to millions of people or anything, but for sickos and preservationists, it would be a pretty big loss.
Hard Corps: Uprising
Released in 2011 and developed by Arc System Works, of all people, Hard Corps Uprising takes the run-and-gun foundations of Contra and gives them the studio’s gorgeous hand-drawn anime look. It technically acts as a prequel to Contra: Hard Corps, although Konami initially avoided putting the Contra name directly on it.
Underneath the presentation, though, yep, this is absolutely Contra. You run, jump, shoot in eight directions, memorise enemy patterns, repeatedly get flattened by bosses, and let it fuck your wife.
There are two main ways to play. Arcade Mode gives you the traditional limited-life challenge, while Rising Mode adds persistent upgrades that gradually make the campaign more manageable. If you like the idea of Contra but don’t fancy playing it from the cuck chair, it’s pretty approachable.
What’s annoying and a bit cringe is that this excellent revival is still stuck on PS3 and Xbox 360, but you will still be able to get this one on 360 for a lot longer.
Arc System Works has become vastly more prominent since this one, while Konami has started digging through its older catalogue again, yet Hard Corps: Uprising remains stranded.
That’s a shame because while it isn’t the best Contra game ever, it’s one of the better games in a generation that honestly didn’t always do right by the 2D space.
If the PS3 Store disappears without another port arriving, accessing it becomes an uphill battle.
Silent Hill
I wouldn’t usually include a port of a PS1 here that even your dog could emulate, but considering the physical prices of this one…yeah. Consider this a PSA.
Where to start really? The original 1999 PlayStation game remains one of the defining survival horror releases of its generation. Harry Mason searches the fog-covered town of Silent Hill for his missing daughter, slowly uncovering a really spooky…surprise party!
Sadly not, no. You’ll get some very mad dogs and you will love it. The oppressive fog, industrial soundtrack, strange camera angles and deliberately blunt PS1 visuals give Silent Hill an atmosphere that later technology has never quite replicated.
And unlike Silent Hill 2, the original game still hasn’t received a proper modern remake or conventional contemporary rerelease, though that remake is on the way.
That makes its PS1 Classic release on PS3 unusually valuable. Physical copies have become increasingly expensive, while the digital version offers a straightforward and legal way to own and play the original game without entering the retro collector market. By the way, Tron Bonne is also on the PS3 PlayStation Store in some markets for way, way cheaper than physical.
That’s perhaps one of the biggest reasons to care about the PS3 store shutting down that I don’t think a lot of people are really considering, the loss of PS1 Classics. The games you used to love are getting more and more expensive, and they’re taking away your chances to lower the price so that they can dynamically charge you for a rental. Gaming is great, isn’t it!
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