20 Underrated PS3 Games That Are Hidden Gems

The PS3 era was a happy time. Those halcyon days of seventh generation console gaming feel like an eternity ago for many, but looking back at the annals of history reveals a litany of classic games that seemed, at the time at least, like they could never be bettered. Massive AAA heavy hitters such as GTA V, The Last of Us, Arkham City, the first three Uncharted games, not to mention Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas and Dark Souls, cemented the seventh generation as a golden age of gaming.

Heavyweight blockbusters such as these may have stolen the headlines and charged ahead in the race for revenue and sales, but there were countless other releases that slipped under the mainstream radar. Sometimes this lack of recognition was utterly warranted, but it remains a sad fact that some games simply never got the credit they deserved despite their obvious qualities. With these hidden gems to add to your backlog, it’s time to give some bangers the shine they deserve.

 

1. Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day

Developer: Crispy’s!, Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Bandai Namco

There’s perhaps never been a more unique game than Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day, and that has nothing to do with the actual contents of the game itself. Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is a 2D side scroller following the titular heroine as she plans to assassinate her own father, racing through levels as she attempts to outrun a wave of spirits trying to kill her. It’s fast-paced, fun and the story was written by Suda51, so you know it’s going to be a little bit bonkers.

However, the really interesting part concerns the Short Peace section of the title, as Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day was just a small part of the multimedia project that was Short Peace. The full project included an additional 4 animated short films, with one of the films in question (Possessions/Tsukumo) being nominated for an Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards. How many PS3 games can you think of that were part of an Oscar-winning project? Exactly.

 

2. Bulletstorm

Developers: People Can Fly
Publisher: EA

Set during the 26th century, People Can Fly’s hugely kinetic and explosive FPS follows space pirate Grayson Hunt after he is stranded on a hostile planet and tasked with tracking down a nefarious General responsible for tricking him into committing war crimes, one boot kick and laser whip at time.

It seems odd, in retrospect, that a game called Bulletstorm could fail to drum up significant attention to avoid its own publishers citing it as a disappointment. Publishers EA bemoaned at the time that the game underperformed against expectations, not making the money expected of it and, according to some reports, not managing to turn a profit for the giant studio at all.

This all seems strange considering the fact that the industry was experiencing a boom in first-person shooters when Bulletstorm dropped in 2011, although some of this apathy might have been explained by the fact that People Can Fly were experimenting with a new and unknown IP. A distinct lack of competitive online multiplayer, a mode that was certainly enjoying massive growth in the FPS market, certainly didn’t help.

Bulletstorm managed to earn itself some very decent reviews, but sales just never met the expectations of its developers or publishers, and a sequel never materialised. It did get a remaster with added Duke Nukem and a VR port that we’re pretty sure nobody played, but still.

 

3. Tokyo Jungle

Developer: Crispy’s!
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

The byword on weird PS3 games, or at least the first one people tend to think of, Tokyo Jungle wasn’t exactly a huge critical or commercial success, with the game’s director even giving an interview talking about how the game was broadly received negatively in North America. Despite that though, Tokyo Jungle still managed to achieve cult status with its quirky gameplay and tone, as who wouldn’t want to be a pomeranian exploring a ruined Tokyo? It’s basically Stray before Stray even existed.

Set in a world where humanity has disappeared, Tokyo Jungle is a game of two halves. The story mode focuses on a number of different animals as their attempts to survive collide with each other throughout the game across a number of levels, while the survival mode allows players to pick from a variety of animals and attempt to either establish or defy their place on the food chain.

 

4. Lollipop Chainsaw

Developers: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publishers: Warner Bros.

Lollipop Chainsaw is one of those odd games where it feels like lots of people have heard about it but not many have actually picked up and played the thing. Maybe having a semi-naked cheerleader (always a popular costume for enthusiastic cosplayers) as a mascot helped keep the game alive within the cultural conscience more than the actual game ever could.

Lollipop Chainsaw is essentially a classic hack-and-slash zombie slayer in which you assume the role of Juliet Starling, a ditsy blonde pom-pom twirler clad in nothing but a miniskirt and crop top and wielding an oversized chainsaw, cutting her way through swathes of zombies like Ash Williams cosplaying as one of the protagonists from Mean Girls. Lollipop Chainsaw’s tongue isn’t so much in its cheek as it is digging into its own jawbone like a pneumatic drill.

It’s all lightweight, self-referential fun, but Grasshopper’s experiment was just a bit too flippant and flimsy to be ever taken too seriously, a lightweight piece of diversion that could never quite challenge the increasingly serious and grim AAA titans. Perhaps most notable for featuring Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn as its co-writer, Lollipop Chainsaw ended up as cheap, cheerful and sadly overlooked by the masses.

It has a remake on the w–oh, it’s just a remaster now? That’s weird, but hopefully it means they can maybe keep all that licensed music now.

 

5. ModNation Racers

Developer: United Front Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony really tried to carve a niche out for the PS3 by making it a home for creation enthusiasts to share their work online. The PS3 saw the debut of the LittleBigPlanet series, which was an almost unparalleled level of freedom given to console players to create their own platforming levels, and while they’d eventually make a LBP kart racing game too, ModNation Racers got there first. Of course, Sony would recruit the ModNation team to work on LittleBigPlanet Karting anyway, so if anything, ModNation was a perfect proof of concept.

A Mario Kart-esque racing game with similar drifting mechanics and plenty of weapons to gain an advantage over your opponents, the real highlight of ModNation Racers was of course the ability to create your own custom race tracks and share them online with the whole world. The process of creating these tracks was actually pretty straightforward, meaning anyone could get to grips with the tools and create the next Silverstone.

Or a Rainbow Road rip-off. Your choice.

 

6. Splatterhouse

Developer: Bottlerocket, Namco Bandai
Publisher: Namco Bandai

As far as games that do what they say on the tin, you can’t really get more transparent than BottleRocket and Namco’s 2009 blood-soaked hack-and-slasher Splatterhouse, a ludicrously over-the-top reboot of the original Splatterhouse franchise that spends most of its time bathed in swathes of crimson blood and gut-laden gore.

Splatterhouse isn’t just a violent game, it’s an unashamedly weird one, often to its benefit. When his girlfriend Jennifer is kidnapped by a nefarious doctor and professor of necrobiology, protagonist Rick manages to save his own life by putting on a ghoulish disguise known as the Terror Mask, transforming him into a Hulk-like creature blessed with super strength and power.

Everything about Splatterhouse has the trashy, metal-infused psychotic vibes that were more typical of games released in the early to mid-2000s, operating even in 2010 as something of a strange throwback that showed full commitment to its relentlessly gory premise. Sure, it might run about as effectively as Lieutenant Dan trying to keep up with Forrest Gump, but it’s still a fun time.

With a heavy metal soundtrack blasting away in the background, Splatterhouse is the game to seek out if you like impaling demons on spikes while listening to Five Finger Death Punch. And, let’s face it, who doesn’t?

 

7. 3D Dot Game Heroes

Developer: Silicon Studio
Publisher: FromSoftware, Atlus USA, SouthPeak Games

3D Dot Game Heroes wasn’t the first 3D game to do the whole “cor, remember when games were 2D and pixelated? What a trip” routine, and it wasn’t the last either, but cheap jokes and a retro aesthetic will only get you so far. At the end of the day, your game needs to be enjoyable enough to stand on its own two feet, and 3D Dot Game Heroes passed that check with flying colors, giving players an old school Zelda-like adventure with more modern trappings.

Developed in just 10 months as a means of showcasing Silicon Studio’s own middleware tech, 3D Dot Game Heroes sees the grandson of a great hero setting out on their own journey to stop an evil their grandad sealed away. You’ll explore a 3D world that still looks 2D thanks to the game’s voxel graphics, and you can even use the in-game 3D sprite editor to create your own character, or just recreate Mario instead.

And yes, you didn’t imagine the name as the publisher: FromSoftware really did publish this in Japan. Where’s all the poison swamps at?

 

8. Folklore

Developer: Game Republic
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

The first of two appearances for Japanese developers Game Republic on this list, Irish mythology-inspired RPG Folklore was another game that seemed to demonstrate that concepts don’t always translate well from an Eastern studio to Western audiences.

Released in 2007 at the start of a new console generation, Folklore was bold enough to play with a mythology and ideas not often seen within mainstream gaming circles. Greek and Norse legends have become commonplace with releases such as Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Hades and the God of War games, but having the confidence to take on the earthy, mischievous realm of indigenous Irish myths and folktale was pretty much untrodden ground.

What’s striking about Folklore is just how dark and creepy it can be, the tale of a journalist and a young woman drawn into the Celtic Netherworld in order to solve a longstanding murder mystery feeling strange and unsettling, an effect only augmented by some authentic and striking art design. Folklore often feels Alice in Wonderland-esque in terms of the way it pulls you into its dark and dreamy world.

Game Republic’s ambition didn’t pay off, though, certainly not in terms of revenue and commercial return, and while it certainly didn’t end up as a critical dud, Folklore didn’t quite take the world by storm through its glowing reviews, either. The studio couldn’t catch a break during its brief lifespan, with the trippy RPG another entry in a litany of games that failed to spark critical and commercial glory.

If you want a weird, unpolished gem from the past, Folklore is certainly a trip.

 

9. Warhawk

Developer: Incognito Entertainment
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Perhaps Sony’s most forgotten exclusive franchise (next to Ape Escape, Sony, you cowards), Warhawk originally started life as a flight simulation game on the PS1, receiving pretty decent reviews at the time, but would fall into obscurity for about a decade. The Warhawk ship, or at least some version of it, did appear as the final boss in Twisted Metal: Black, but it wouldn’t be until 2007 when the Warhawk series was revived properly for the PS3. This time around, Warhawk was a multiplayer game, with both flying and on-foot gameplay.

Players would square off against each other across a range of modes, with Warhawk offering the ability to use the Sixaxis’ motion controls when piloting the Warhawk ship itself, though many just settled for the default analog sticks. At the time of Warhawk’s launch, the game received plenty of ire as the servers weren’t working properly for a few months, but now, even after the game’s official servers have been nuked, you can still play online thanks to the work of passionate gamers like the team at PS Network Online Emulated.

Helldivers 2 has proven that Sony can publish a live service game that’s just all-round fun without being predatory or, worst of all, boring. Here’s hoping Warhawk can get that same treatment.

 

10. SIREN: Blood Curse

Developer: Japan Studio
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

With Resident Evil and Silent Hill hogging all of the limelight in the horror games stakes, Japan Studio’s Siren franchise ended up starved of attention. Never an obscure no-hoper but hardly a mainstream colossus, Siren entries ended up being the sort of games played by people with a genuine enthusiasm for the genre rather than by casual tourists looking for a quick and easy fright.

Debuting in 2008 exclusively for the PS3, Blood Curse was a reimagining of the very first Siren game, expanding upon the lore and story of the original with a new graphics engine, additional characters and a deeper, more explorative story. Set in the fictional Hanuda Village in Japan, Blood Curse centres on the attempts of the game’s core cast of players to uncover the mysteries of the strange supernatural forces that have descended upon the isolated village and have caused, among other things, the dead to rise from their graves.

Blood Curse distinguishes itself by being legitimately scary, to the point at which it’s worth going back and revisiting a game that is now nearly fifteen years old yet still capable of eliciting a raise in the heartbeat or chills in the spine.

For fans of Japanese horror, you’d be foolish not to heed the call of Blood Curse’s alluring terrifying siren.

 

11. Binary Domain

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: SEGA

It’s great that RGG Studio have finally started earning their flowers among the mainstream gaming audience, thanks to the success of the Like A Dragon and Judgment games, but RGG were putting in work for the PS3 that’s gone underrated and underappreciated by the vast majority. While we won’t try to sit here and tell you why you should play Yakuza: Dead Souls in 2024, we’re definitely saying that Binary Domain deserved more love than it received.

A third person cover shooter in the same vein as games like Gears of War, Binary Domain jumps ahead to the 2070s, when much of the planet has been devastated by climate change and Japan has become an isolationist state that’s created robots which think they’re human. Naturally, that’s an affront to God, justice and the American way, so you and a team of elite international badasses are shipped off to fight a bunch of robots.

It’s daft like a lot of SEGA’s games around this time, but it’s all the better for it.

 

12. Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

Developer: Game Republic
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games

What games like Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom remind us of is that there isn’t enough whimsy in the world of gaming. Yes, charm still abounds if you look in the right places, but the mainstream market is often dominated by violence, chaos and even hard-hitting misery. What’s wrong with games having a little wide-eyed wonder or childlike innocence? Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom had enough sweetness and charm for an entire industry.

What 2010’s hugely underrated action-adventure puzzler demonstrated was that the medium could still enthrall and captivate without constantly reverting back to violence in the age of the multiplayer FPS. The story of a young thief who finds a powerful, mythical creature in order to rescue his homeland from the dread of a mysterious force known as the “Darkness” feels like it wouldn’t be out of place in a Pixar movie.

As is often the case in the cruel modern world, sweetness and light often lose out to cynicism and loud explosions. Strong reviews couldn’t save Majin from relative obscurity, a real shame considering its evident quality. It might have evaded mainstream attention, but the spirit of Game Republic’s charming odyssey lives on in charming tales such as Ori and the Blind Forest and The Last Guardian.

A worthwhile legacy after all, then.

 

13. Dead To Rights: Retribution

Developer: Volatile Games
Publisher: Namco Bandai

Are we going to sit here and pretend that Dead To Rights: Retribution is some high art masterpiece of the PS3? No, of course not. The DTR games have always been like a guilty pleasure junk food that you can’t help but gorge yourself on, despite the fact that you know there’s better options more readily available, and Retribution doesn’t do anything to dissuade that notion. Despite that though, Dead To Rights: Retribution is a simplistic yet competent shooter that serves as a great palate cleanser between some of the other PS3 games you can buy.

Set in the fictional Grant City, Retribution reboots the Dead To Rights franchise and sees Jack Slate seemingly transformed into a walking fridge with Dragon Ball Z levels of spiky hair. Joined by his trusty dog Shadow (who’s basically just a wolf, who are we kidding?), Jack shoots a bloody path through the City in an attempt to find his father’s killer, uncovering a plot of political intrigue and police corruption as he does. Again, it’s decent at best, but you can also play as a dog and kill people, so it’s also Game of the Year, every year.

Call of Duty: Ghosts? No.

 

14. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games

Many of the most underrated PS3 games were simply just ahead of their time. A very loose interpretation of the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, 2009’s Enslaved follows protagonist Monkey as he escorts his companion Trip home after their ship crashes, navigating a hostile futuristic world in which wartime robots called “mechs” are still programmed to eradicate any surviving humans. Sounds familiar.

There are shades of Tomb Raider and Uncharted running through Enslaved, especially in the sequences in which Monkey is effortlessly traversing the ruins of an ancient city or trepidatiously crossing a chasm using a rusty drainpipe. What’s more notable is the influence Enslaved seems to have had on subsequent games, hardly a surprise considering the fact that it originally started its conceptual life as a CGI movie. Just Look at Kena: Bridge of Spirits or the Horizon games for an apparent creative debt.

Despite everything that it had going for it, Enslaved ended up a commercial failure. With developers Ninja Theory investing time and resources into new projects and later relinquishing the IP rights to the game, it seems unlikely that players will enjoy another Odyssey with Monkey and Trip.

 

15. Asura’s Wrath

Developer: CyberConnect2
Publisher: Capcom

There have been many games over the years that have tried to go for the “interactive anime” aesthetic, but none have really nailed that brief quite like Capcom’s Asura’s Wrath. Sure, the game was rightly lambasted by everyone under the sun for locking its true ending behind DLC, and the gameplay is about as shallow and simplistic as it gets, but Asura’s Wrath is a non-stop visual tour de force that it’s hard to not have your jaw agape half the time.

Taking elements of both Hindu and Buddhist mythologies, while blending them with plenty of sci-fi too, Asura’s Wrath follows the titular character, a Guardian General charged with protecting Gaea, as he’s betrayed and killed by his fellow Generals. Living up to the adage of being “literally too angry to die”, Asura is resurrected 12,000 years later, swearing revenge on all that has wronged him. Cue plenty of ridiculous, planet sized fights and lots of stunning cutscenes.

 

16. Vanquish

Developer: PlatinumGames
Publisher: Sega

Like many of the entries on this list, Vanquish was met with significant enthusiasm from critics and reviewers yet failed to achieve a proper commercial fanbase. With an 84 Metacritic score on the PS3, coupled with frequent eight and nines out of ten and a very sick sliding mechanic, Vanquish looked set to take over the world.

None of this ever quite panned out. It may have sold just under a million copies, but Vanquish always felt like a game that should’ve received more love and affection considering just how good it actually was. Rather tellingly, GameSpot awarded it their coveted award for the Best Game No One Played, a backhanded compliment of an award that feels like the gaming equivalent of winning “Weird Crush of the Year”.

The awarding of such a coveted title wasn’t, however, undeserved or misplaced. Vanquish’s relentlessly fast pace, aided by the augmentations and abilities of your high-tech battle suit, meant that gameplay was a breakneck thrill rather than a stodgy bore, players and critics citing the game’s bold aesthetics and novel mechanics as some of Vanquish’s strongest aspects.

It may now be more than ten years old, but one of the most underrated PS3 games of its day still offers more thrills per minute than most AAA shooters currently on the market. If you want to check it out, it got an eight generation remaster not all that long ago.

 

17. Afro Samurai

Developer: Bandai Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco

Potentially one of the first anime shows that people watched because they heard Samuel L. Jackson played two of the leading roles, Afro Samurai is a bizarre curio of a series that’s gained a cult-like following over the years. After being released as a manga in the late 90s, Afro really exploded in popularity with the anime series in 2007, which in turn led to Bandai Namco commissioning a hack and slash game too. It’s certainly not a patch on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but for a quick and dirty murderfest, Afro Samurai is great fun.

In a version of feudal Japan that blends history with technology, society is governed by the Number 1 and Number 2 headbands. Whoever holds the Number 1 headband will be “a god”, and can only be challenged to a duel by the Number 2 holder. Unfortunately for whoever holds the Number 2 headband, they can be challenged by anyone, with Afro Samurai having to take on all comers on the path to avenge his father’s death at the hands of the outlaw, Justice. While mostly a simple retelling, the Afro Samurai game tweaks elements of the story, especially the ending, to create a more interesting tale.

It’s a giant shame about that second game, though.

 

18. Shadows of the Damned

Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: EA

Don’t be put off by the slightly overwrought title and some questionable box art, Shadows of the Damned is a strange, woozy concoction that could only result from a gothic-infused piece of punk rock Mexicana developed by a Japanese studio and published by EA. If you want a game with a confused hybrid parentage, this is the one to go for.

Following the trials and tribulations of Garcia Hotspur (just don’t), a sort of Mexican Van Helsing traversing the underworld to rescue his girlfriend from Fleming, Lord of Demons, Shadows of the Damned seems to balance around a hundred different influences and competing ideas, feeling like an enthralling combination of Resident Evil, Red Dead Revolver and Grindhouse all fighting it out in the same package.

In fact, Shadows of the Damned is such an odd mishmash of styles, genres and influences that it’s sometimes hard to process just what’s going on, like having all of your dinner courses served to you in one big bowl so that the trifle is all mixed in with the roast beef, prawn cocktail and After Eights. It’s a relentlessly silly, bloodsoaked, and genital-obsessed piece of work, but come at it with the right mindset and Shadows of the Damned will likely reward you tenfold.

“I am not even going to ask how that makes sense,” quips Garcia after a particularly esoteric piece of textual advice. Players would do well to adopt a similarly brainless attitude. If you take it at face value and don’t think too hard (or at all), Shadows of the Damned is almost the most fun you can have in the underworld. Almost.

By the way, a remaster of this was announced in June 2023 and there’s been nothing heard from it since. Hopefully it’s not got lost in the shadows.

 

19. Sideway: New York

Developer: PlayBrains Inc, Fuel Entertainment
Publisher: PlayBrains Inc, Daybreak Game Company

It’s usually a pretty good sign that your game was unfairly underrated or overlooked when the ideas shown start appearing in games a few years after your game’s release. Sideway: New York earns that distinction by being a platformer that displays a lot of similarities to both The Pedestrian and certain 2D sections in Super Mario Odyssey (those sections where Mario enters a warp pipe and starts platforming on the side of a building), despite launching over five years earlier.

Based on the art and graffiti culture seen in the Big Apple, Sideway: New York follows Nox as they explore 2D levels set within a 3D space of New York’s city blocks. Along the way, you’ll solve puzzles, collect a host of new abilities and defeat a range of bosses. It’s your standard platforming fare, but again, with a premise and aesthetic years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, Sideway was delisted from PS3 storefronts, and the Steam version is considered to be the inferior version, so if you want to play Sideway on PS3, you might need to start try another (side) way, if you catch our drift.

 

20. Dante’s Inferno

Developer: Visceral Games
Publisher: EA

As far as blatant rip-offs go, Dante’s Inferno is one of the best. Debt to God of War and Devil May Cry aside, Visceral Games’ own Biblical-inspired effort ironically ended as one of its generation’s most distinctive creations for its unrelentingly grim depiction of what will happen to all those misguided sinners who don’t eat their vegetables or put enough money in the church collection plate.

Focusing on crusader Dante’s quest to rescue his beloved Beatrice from the pits of the underworld, Dante’s Inferno is a classic hack and slasher in which the central protagonist pummels his way through the circles of Hell like The Punisher crossed with a very angry vicar.

It’s certainly a pretty unique experience. How many games can say that they’re based on the first chapter of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic text the Divine Comedy? How many games ask you to fight Lucifer himself (distractingly naked from the waist down) in his goat-footed, giant-horned form? In fact, how many even dare to show the visceral horror of the nine circles of the underworld (Shadows of the Damned and Doom aside)? If nothing else, Dante’s Inferno deserves credit for being exceedingly ballsy, especially with regard to its superb boss designs and unrelenting commitment to its disturbing, unholy premise.

The thing about Dante’s Inferno is that it is just an inherently visceral experience. The undeniable truth is that Hell, while being exceedingly nasty, makes for a stunning backdrop, almost matching the Olympian vistas of the God of War franchise for sheer jaw-dropping scale, grim majesty and atmosphere of unerring terror. If ever there was a game to get you into a confession booth, it’s Dante’s Inferno.

Disturbing, intoxicating and violent, this is about as much fun as you can have in the crushing horror of eternal damnation — outside of the middle aisle of Aldi, of course.

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