Top 100 Single Player PS3 Games: Part 2 (90-81)

Well, we’re here for the second part already of the Top 100 Single Player games on PS3.

Please bear in mind this list doesn’t take into account multiplayer aspects of games, it’s based solely on single player experience.

Let’s begin:

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90. Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 was my first experience with the Far Cry series. A first person shooter set in Africa, it puts you on the trail of The Jackal, an arms dealer causing chaos in the region. The game gives you a great deal of freedom to drive around and explore the area, as well as doing main missions to complete the story.

Not content with giving you rebel groups and a harsh environment to deal with, in Far Cry 2 you’ll also have to deal with the fact your character has Malaria and needs to keep taking medication to avoid destabilising attacks.

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89. Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance

Set 4 years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, Rising sees you take control of Raiden once more – though he has changed somewhat since the Metal Gear Solid 2 days 🙂

Unfortunately, a lack of flexibility killed the game for me. At times I just felt drained and, to be honest, that kind of typifies my experience with Metal Gear Rising. For the majority of the game I was comfortable, in control and having fun. Then I would hit a crazy difficulty spike and just end up frustrated.

My advice, unless you love a hugely challenging experience, would be to just play this through on Easy first time out and enjoy the ride. Rising is a fun and over the top action game, I just didn’t enjoy playing all of it.

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88. Assassin’s Creed

The original Assassin’s Creed plays a bit like a tech demo that outstays it welcome compared to the games in the series that followed it. However at the time it was like nothing else out there – interesting game mechanics, good characters and a great, historical setting gave us value for money.

The assassinations were the high point of the game but unfortunately these were padded out with lots of repetitive missions to gain intel on targets. Gameplay itself was strong and it was refreshing to play something with well designed sword-play. Not as strong as some of the other Assassin’s Creed games but worth checking out if you can stomach the grind of gathering intel.

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87. Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 puts you in the shoes of Jason Brody, a rich kid who is partying with his friends on a tropical paradise island near Bangkok. However, as becomes apparent in the game’s opening, everything is not quite as idyllic as it seems.

The story itself starts strongly, wavers in the middle and finishes well – though it felt like there were different directions Far Cry 3 could’ve gone in that might’ve been better suited to the early story stuff.

After initially being impressed with Far Cry 3 by the end of the game I felt a little let down by the way the story developed. Added to that were the technical issues that disrupted my playthrough and it made for a slightly disjointed experience.

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86. Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was a great follow up title featuring more of the same tactical SWAT style shenanigans. If you like your shooters fast and furious (ala Call Of Duty) then this won’t be for you.

You’ll be taking control of the Rainbow Six teams as they try to stop a terrorist attack and you’ll need all the tactical skills you have to orchestrate the mission and get success. But you also have a few nifty tricks up your sleeves – whether that’s something as simple as a flashbang or a small camera that can be used to see what’s on the other side of a closed door.

Methodical planning and several ways to strike make this a tactical dream. But it’s still a FPS at heart and there are a few frantic firefights waiting for you as you return to the Strip.

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85. Bulletstorm

Telling the story of Grayson Hunt, a space pirate in the 26th century, who crash lands his crew’s ship on an alien planet following a (failed) drunken attempt at revenge on a huge spaceship. As you try to battle your way off the planet all hell breaks loose, with various factions taking each other on as well as fighting with you.

The game mechanics work well and some of the ways you can dispatch foes have to be seen to be believed. Environmental kills and lots of creative weapons make for a fun, and different, experience.

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84. Need For Speed: The Run

Need For Speed: The Run is a ‘Cannonball Run’ style chase across the US, minus the wacky characters (sadly). The cars handle well and this is definitely the arcade style of driving. You’ll have great fun power sliding a Porsche through corners as you swerve to avoid oncoming traffic.

The story is much of a muchness and was a bit too serious for my liking. If they’d taken a bit more inspiration from ‘Cannonball Run’ this could’ve been a great title.

Don’t get me wrong, The Run is a fun game and you’ll have a good time playing it for the most part. The load times and odd difficulty spike do have an impact but the biggest issue I had with the game was walking away from it thinking it was one hell of a wasted opportunity to create something a little more unique.

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83. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Ghost Recon: Future Solider puts you in the boots of Cedric Ferguson, the Captain of the Ghost Recon squad ‘Hunter.’ After a bomb denotes and wipes out another squad, ‘Predator’, you are assigned the task of finding out who set the bomb off and where it came from.

The gameplay is solid, this is a third person based shooter that also features an iron sight view for those that want it. It reminded me of SOCOM 4 in terms of control and feel but obviously having lots of extra gadgets (active camouflage/UAV’s/Cyborgs etc) makes it a different beast to play through.

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82. Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 had been one of my most anticipated games of 2011 and the developers incorporated lots of things from Bad Company to help improve the all round gameplay.

I did thoroughly enjoy the multiplayer aspect of the game. However we’re here to discuss single player games and sadly Battlefield 3’s campaign is a decent, linear shooter that doesn’t really do much to break new ground. Graphically it’s very impressive and it’s not bad to play through but it just doesn’t do enough to stand out from any of the other FPS campaigns out there.

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81. Syndicate

Syndicate is a first person shooter which is set in 2069. You play as Agent Miles Kilo, one of EuroCorp’s newest members. In the world of Syndicate corporate espionage is where the great power struggles happen. The corporations are the ones running everything and information is vital.

While I didn’t think the game was amazing, it was certainly above average and brought some interesting gameplay ideas forward. It’s a shame the sales were low as I’d actually be up for playing a sequel that was set in that universe and was, perhaps, a bit more refined.

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So that’s part two done and dusted – we’ll be hitting 80 through to 71 next week so come back then 🙂 As always let me know in the comments if you’ve played any of these titles and what you thought of them…

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Far Cry 3 – Review (PS3)

Far Cry 3 puts you in the shoes of Jason Brody, a rich kid who is partying with his friends on a tropical paradise island near Bangkok. However, as becomes apparent in the game’s opening, everything is not quite as idyllic as it seems.

With your friends scattered and captured it’s left up to you to try and get everyone together and escape from this hellish nightmare.

Fortunately there are plenty of guns around and lots of armed enemies to take out in the process.

The setting is beautiful and the developers have done a great job of creating a stunning and believable environment for you to mess around in. And mess around you will because Far Cry 3 is positively loaded with things to do in addition to the story missions.

The story itself starts strongly, wavers in the middle and finishes well – though it felt like there were different directions Far Cry 3 could’ve gone in that might’ve been better suited to the early story stuff. I certainly would’ve liked to have seen it take longer for Brody to turn into a frenzied killing machine after his fantastically timid beginnings but having said that, it does fit in with the story stuff that follows.

Enemy AI is ok on the whole, though it has to be said it’s at its best when unscripted emergent events happen – like wild animals rushing in and attacking you and your enemies. Some of those moments were superb and gave the game a real feeling of vitality and freshness.

The missions were good overall and I felt that Far Cry 3 was well paced, aside from a few instances and one particular ‘boss’ battle that felt a little out of place. Mainly due to it’s length rather than it’s place in the story.

Having everything in first person gives the game a nice feel, especially when driving a vehicle. And it says a lot that for the most part I avoided using the fast travel system and would just drive wherever I needed to go.

On your travels you’ll encounter random enemy patrols or wild animals and for me, these were some of the highlights of my playthrough. Likewise capturing enemy bases was always fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge presented by the radio towers you need to activate to unlock chunks of the map.

I did feel the story outstayed it’s welcome a little, possibly trimming an hour or two off the campaign might’ve helped but the characters dreamt up by the developers are pretty awesome and it was nice to see some colourful personalities that were fun to interact with.

Unfortunately during an early mission I experienced several game breaking glitches that meant restarting the mission. Whether it was a game crash, an online connection error that froze the game on the pause screen or something else, it meant redoing the same mission 4 times, which was pretty frustrating. The game also locked up on me a few times beyond that and because of Far Cry 3’s lack of manual save options I lost a fair bit of valuable progress.

I found the multiplayer offering to be pretty robust and good fun. There isn’t anything revolutionary here but it’s solid and will offer further hours of gameplay within the universe. There are also a batch of co-op missions that you can tackle with friends which further boosts your potential playtime.

Overall, after initially being impressed with Far Cry 3 by the end of the game I felt a little let down by the way the story developed. I felt a couple of great characters were wasted and I suppose having enjoyed the opening it just highlighted the disappointment by the time the game ended. Added to that were the technical issues that disrupted my playthrough and it made for a slightly disjointed experience.

Rating: 7/10

E3 2011: Wrap Up

So E3 has been and gone for another year.

While there wasn’t much in the way of big surprises we got to see plenty of great stuff.

Here are my thoughts on this year’s games:

EA had a great press conference, showing off the expected big guns of Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12. Mass Effect 3 looked great and having just wrapped up the second game I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Same goes for Battlefield 3 – the game looks stunning on PC and it will be interesting to see how close they can get the console versions.

FIFA 12 looks set to be improved greatly by a new physics engine, which essentially means the end of set animations for players. From here on out players will react naturally to where they are hit. If implemented corrected it could be a game changer.

I wasn’t that sure about Need For Speed: The Run which brings QTE’s to the franchise for moments your driver leaves the car. Could be cool if they feature it well – overuse it and it could be the kiss of death for the game. One of the few ‘unknowns’ of the show, Overstrike is the new game from Insomiac Games (makers of the Resistance series) and it looks like lots of fun. Certainly it doesn’t take itself too seriously – check out the trailer below.

Speaking of Insomiac Games, I thought Resistance 3 looked cool. Maybe not as polished as some of the other games but certainly a story I’m interested in seeing continue. DUST514 was another unknown property to me but seems like something different in the shooter market.

Of course Uncharted 3 looked superb and it’s getting to the stage now where I’m considering not watching any more footage for fear of ruining the game for myself! Twisted Metal impressed – while it’ll be a hard sell to the masses, in my opinion, I am definitely on board having loved the original back on the PSOne.

Ubisoft were showing off Assassin’s Creed: Relevations, the final chapter in the Ezio trilogy and while it looks like refinements rather than innovation, I’m cool with that. They also showed a trailer for a new Brothers In Arms title called Furious Four. I thought it looked great, as many others have said it has a touch of the Ingloroius Bastards about it. The only issue I had was the fact that Brothers In Arms games usually take the moral high ground and base themselves on real soldiers experience, so the branding here jars somewhat.

The new Driver title looked like it could be fun but the last few have been fairly poor so I’ll withhold judgement for now. Certainly it was a cool trailer. I also liked the look of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. It reminded me of SOCOM 4, which I enjoyed a lot, so that bodes well. Far Cry 3 returned with a bang, showing off an impressive trailer that really set the scene. Far Cry 2 didn’t grab me as much as I’d hoped so I have my fingers crossed for the third one.

Batman Arkham City had a reveal at the show, that Catwoman would be a playable character. A nice addition and we got to see some more footage of the game in action. It’s shaping up nicely and the open world setting looks amazing. Finally looks like XBox owners will get a slice of the Uncharted action with Tomb Raider, a reboot of the series that shows a more gritty version of Lara Croft finding her feet on a quest for adventure. From what they showed it looks great so I’m interested to check it out.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Bioshock Infinite were both known properties but the new footage shown has raised expectation even higher than before. Deus Ex hits later this year with Bioshock Infinite coming in 2012.

Modern Warfare 3 was also shown and, well, it’s Modern Warfare. No-one is likely to be disappointed with more of the same and it’s understandable with the walk outs the game studio had. I’ll enjoy the campaign and play some multiplayer as I do with each Call Of Duty. Surely this has to be the last outing for this game engine though?

Bethesda’s Skyrim looked stunning and if you like your games based in the olde worlde fantasy setting this will be one you’ll need to pick up. I was also glad to see X-COM make the jump from XBox exclusive to multi-format as I liked the look of that previously. With a 1950’s ‘Twilight Zone’ style setting it’s one to keep an eye on.

It’s been too long since we slipped on the gloves of Agent 47 and IO Interactive are looking to remedy that with Hitman: Absolution. A brief trailer was all that was shown but I can’t wait for this game. On the downloadable game front I thought Payday: The Heist looked like it could be absolutely superb. The idea of running through heists with friends online and it being different each time sounds like a lot of fun.

So there we go – one of the other big parts of E3 was the confirmation of the PS Vita handheld from Sony but I think that deserves it’s own entry so keep your eyes peeled for that sometime this week.

What were your thoughts on E3? Which games surprised you or increased your interest?