PS3 Turns Five: Game Developers Name Their Favorite PS3 Games

John Garvin

Director of Product Development, Bend Studio – Current project: UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss

• UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception – Who says that Hollywood isn’t making great summer blockbusters anymore? Oh wait, this is a *game*! Hollywood only wishes it were making big screen adventures this good.
• God of War III – Probably one of the most epic games I’ve ever played. Loved the homage to 2D fighting games…
• Heavy Rain – My knees and elbows still hurt from crawling through all that glass.

Billy Harper
Animation Director, Sucker Punch Productions – @BillyHarper73

• God of War III – I love super-gory melee games. I love caffeine. God of War III is caffeinated melee gore at its best! The finale of the boss battle with Hermes sums it up best for me.
• UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves – When I played UNCHARTED 2, my mother-in-law was visiting. She actually had as much fun watching me play the game as I did playing it, and she made me finish the game before she left to go back home. It was one of the most unique experiences I’ve had playing a game in a long time.
• Portal 2 –Whenever I want to flex my atrophied brain muscles I pop in Portal 2. I’m actually playing the free Peer Review DLC with my son right now and having a blast. GLaDOS makes me feel like crap… and yet, I <3 her. I’m a masochist, I know.

Mark Healey
Creative Director, Media Molecule

• Flower – Refreshingly mellow, and can be played with one hand, so you can hold a baby in the other.
• Heavy Rain – I really liked that you could decide how slowly to get out of bed. It made it feel epic somehow.
• Blast Factor – This was the first PSN game I bought, I was addicted to it for ages, and thought I got quite good at it, until I saw my position in world hi score tables.

Dylan Jobe

President, LightBox Interactive – @DylanJobe
Current project: Starhawk 

• Burnout Paradise – This is the best racing game I have ever played. And yeah, yeah I *TOTALLY* know that it isn’t a “pure” racer but damn, I felt sooooooo good playing it. It got my adrenaline pumping in the same way as shooters do and it’s overall presentation was stellar.
• UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves – A fantastic experience that is the poster-child for remarkable execution and “couch-friendly” games. By that I mean that it was super enjoyable to play and watch being played. I remember running away from the final boss battle in Shangri-La and just being stunned at it’s beauty.
• Red Dead Redemption – It’s really hard to say just a few things about this game so I shall ramble: Gorgeous, immersive, loved the music as I crossed into Mexico, missions were great at capturing the American Western theme and I’m still very sad I accidentally skinned my own dead horse’s body after I jumped him off a cliff :-(.

Ken Levine
President and Creative Director, Irrational Games – @iglevine
Current project: BioShock Infinite

• God of War III – I’m just like Kratos, if you discount the muscles, the courage, and the ability to bed seven wenches at once.
• UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves – I’m still working on UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception, so I’m gonna go with UNCHARTED 2. Let’s face it: unless your first name is Indiana, you kinda wanna be Nathan Drake. Don’t lie. You know it’s true.
• Joe Danger – I love this game. It’s like Excitebike, but I’m playing it in a nice house rather than the crappy studio apartment I had in 1989.

Patrick Liu
Producer, DICE – @pottan – Current project: Battlefield 3

• Shatter – This breath of fresh air for the puzzle genre could be described as Arkanoid on steroids. The best part: its amazing soundtrack!
• Siren Blood Curse – My favorite Japanese horror game features uncompromising design and an atmosphere that I really savor. Creepiest game ever.
• Wipeout HD Fury – The series has been one of my favorites since PSOne, and this version encompasses that feeling with the smooth framerate and controls. And again, the music here is excellent. Do I unconsciously judge games by their music?

Jonathan Mak
Creator, Everyday Shooter – @queasy00 – Current Project: Sound Shapes

• PixelJunk Racers – Back in 2007, I was at my first E3 I happened to be paired up in the same kiosk with PixelJunk Racers. I didn’t know anything about the game but offered to help demo it.  At first I didn’t think much of it, but as I played more and more I realized how similar the game was to a shooter where basically all the cars are bullets and you must avoid them. Of course there were certain situations where you actually want to bump into the cars, but that’s even so for shooters (bullet-eaters, shields, …). It’s pretty interesting how two completely different genres can share such similarity.
• Flower – I only played this a short amount of time but it’s a game that is permanently implanted in my head. There are days where I still see flashes of Flower in my minds eye, and whenever I think of video games, this one pops up in my head. I don’t really know what it means in the grand scheme of things and I don’t know why it’s so stuck in my head, but it is.  Maybe it’s simply because it’s so damned beautiful.
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Raised the bar of what a AAA game is in my opinion. The amount of variety in interaction and the density of distinct content was and to this day, continues to be unmatched in the big-budget game world. Sometimes I can’t control the way my broken brain works and I end up drawing parallels with Eric Chahi’s Another World. Both games stuck to its respective genre and yet explored so many possibilities within it.

Yoshinori Ono
Producer, Capcom – @Yoshi_OnoChin
Current project: Street Fighter X Tekken 

• Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction – The first of the new Ratchet & Clank series, I remember thinking excitedly, “what kind of adventure will I be experiencing today?” as I set the disc into my PS3. I also have fond (and sometimes frustrating) memories of trying to control those Zoni creatures.
• inFAMOUS – I loved being able to choose between good and evil in this game. Your choices would affect not only your play style, but the missions in the game. Considering you got two different experiences for the price of one game, it was definitely worth it. I really appreciated the seamless level technology, as well as the sheer amount of strategies.
• PixelJunk Eden – It was a blast exploring the Eden world, while clearing objectives here and there. A great casual game, I feel it really set the bar for PSN downloadable titles. When you first play it, all you can think is “Huh?” but that thought gradually turns into an “Oh!” It really is a remarkable game.

Steve Papoutsis
Vice President and Executive Producer, Visceral Games EA – @leveluptime

• UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves – it’s like being thrown into the middle of a great movie with characters you find interesting and fun to be around. Incredible epic moments and acting make for a very memorable game.
• MLB 11: The Show – Hands-down my favorite MLB game. It features an incredibly deep career mode, plus great-looking graphics and animations. I look forward to this game every single year.
• Heavy Rain – One of my favorite games from this generation. It proved you could create a story that both pulled you in and made you care about the outcome and characters.  I tell all my friends to give it a try, really, really enjoyed it.

Randy Pitchford
President and CEO, Gearbox Software – @duvalmagic
Current project: Aliens: Colonial Marines, Borderlands 2

• Valkyria Chronicles – UNCHARTED and LittleBigPlanet are going to get plenty of play, so I want to call out great games that haven’t gotten as much love as they deserve. Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games: great art direction and appealing characters wrapped around an awesome turn-based tactical RPG! Such a rarely represented genre is so beautifully realized. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a turn-based tactical game owes it to themselves to check this game out.
• Demon’s Souls – Difficulty aside, these guys really did a great job in bringing some new experiences to the world. I hope their successor game Dark Souls gets even more traction and recognition because there are some good ideas in the “souls” games that we all can learn from. I think it’s important for gamers and game makers to spend time with this game and understand why it’s so rare and special.
• Resistance 3 – I’m a big fan of anything Insomniac, but Resistance 3 motivated me to get the PlayStation Move set up with the sharp shooter controller, and it’s a great way to play this great game. It’s always difficult to be able to rationalize custom development effort for sub-sets of customers on a platform, but the experience I had with Resistance 3 and the sharp shooter makes me want to see something special done with that interface in our games.

Matt Southern
Studio Game Director, Evolution Studios – @mrsuv

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – History beats fantasy and sci-fi for me, I wish there were more historical games. And as his name suggests, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is the coolest videogame hero of the 21st century.
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit – Modesty prevents me from naming one of the three racers that are better than this thrilling mix of Burnout and Chase HQ :) A focused, polished game from two world-class developers.
• Red Dead Redemption – An obvious choice, but all the Rockstar open world games on PS3 have been astonishing, and this one is the best. Absolutely breathtaking ambition.

Evan Wells
Co-President, Naughty Dog – @evan_wells
Current project: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception

• Flower – I love this game for its simplicity and its beauty. That Game Company is like none other; it took a concept that nobody else would dare attempt and created an experience that engages your eyes, your ears, and your heart.
• Portal 2 – The first one was great but left you wanting more, and Portal 2 delivered just that. The writing was top notch and the puzzle design so amazingly good that just when you’re ready to give up, you have that “Aha!” moment that makes you feel like a genius.
• Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – Who knew a concept three decades old could be reinvented in such a fresh and addictive way? I’ve never been big on leaderboards, but there’s something about this game that makes you want to get in there and shave a second off your time or pump your score up another 100K. And is there anything more satisfying than eating 100 ghosts in a row?