Although it should be interesting to see how Ninja Theory plans to bring sassy red-head Nariko back into future iterations, it will be far more fun to see what kind of tweaks can be made to the gameplay. I rather enjoyed the elegant fighting mechanic that Heavenly Sword introduced but it wouldn’t be harmed by a bit of fine tuning either – possibly to even produce something as satisfying as God of War’s more visceral approach.

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Gaming Today

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Top 5 most underrated games on PlayStation 3
Heavenly Sword video review

Emotions run high when there’s a new kid in console town. Promises are made, promises are broken, expectation soar to dizzying heights only to be dashed bloodily by cold-hearted reality. Hype is the main problem; everyone’s guilty of blinding themselves to the true beauty of a game that fails to meet up to what it seemed like from afar – from players to reviews, even to Sony itself – and the result is that decent, ambitious games have been overlooked, berated and been admonished for all the wrong reasons.

In an attempt to redress the balance, PSPSPS.tv takes a look at some of the most underrated titles in the PS3s short history:

5. Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory)

Still one of the best looking games on the PS3, one of Heavenly Sword’s more serious failings in the public’s eye is that Nariko just isn’t Kratos. It’s unfair - Kratos is all brute force and ignorance, bloodily crushing, gouging and tearing his way through adversaries, while Nariko floats effortlessly around her enemies with balletic grace; the combat is worlds apart. Perhaps not quite as viscerally satisfying, once you get into it, it offers a unique reward to the attentive player. The real killer was the brevity of course, but with so many new games now also lingering around the eight hour mark now, we may have been too quick to judge.

If Ninja Theory had only a third of its budget and – instead of pouring dosh into fancy WETA motion capturing and Lord of the Rings extras – had focussed more closely on fleshing out the gameplay (such as to make hard difficulty mode worth playing) Heavenly Sword could have shot at becoming at least a cult classic, rather than a PS3 exclusive also-ran.

4. Warhawk (Incognito)

Everyone loved Warhawk. Reviewers showered it with praises, even though it had no single player mode to speak of and only five maps to play on. Players were almost instantly hooked on it and it is still one of the best reasons to sign into PSN. It was Sony that called this one badly. Axing the single player left Warhawk without a proper identity – it was half PSN mini-game, half it-comes-with-headset-freebie and half full title.

Icognito did a sterling job of tightening and balancing the game to create an intense battlefield playground. But for all those who hadn’t already dipped into Xbox Live, this was their first teetering steps into the online console battlefield, and it stupidly threw you right in at the deep end with little means of finding your way around before you were shot by passing jet. A full title with single and multiplayer campaigns, proper player training and better friends management was sorely needed; Sony failed to give it the acknowledgement (i.e. time and money) it deserved.

3. Resistance: Fall of Man (Insomniac)

As I said, it’s tough being the new kid. Resistance arrived at the same time as the PlayStation 3. Launch titles face the struggle of adapting to new hardware and the fact that everyone’s expecting so much of you, especially when the term ‘Halo killer’ is been slung about like confetti. It managed to be an accomplished shooter with just enough visual appeal to remind everyone that they’d upgraded their PS2. But it of course wasn’t a Halo killer, and it was inevitably criticised for not delivering that shiny concept of ‘next-gen’ everyone was banging on about. It was occasionally dismissed as Call of Duty plus aliens – perhaps because said aliens were a little bit daft, people managed to miss the fact that a lot of thought had gone into putting a highly original arsenal of weapons at your disposal.

But multiplayer-wise (sorry for lingering on this) PSN’s limitations didn’t help either. Where was the ability to drop into to games seamlessly from the XMB, why can’t you send and receive messages during play? Oh how we laugh now – relatively, R:FOM is the only game that has actually managed a serious attempt at well thought out multiplayer options. You can get into individual squads for easier, more tactical communications; you can *gasp* even get at your friends list and send messages from the multiplayer menu. Why, oh why aren’t more games copying this?

2. Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)

Considering that Assassin’s Creed is still (at time of writing) topping UK games charts, there’s an odd – but not particularly uncommon – disparity between the game’s review scores and how much people like it and are prepared to pay full price for it. No, it wasn’t the cerebral, spiritual Hitman successor many of us were hoping for, but it has captured the attention of the gaming public at large. There’s good cause to believe that lots of people were caught up in the hype surrounding it and the end product just didn’t match up. However, Assassin’s Creed has managed to create an engaging, visually stunning (despite a few hitches) world that few games are able to compete with. Sure it gets repetitive pretty quick and, over the course of the game, I’ve personally gone full circle on my opinion of the review verdicts. I’m now inclined to agree with the final justifications for sub 9-10 scores, but that doesn’t seem to match up with a game currently destroying bookie’s Xmas favourite, Need for Speed ProStreet.

It’s recycled mission structures are repetitive to the nth degree, but with so many games getting equally panned for offering too brief of a gameplay time, it’s easier to forgive Ubisoft for just upping the number of samey side missions to flesh it out. The combat has been a bone for contention, often being described as one-trick pony button-mashing affair, but then it’s also appealing because of its rhythm like action that rewards the player with some satisfyingly brutal and well animated kills.

1. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (Insomniac)

Flipping the reviewer-player relationship on its head entirely comes Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Unlike Insomniac’s launch title (see No. 3 above), PS3’s R&C title had everything that we’ve been clamouring for since the next-gen originally ‘started here’. Graphically it’s superb, the character animation is little short of amazing and the whole game manages to feel just short of actually playing a Pixar movie. Add to that is Insomniac’s unique, trademark approach to game weaponry and overall polish. The reviewers loved it, awarding R&C consistently high scores and making it the top rated PS3 exclusive title so far (according to Metacritic).

For some reason though, this just hasn’t made it through into chart topping success. In the UK it has fared even worse somehow, sinking without a trace from the chart’s top 40. Although I’m not personally a Ratchet fan, it is interesting that a game so well rated and from a great heritage could be treated with so much ‘meh’. Perhaps it is indication that PS3 gamers are not simply those upgrading their PS2s to the next console up the ladder, but an entirely different, misunderstood breed.

Thoughts, opinions, arguments and reasons why Lair should / shouldn’t have been in this list are, as always, very welcome.

Emotions run high when there’s a new kid in console town. Promises are made, promises are broken, expectation soar to dizzying heights only to be dashed bloodily by cold-hearted reality. Hype is the main problem; everyone’s guilty of blinding themselves to the true beauty of a game that fails to meet up to what it seemed like from afar – from players to reviews, even to Sony itself – and the result is that decent, ambitious games have been overlooked, berated and been admonished for all the wrong reasons.

In an attempt to redress the balance, PSPSPS.tv takes a look at some of the most underrated titles in the PS3s short history:

5. Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory)

Still one of the best looking games on the PS3, one of Heavenly Sword’s more serious failings in the public’s eye is that Nariko just isn’t Kratos. It’s unfair - Kratos is all brute force and ignorance, bloodily crushing, gouging and tearing his way through adversaries, while Nariko floats effortlessly around her enemies with balletic grace; the combat is worlds apart. Perhaps not quite as viscerally satisfying, once you get into it, it offers a unique reward to the attentive player. The real killer was the brevity of course, but with so many new games now also lingering around the eight hour mark now, we may have been too quick to judge.

If Ninja Theory had only a third of its budget and – instead of pouring dosh into fancy WETA motion capturing and Lord of the Rings extras – had focussed more closely on fleshing out the gameplay (such as to make hard difficulty mode worth playing) Heavenly Sword could have shot at becoming at least a cult classic, rather than a PS3 exclusive also-ran.

4. Warhawk (Incognito)

Everyone loved Warhawk. Reviewers showered it with praises, even though it had no single player mode to speak of and only five maps to play on. Players were almost instantly hooked on it and it is still one of the best reasons to sign into PSN. It was Sony that called this one badly. Axing the single player left Warhawk without a proper identity – it was half PSN mini-game, half it-comes-with-headset-freebie and half full title.

Icognito did a sterling job of tightening and balancing the game to create an intense battlefield playground. But for all those who hadn’t already dipped into Xbox Live, this was their first teetering steps into the online console battlefield, and it stupidly threw you right in at the deep end with little means of finding your way around before you were shot by passing jet. A full title with single and multiplayer campaigns, proper player training and better friends management was sorely needed; Sony failed to give it the acknowledgement (i.e. time and money) it deserved.

3. Resistance: Fall of Man (Insomniac)

As I said, it’s tough being the new kid. Resistance arrived at the same time as the PlayStation 3. Launch titles face the struggle of adapting to new hardware and the fact that everyone’s expecting so much of you, especially when the term ‘Halo killer’ is been slung about like confetti. It managed to be an accomplished shooter with just enough visual appeal to remind everyone that they’d upgraded their PS2. But it of course wasn’t a Halo killer, and it was inevitably criticised for not delivering that shiny concept of ‘next-gen’ everyone was banging on about. It was occasionally dismissed as Call of Duty plus aliens – perhaps because said aliens were a little bit daft, people managed to miss the fact that a lot of thought had gone into putting a highly original arsenal of weapons at your disposal.

But multiplayer-wise (sorry for lingering on this) PSN’s limitations didn’t help either. Where was the ability to drop into to games seamlessly from the XMB, why can’t you send and receive messages during play? Oh how we laugh now – relatively, R:FOM is the only game that has actually managed a serious attempt at well thought out multiplayer options. You can get into individual squads for easier, more tactical communications; you can *gasp* even get at your friends list and send messages from the multiplayer menu. Why, oh why aren’t more games copying this?

2. Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)

Considering that Assassin’s Creed is still (at time of writing) topping UK games charts, there’s an odd – but not particularly uncommon – disparity between the game’s review scores and how much people like it and are prepared to pay full price for it. No, it wasn’t the cerebral, spiritual Hitman successor many of us were hoping for, but it has captured the attention of the gaming public at large. There’s good cause to believe that lots of people were caught up in the hype surrounding it and the end product just didn’t match up. However, Assassin’s Creed has managed to create an engaging, visually stunning (despite a few hitches) world that few games are able to compete with. Sure it gets repetitive pretty quick and, over the course of the game, I’ve personally gone full circle on my opinion of the review verdicts. I’m now inclined to agree with the final justifications for sub 9-10 scores, but that doesn’t seem to match up with a game currently destroying bookie’s Xmas favourite, Need for Speed ProStreet.

It’s recycled mission structures are repetitive to the nth degree, but with so many games getting equally panned for offering too brief of a gameplay time, it’s easier to forgive Ubisoft for just upping the number of samey side missions to flesh it out. The combat has been a bone for contention, often being described as one-trick pony button-mashing affair, but then it’s also appealing because of its rhythm like action that rewards the player with some satisfyingly brutal and well animated kills.

1. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (Insomniac)

Flipping the reviewer-player relationship on its head entirely comes Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Unlike Insomniac’s launch title (see No. 3 above), PS3’s R&C title had everything that we’ve been clamouring for since the next-gen originally ‘started here’. Graphically it’s superb, the character animation is little short of amazing and the whole game manages to feel just short of actually playing a Pixar movie. Add to that is Insomniac’s unique, trademark approach to game weaponry and overall polish. The reviewers loved it, awarding R&C consistently high scores and making it the top rated PS3 exclusive title so far (according to Metacritic).

For some reason though, this just hasn’t made it through into chart topping success. In the UK it has fared even worse somehow, sinking without a trace from the chart’s top 40. Although I’m not personally a Ratchet fan, it is interesting that a game so well rated and from a great heritage could be treated with so much ‘meh’. Perhaps it is indication that PS3 gamers are not simply those upgrading their PS2s to the next console up the ladder, but an entirely different, misunderstood breed.

Thoughts, opinions, arguments and reasons why Lair should / shouldn’t have been in this list are, as always, very welcome.