Next up in our awards is the Playstation 3. It had a fairly good showing as far as exclusives go. So we actually had more than 4 possible choices for winners here.

There are however a few games that didn’t make the cut. Either because they weren’t good, or because we haven’t played it. You can ask about why certain titles aren’t on the list, and we’ll be happy to answer if you’re not trolling.

So read on and see what were our choices for the best PS3 games of the year!

3D Dot Game Heroes

Mixing gameplay elements from the original Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past, 3D Dot Game Heroes kicked ass not only gameplay-wise, but the visual style is just all sorts of incredible. This is basically what I imagined games looking like in 2000+ when I was playing Zelda as a kid, it’s beautiful and the visual effects like some of the blurring and all makes it look just fabulous. It shows that 8-bit in 3D works. So here you have an LttP style world map, with LoZ style dungeons, with a bunch of Zelda-inspired items and weapons, a huge variety of swords which can be customized (making them longer(literally screen-long), wider, stronger, and some can be given special properties), a bunch of side-quests (some which can be missed), hidden areas, great boss battles, lots of time-consuming trophies for the trophy-whores out there, some good replayability, and the game is super cheap, starting at a low price when it launched and actually getting discounted during the year. Well worth owning.

Gran Turismo 5

Of course GT5 has to be on there. It was incredibly long in the making, but it’s definitely a solid game. Lots of cool courses to drive on, over a thousand cars to drive and modify (seperated between less detailed standard cars, and more detailed premium cars), great graphics, very realistic driving physics. There’s a good variety of modes, weather effects, there’s karting, a course editor, and it’s probably the deepest game in the series as far as damage models go. If you’re in for a good racing simulator, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than GT5.

Yakuza 3

Because of the Japanese setting, a lot of people might have overlooked this game quite fast or others might have classified it simply as a Japanese GTA game, but Yakuza 3 was definitely worth a look at this year, even with some of the content cut from the Western release. While the combat isn’t as deep as Bayonetta, it’s still one step ahead of games like God of War 3 and makes up for less smoothness by having hundreds of assets to kick some ass. It also keeps you going with its intense story, and you always find yourself with plenty of side quests to do when you feel like doing something else. With over a hundred hours to get through everything there is to be done, its fun gameplay and compelling story, it’s definitely my favourite PS3 exclusive this year. (Thank you Dave for the text!!)

Trinity Universe

Trinity Universe is a pretty interesting RPG. You have a very fun battle system, cool characters, playable characters that come from the Atelier and Disgaea series, a good amount of customization, a fairly interesting story with good/funny dialogues, a good amount of content, there is some challenge, and it’s overall a lot of fun. There’s lots of replayability too, with 2 story modes (which come together in the end) and multiple endings. The dungeons are a bit on the simplistic side, with them revolving mostly around corridors leading to rooms with treasure (as well as having random treasure randomly spawning everywhere through the dungeon). The treasure is the important part here since they’ll be used to make items and such. One minor problem here is that you can basically break the game on the second playthrough using an exploit in a special store that opens up, but it makes maxing out easier/less time-consuming so you won’t be spending hundreds of hours powering up like with Disgaea. It’s a fun game, well worth playing if you’re a NIS fan or if you want a fun RPG.

jobocan Console, Game of the Year, Games, Games of the Year, ps3