This essay was written in 2022 for Venture Advancement Center
Published for Topham Topics
PROLOGUE
Hello,
and welcome to this essay where we talk all about Sony’s great exercise in
hubris and arrogance that was the PlayStation 3. A console so powerful it could
prevent others from dying, and just like the tragedy of Darth Plagueis, it was
killed by its more capable and cunning successor but we’re getting ahead of
ourselves.
This
essay will contain gratuitous amounts of bad language and plenty of use of the
funny fuck words. If you find this displeasing then just read the bible anyway
because gaming is for sinners and you ain’t no sinner even though according to
Jesus everyone is a sinner and you must feel bad and guilty all the time unless
you read a 2000+ year old self-insert fanfiction and go to a pointy roofed
building to compare clothing. But that is not the point, now isn’t it?
We will
go over the history of the PlayStation 3, from its inception to its reception
and to its deception and redemption. We will even talk about a small selection
of games that I have played on the system to get an idea on how well I think
about the system. So consider this as part review, part historical essay, and
part paper about what not to do to make a video game console and why the PS3
has bad idea written all over it.
For
those who don’t know, the PlayStation 3 is a seventh generation video game
system produced by Sony Computer Entertainment was Ken Kutaragi’s magnum opus
in console production having the PlayStation 3 be the ultimate PlayStation and
the best multimedia hub. More details on this will become evident as we get
ahead further in this paper. So let’s get into this.
HISTORY
OF PS3
The PlayStation 3’s
history goes back to the days of the PlayStation 2, but first we must discuss
the man behind it all. Ken Kutaragi was a man who came from humble beginnings,
being born in Tokyo, Japan and to a family of middling socio-economic standing.
He would later find employment at Sony as an engineer working on early Liquid
Crystal Displays and later digital cameras. His entry to the games industry
came in the form of his daughter playing the Nintendo Famicom, the Japanese
equivalent of the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. Ken, was
unimpressed with the sound quality of the 8-bit hardware and went to Sony and
behind the backs of his supervisors, created a sound chip that would later be
put into the Super Famicom. This would start a working relationship with
Nintendo that would later lead to the creation of the PlayStation.
Ken would then start work
on a CD add-on/standalone SNES-ish machine called the “Play Station”. However
due to a contract that Nintendo found to be inappropriate, they would partner
up with Phillips and snub Sony at the Summer 1991 Consumer Electronics Show in
Chicago. This type of betrayal would normally just lead to a lawsuit but this
is Japan where honor and gentlemen’s agreements are holding the entirety of
their economy (and maybe even the government come to think of it). So Sony
would task Ken with independently developing the PlayStation (now one word).
The CEO of Sony, Norio Ogha, would move Ken to their music division so that Ken
would have the space and people to work on it as certain board members were
against making a video game console.
The PlayStation was an
easy to program, 3D polygon pushing, Compact Disc, magic moving machine. While
Sony would fight a tough battle against the Sega Saturn, the PlayStation found
international domination as Sega and Nintendo made numerous mistakes in
bringing their next gen machines to market leading to Sony absolutely rocking
everybody’s shit from California to Alsace-Loraine.
Immediately after the
release of the PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi began development of its successor.
The PlayStation 2’s development was kept largely under wraps and thus not much
was known other than Sony using powerful custom made chips and using DVDs,
starting gaming’s fascination with consoles being also media hubs because why
not?
The PlayStation 2 was
revealed in 1999 and pretty much killed Sega and scared Microsoft into
developing the Xbox. Developers found making games for the PS2 to be hard to
accomplish but due to the immense marketshare the console would achieve, game
developers would just have to deal with it, for
now. This will also come to bite Sony Computer Entertainment in the ass
later down the line. The PlayStation 2 was uber successful, pushing a million
units in its first week of sales and killed the Dreamcast right then and there.
With the release of the
PlayStation 2, Ken would work on its successor once again. But this time, it
will be his last. Ken wanted to build a console that would become a testament
to his legacy of reshaping the games industry in his image. It would be the
ultimate PlayStation; it would be the ultimate multimedia machine. It will use
the most powerful chips available to mankind, it will push polygons and
particle unlike the world has ever seen. This is…PlayStation 3, and finally
we’ve gotten to where we should be.
The PlayStation 3 was a
beast of a console, using the Cell Processor, a supercomputer CPU made in
collaboration between Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. It would also use the Reality
Synthesizer, a GPU co-produced by Nvidia. The console would even try to
recapture the magic of PlayStation 2 by supporting the latest and what Sony
thought was the greatest in video disc technology, the Blu-Ray Disc. A new disc
format that could hold up to 50 Gigabytes of data and was read by a blue laser
diode. The console was also backwards compatible with the two previous
PlayStation systems complete with special hardware to emulate them. The
PlayStation 3 was the ultimate in gaming technology and was slated to come out
in the spring of 2006; it was then delayed to the holiday season.
From here on out this
will now be the Greek tragedy of King Kutaragi and his great big black and
chrome folly. The console’s 60 GB model (which contains numerous memory stick
ports and WiFi.) would be $600, and Sony even said that people would be willing
to work multiple jobs to buy it. Sony bet big on the success of the PlayStation
3 and bet that people would buy the next PlayStation based on brand name
loyalty and that it would fly off the shelves even if it was a 400 pound
Swastika that cost the same as a Honda Civic hatchback.
The release was a
disaster for the PlayStation 3. Most costumers went and bought either an Xbox
360 or waited a week or two to buy the Nintendo Wii. The people that were able
to buy the PlayStation 3 were greeted a by a poor selection of bad, poorly made
games. Only three out of the fifteen games being any good, Ridge Racer 7, Resistance,
and a Tiger Woods PGA golf game (maybe also Motorstorm and Blast Factor). The
console’s PSN store was just a shitty web browser and the console lacked many
features that the Xbox 360 had. The console was an absolute mess. Developers
had had a hard time making games as the console’s supercomputer server-rack
chipset made development hard as most game developer aren’t computer scientists
but a bunch of smartass t-shirt wearing schmucks. While Ken did say he regret
making the PS2’s hardware difficult, he apparently didn’t learn his lesson and
soon Ken left Sony Computer Entertainment to go do other things and thus SCE
was stuck with a console that cost $900 to produce and with poor sales.
The cost reduction
efforts began almost immediately, with Sony slowly removing PS2 backwards
compatibility from their system and cutting the 20 GB model off. Sony would
stick with the original fat model until the console’s relaunch in 2009. Within
the year a post mortem report was written up and consultant Mark Cerny was
brought on the case on what to do with the PlayStation 3 and started work on
its successor.
While Sony had made the
same mistakes as Sega did with the Saturn. Sony decided to double down where
Sega punked out because Sega was a little bitch during the late 90’s. Sony
pumped money into developers to make games resulting in the Uncharted franchise
and aiding AAA developers to help optimize their games for the bad hardware.
Meanwhile the PS3 fat
models began to show mechanical failure during this time as Nvidia had fucked
up making the RSX GPU and due to how hot the console would get would breaking
the chips lead ball seating or whatever that part of the chip was called. Thus
the Yellow Light of Death. While the PS3 didn’t have the short term reliability
issues that the Xbox 360 was experience, this issue meant that almost every fat
model was a ticking time bomb. The PlayStation 3 was essentially built like the
Panzerkampwagen V “Panther”, an
over-engineered, expensive to produce, piece of shit, complete with a
transmission (read Reality Synthesizer GPU) that would barely last 750 Km
before breaking down.
Sony in its effort to
recuperate costs, released the first slim model in 2009, and reduced the price
to $300. This relaunch also came with a new PS3 logo, no longer using the Sam
Rami Spiderman font but a modern rounded version of the PS2 logo font which
marked the death of classic Sony and the birth of modern Sony in which every
first party game plays the exact same and all their games are just different
variations of Naughty Dog’s “The Last Of Us” just with the bits rearranged like
a YouTube Poop except less funny.
Sony’s mission to redeem
the PlayStation 3 and make it profitable while Mark Cerny was busy on its next
console was going well until 2011 when the PlayStation Network was hacked in
which the console’s online features and capabilities were made moot. This also
resulted in people’s private details such as credit card numbers were also
potentially leaked and Sony’s carefully rebuilt report with consumers was
destroyed once again. But the hack and subsequent leak didn’t matter in the
long run and Sony soon recovered.
By 2012, Sony released
the Super Slim model which was available for $200 minimum and was the cheapest
feeling PS3. By this time the PlayStation 3 had outsold the Xbox 360 in one of
the biggest pyrrhic victories in gaming history. But by now, the PlayStation 3
was in its twilight years and by the end of next year, its successor would be
released. The PlayStation 4 was a marvel of modern technology, it was easy to
program for and at the same time was very powerful which proved that big
performance and developer friendliness was not mutually exclusive. The
PlayStation 3 would continue to be sold until its discontinuation in 2017 in
which the last notable game was the venerable Persona 5, an JRPG so good that
people that hate RPGs more than Americans that hate foreigners (Scott the Woz
and VideoGameDunkey to name a few.) would go on to enjoy it, just like how a
racist person says they’re not racist because they have one black friend or
claim that they do.
The PSN Store was nearly
shut down in 2021 but was backtracked due to public pressure. But the PS3 now
exists as a zombie waiting for its remaining online services to be terminated
and only then would it be put to rest. While it did beat the Xbox 360, it didn’t
win the console war, in fact the Nintendo Wii outsold the PS3 by a considerable
margin. The PlayStation 3 lived a long life in which it redeemed itself only to
be sidelined for a better successor. A pyrrhic victory and an exercise in why
you should make consoles out of silicon and plastic and not out of arrogance
and hubris. Ken Kutaragi in his effort and infinite wisdom to bring about his
magnum opus instead created a multi-billion dollar disaster on the level of the
Penn Central Railroad bankruptcy and tasked Sony with a console generation of
course correction and building back the trust that they had lost. It was proof
that brand loyalty is something you should never bank upon 100% of the time on.
For if you build it and make it desirable and affordable, they will come. It
was a hard lesson that Sony learned and used their newfound knowledge to make
the PS4 successful only to be lapsed by the Nintendo Switch and then for Sony
to make different mistakes with the PlayStation 5, a literal white elephant of
a games console whose rarity is matched by a high price and bloated hardware
complete with a money hungry Sony that only wishes to put their costumer
through hell to obtain their console because they lack any maxim of ethics and
only wish to make money at the expense of their costumers and their own
marketshare.
HARDWARE
REVIEW
Throughout the
PlayStation 3’s lifespan there had been three major versions of the console,
the original fat model (2006 – 2009), the slim model (2009 – 2012) and the Super
Slim model (2012 – 2017). The only two models I had the most experience with is
the original fat and Super Slim versions and thus I will review each variant in
chronological order.
The original 60 GB fat
model is an absolute unit. It’s big and bugling with the general shape of a
George Foreman grill when placed horizontally. The console conforms to my
favorite tenant in console design, the Big Black Console©. The chrome lettering
and strips lend a sort of retro automotive mystique sorta like a 1958 Cadiliac.
Its big and luxurious and very powerful looking. The build quality was really
good considering it cost $900 to produce per
unit, but the 90 nanometer RSX GPU chip was poorly designed so these units
end up dying of the Yellow Light of Death and require extensive maintenance to
keep in working order which sadly makes these highly desirable consoles into
time bombs as to when they will become in a state in which they are beyond
repair. This console also contains PS2 CPU and GPU hardware to make it
compatible with PlayStation 2 games and thus is the only unit to really do it
besides its 20 GB brother. The console also contains numerous memory card ports
in a little cubby hidden underneath a cleverly made cover that looks like a
part of the main case and thus is a bit secret if you haven’t known where that
was yet. My only complaint with this system is that 60 GB isn’t much for
storage but this was released in 2006 so games didn’t need much storage for
save data and other stuff as developers at this time use the disc’s space for
stuff unlike today in which the physical disc is less of a game and more of a
formality. I love this console’s design. Enough Said.
The Slim model is alright
looking. The console is just black and while it is a bit smaller, it just
looked like somebody took a 20 GB model and flattened it with a rolling pin.
The console still has an internal disc drive which is a nice but is missing the
memory shit from the fat model but by now there are larger hard drives
available for the system so it’s no big deal. It’s alright I guess. Not as sexy
as the fat model but at least it adheres to the BBC© style of console design.
It’s so okay, its average!
The Super Slim model is
an exercise in how cheap Sony could get with their luxury home theater
multimedia games console. The build quality and material quality of the Super
Slim feels like an insult to what made the original PS3 so desirable and sexy
looking. From its corrugated plastic top to its cheap shiny plastic slated
sides. With a top loading disc tray that feels like Sony forgot how to make
slim models the right way like they did with the PS1 and PS2, in fact, those
slim models were significantly sized down and yet here, the smallest they could
get is the same height as the slim with half the floor space and yet it is
still bigger than the PS2 slim and the
PSone models. While I own the 250 GB model, there is one that only comes with
12 GB of flash memory which sucks for those who have tight budgets considering
by the time this model was released there were games that could take up entire
Gigabytes of memory for stupid unnecessary installs.
This console just feels
sad, a far cry from the expense and general quality that Sony had made
themselves known for. From the sliding disc tray that could break if you looked
at it funny, to the general build quality reminding me of an American malaise
era automobile. But at least it still has PS1 backward compatibility, right?
Yeah, like that totally redeems the damn thing. It’s great if you just want a PS3, but if you want an
ultimate PS3, you have to get a 60 GB
fat model that’s just going to kill itself within three months of purchase.
All things considered it
is an acceptable model but Jesus ‘Tap-dancing’ Christ is this thing cheaply
built.
This would be the part
where I would have some closing words but the downhill trajectory of the
aesthetics of the PS3 feels like shit. From the color of the PS logo being lost
in favor of a cold hard brutalist gray. Like an apartment building built by
communists. You could watch almost in real time when the classic fun old Sony
died and watch the birth of the postmodern monstrosity that is modern corporate
Sony. Bring me back the old Sony any day, at any time. Fuck that shit.
SOFTWARE
REVIEW
This section will be
broken up into a bullet list of games that I like and had any thoughts of on
the PlayStation 3. The physical games I own will go first and will continue in
alphabetical order until I go to the digitally owned games in which there will
be no pre-determined order in which they are presented. Some games are
exclusive, others are not so be aware of that. Now let’s get into the nitty
gritty, shall we?
· Borderlands:
A very fun yet weird game. A First Person Shooter with wacky cel-shaded
cartoony graphics (more comic book less Saturday Morning like how the game Cel
Damage is). Somehow the very much skill based First Person Shooter gameplay
meshes well with the RPG mechanics which make the game weird gameplay wise. The
graphical performance of the game sadly is a bit un-optimized for the
PlayStation 3, however this was a bit in the early era so its par for the
course for multi-platform games of the time. It was a blast to play and very
good. Even I only spent a few hours in
it and still very much at the beginning of the game.
· Call
of Duty 4 Modern Warfare: Ah, the FPS that popularized FPS’s
as the main genre of the seventh generation of consoles. It is graphical tour
de force with realism on full display with a world of beiges and browns like an
office from the 1970’s. Other than the drab color palette and the realistic
graphics that made hardcore gamers harder than Ron Jeremy in a porno. Its sound
design is fantastic and the gameplay is good. However, I’m kinda bad at these
sorts of high skill based games so I trudged through the first three levels and
called it quits for the time being. Despite the difficulty, its quite good. It
even proved that there was more to Call of Duty than just the same old trite
World War 2 shooters.
· Call
of Duty World at War: A back to basics, using the Modern
Warfare engine to make yet another fucking World War 2 game. Its good and the
audiovisuals are as good as ever and its campaign is also a bit easier but I
had to look at a walkthrough because there is a level where you are at
Stalingrad and at the very end you have to use a sniper rifle to kill a Nazi
general. But I couldn’t find the goddamn general until I looked it up online
and fuck that shit, man. Also Nazi Zombies are here and zombie modes in Triple-A
FPS’ would soon become the norm. Even if Zombies are played the fuck out.
· Fallout
New Vegas: One of the best Fallout games ever with fun FPS
gameplay and better implementation of RPG mechanics than Borderlands thanks to
the VATS system where the game slows down and pauses to let you select what
body parts to shoot at. With a fun story and even fun-er characters, this was a
treat to play. I recommend it, like a lot.
· Farcry
3:
Its good and looks good too, but its kinda hard and I gave up after trying to
clear an enemy outpost. Its good but fuck this game in particular.
· Gran
Turismo 5: The penultimate racing simulation game. This game is
fucking awesome. With great graphics and gameplay with loads to do…If the
online servers were still up. Instead what you have a very boring B-Spec mode
in which you have some idiot driver drive worse than you that requires you to
baby the damn thing god forbid if you lose consciousness waiting for the stupid
fucking race to end. Then in A-Spec there is less races per cup than in Gran
Turismo 3 for the PlayStation 2. Hell, the whole game feels like Polyphony
Digital got insecure because of how big they made Gran Turismo 4. But for the
time that I did spend with it, it was fun. Except for the bad ingame economy
and the need to buy cars that are required for only one race and the lack of
returning tracks and the need to minimize the substance that previous games
had. But I love this game too much to really tell it to go fuck itself. I
recommend giving this one a whirl.
· Hyperdimension
Neptunia: So I got this game because at the time I had just
come into possession a Super Slim PS3 and wanted a turn based JRPG to fuck
around in because I love those and people who hate turn based JRPG’s like VideoGameDunkey
should blow his brains out with a Flak-88 Anti-Aircraft cannon. This game was a
fun if a bit too anime celebration of the games industry with in-jokes and
references galore with characters representing entire companies, consoles, and
more. The gameplay is bit disappointing in which there is no explorable
overworld just a menu of floating islands and the dungeons play like sidequests
complete with a timer and you better get that S Rank you motherfucker. But
other than that, it was a very fun game and even the DLC is still up for
download so thank fuck for that. I recommend giving this game a try if you are
into these sorts of games like I am.
· Lego
Star Wars The Complete Saga: A combination of the previous two
last gen Lego Star Wars games with all six movies playable in one. While I
played this on the Wii and was very happy with it. The graphics are kinda bad
on the PlayStation 3, while it does look nice and does play at 1080p
resolution, it doesn’t have the fully vertical resolution so the screen looks
kinda squished and uncomfortable to look at on a super large television. But
other than that, what you have left is a very fun kid’s game that still
entertains to this day. Even if its existence on the PS3 makes no damn sense.
· Motorstorm:
This game was the premier arcade racing game if you were too edgy for Ridge
Racer 7 and Gran Turismo hasn’t come out yet. It look good and plays okay. But
why in the flying fuck does a Big Rig truck control better than a fucking
motorcycle? The Motocycle makes these wide ass turns and yet the truck can get
round those corners just fine? I did like one cup in the game and gave up
because it was just too frustrating so screw this game.
· Ratchet
and Clank Future Tools of Destruction: A very fun action
platformer in which you fire cool guns and smack enemies about with a big fuck
you wrench. The typical gameplay to expect from Ratchet and Clank and their
adventures on the PlayStation 2 now in 720p HD clarity with fun mechanics and
RPG mechanics that seem to permeate in a lot of these games so as to seem
bigger and grander with Experience Point bars and Health and upgrades and shit.
I love this game and you should too.
· Ridge
Racer 7: Pretty much one of the few if not the only good game
at the launch of the PS3 and boy is this game good. A perfect refinement of the
arcade racer by the then recently merged Bandai Namco. Drifting and boosting is
a breeze with a difficulty that is normal for arcade games even if it means I
struggle to play it at times. But with true 1080p HD Graphics and good gameplay
it is a lovely experience and one of the definitive racing titles to own on the
PlayStation 3. Its fucking awesome!
· Sonic’s
Ultimate Genesis Collection: Sega several years after receiving
the biggest “L” in the history of gaming. Having realized that they could make
money off their legacy content decided to give the PS3 the ultimate Genesis
collection. I mean it’s a collection of Sega Genesis games so it is very much
not special but if you have an itch to play Phantasy Star 2 on a console that
cost Sony $900 to produce and billion in lost revenue because Ken Kutaragi
couldn’t keep the Cell Processor in his stupid fucking Bell Bottom Jenco Jeans.
It’s good but a bit gratuitous on Sega’s part.
· Sonic
Unleashed: Definitely one of the Sonic games ever made. Its
much better than Sonic ’06 so that’s good right? Nope! The game is half fun 3D
Sonic gameplay in which to press the boost button to win and half not-so-fun
Warehog gameplay in which the game attempts and then fails to be Dynasty
Warriors and would be fun if there was some of that cool “Streets of Rage”
beat-em up gameplay fun in there but sadly its just a bunch of long stages with
nary a checkpoint in sight where you beat the shit of out these alien demon
thingies with your stretchy arms. With button mashing gameplay suitable for the
NES than the high tech, high concept PlayStation 3. But hey! At least the
graphics look good? Fuck good graphics, gameplay matters more than graphics and
Sonic Unleashed has some at best weird and at worse sad gameplay. 3D Sonic
should’ve just stayed on the Dreamcast. To quote US President Donald J. Trump;
“Sad.”
· White
Knight Chronicles: A collab between Sony Computer
Entertainment and Level-5 who decided the PlayStation 3 needed a spiritual
Successor to the Dark Cloud franchise that only lasted two games and remained
only on the PlayStation 2 and thus this game was made. A great JRPG that is
actually very affordable believe it or not. With a very traditional if sanctimonious
fantasy RPG plot about a cult of evil magic people and a princess getting
kidnapped and big mecha knight suits that remind that you that yeah, Japanese
people made this. The game features a world map that’s basically the world map
from the Saturn game “Shining the Holy Ark” but with extra steps. Combat is
funny because the game can’t make its mind up if it wants to play more like
Dark Souls and be more of an Action RPG or if it wants to be Turn Based. So you
clumsily select an attack or custom made combo in one of three bars and then
wait for a circular bar to fill up and then press the X Button and much like a
cs188 video and “do it all over again.” The game is good but there is some
noticeable screen tearing if you play it on a big TV and the graphics are nice
I suppose. The Georama village building feature takes a back seat and is not
needed to advance the game but it is still nice and love these sorts of society
building sections in RPGs, mostly because
I love SimCity. The game has online multiplayer but sadly the servers were
cut down years ago and thus quests can be only done alone and you can’t share
your Georama towns that you spend so much time on. I’d say give it a try if you
can.
· Super
Rub a Dub: Now we get into the digital games and this lil’ guy
from the PSN Store is a game that demonstrates the Sixaxis motion control
features of the PS3 controller. You move a duck by tilting the controller and
you much chain together a collection of smaller rubber ducks and get them to
the drain without losing any of the them and it is very fun and the whole game
is based off a tech demo that Sony showed off in 2005/2006 so that’s nice. Its
good.
· Ricochet
HD:
Its that funky Arkanoid clone from the early 2000’s that used to be on PCs and
was fun back then and here its alright. Pretty mid by modern standards. Its so
okay it is average!
· Sonic
Adventure: The Dreamcast classic now on PSN. I mean it’s a very
good if dated game. Its good, if a bit mid by modern Sonic standards (which
doesn’t say very much).
· Daytona
USA:
An arcade perfect port in HD complete with challenges and new modes. The cars
control like ass and lacks the unlockable cars of the Saturn port. Personally I
shall stick to the Saturn version.
· Virtua
Fighter 2: Another arcade perfect HD port from Sega and sadly
you can’t give yourself infinite health like in the Saturn version and Easy
mode pretty much means that you’ll get your shit rocked by the fourth stage and
game over pretty quickly at that point. Fuck this game and fuck fighting games
for being so goddamn twitchy all the fucking time.
· Super
Stardust HD: A fun little space shooter. Its
performance is great and so is its gameplay. It’s Gucci and its awesome.
· Sonic
CD:
So when Sega released Sonic Origins, a failure of a compilation. They took down
all of the classic Sonic ports of the
Genesis games on online storefronts and yet they forgot about Sonic CD on the
PSN store on the PlayStation 3, so I snagged it and well it’s a Christian
Whitehead remaster so its super good. But at the same time it is just Sonic CD
so its not very special and once you’ve beaten the game with all the Time
Stones collected, there isn’t much else to do other than PSN Trophy hunting so
yeah that’s that I guess.
· WipeOut
HD:
Sony’s premier futuristic racer and answer to Nintendo’s mostly neglected
F-Zero and this PSN game is great if a bit challenging and a bit too fast for
my liking but is a great game nonetheless.
· Minecraft
PS3 Edition: Okay, so back when Minecraft got super
popular. Mojang teamed up with a company to make a mobile port with limited
features due to the limited specs that such hardware had and then the mobile
port was forked off into numerous different console ports, first for Xbox 360,
then for PS3, then the successor consoles and the Wii U before being ultimately
replaced by the more superior Bedrock edition which was made as a one size fits
all sort of version of Minecraft. The PS3 edition is alright and is decent
enough to scratch that Minecraft itch but sadly there are better more feature
complete version of Minecraft elsewhere so this is only there if you really really had to play Minecraft on this
machine. Other than that it’s the typical Minecraft experience that proves that
you don’t need hyper-realistic graphics to sell a game. Remember, it’s the
gameplay that matters more than anything, to quote Nintendo of American
President Reggie Fils-Amie “If its not fun, then why bother?” So yeah this is a
very good if kinda mid version of Minecraft.
So
that caps off all the games I had to talk about. If I didn’t mention a
particular games its either I don’t own it or I do own it but I either didn’t
play it or I don’t even want the game in the first place. Or I did own it and
played it like the Jak and Dexter remasters but had nothing to say about it.
Some of these games are my favorites for the platform, others are not so much.
But I tend to buy the games I want to play and I feel are good enough games to
be put into my personal collection of retro games. So this concludes this
section and now let’s get into the next section, shall we?
PERSONAL
EXPERIENCES
Unlike my history with
the PlayStation 2 or the Nintendo Wii, my personal experience with the
PlayStation 3 was a bit of a detached one. I remember many, many years ago, perhaps at the launch of
the PS3 or maybe the year after (which may also be plausible). My mom had
bought my dad a 60 GB fat model PlayStation 3 complete with the PS2 backwards
compatibility. My mom complained of how expensive that purchase was in front of
us and now knowing the original MSRP of the damn thing she was right.
Right then and there, me
and my brother wanted a Wii, so my mom took the both of us to the Best Buy in
Framingham and bought a Wii which was weird since there was a bit of a shortage
when the two consoles were launched so how we managed to snag both consoles at
the same time was beyond me, perhaps a rare sign of luck in my life or just
another one of those happy coincidences that just sort of happens in life.
For the next few years I
would spend more time with the Nintendo Wii then I had with the PlayStation 3.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have any experience with it at all. I’d watch my
dad play Motorstorm and some Sega Rally game I remember him having, and when
Grand Theft Auto IV came out, me and my brother would watch him do all the
mission and I remember the graphics being quite nice but at the time I was
still very much invested in my Thomas Wooden Railway toys to really care about
gaming all that much.
It wasn’t until the late
2000’s and early 2010’s did I ever get into gaming but due to my exposure to
the now completely shit Angry Video Game Nerd. I got an NES and later a Genesis
and Sega CD model 2 unit. But that PS3 was still there in our partially finished
basement. Whenever I did play it, I was sick and would play “SpongeBob
Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom” on it and the occasional PS1 game. I
would sit and watch my family play Rock Band together, my dad had gotten all
the plastic instruments and even the little optional cymbal attachments. Every
weekend my dad and my brother would watch new episodes of Top Gear on the PS3
since at the time you could buy movies and episodes of TV shows on the PSN
store and while it would take some years before I got interested in Top Gear
and its three funny and charming hosts.
Sometimes I’d try “Call
of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” with my brother and he’d rock my shit in it and I
decided right then and there that First Person Shooters sucked and sucked even
harder on console and wouldn’t change my mind for ten years and even then I
still sucked at those types of games on console. I would use it for SpongeBob
from time to time until 2014 when things began to change.
2014 was the year that
started a seven year run of constant and turbulent change. 2014 was the year my
parents divorced and thus I shared residence between my dad’s house and my
mom’s apartment in Natick. It was really tough and at the time I was in a 5-day
a week residential placement at Reed Academy, a special needs program in
Framingham right over by Callahan State Park, which my therapist at the time
called the state park “Dogshit Mountain” for all the people who’d take their
dogs there and leave their dog’s shit by the side of the pathway. I stopped
using the PS3 and within the next few years, my dad would throw out all the
Rock Band instrument controllers and the PS3 was used more so for movie nights
with my dad.
But over the years before
I turned 18 and thus would stop bouncing between houses. My relationship with
my father grew strained and came to a breaking point in which I had to have a
mediated conversation with him with a clinician I had at the time. From then
on, I’d spent weekends at my grandparents. In 2016 I moved to Upton, a wooded
town with little to do without a driver’s license and a car. With my mom
forbidding me from driving with various bullshit excuses, my rather mobile life
had come to a screeching halt. Forever confined to my house with nary a thing
to do except make RPG Maker games and tend to my growing retro gaming
collection. I’d leave Reed Academy in 2016 to join Accept and only to be kicked
out by the end of summer of 2017. A decline in mental health resulted my
internment in what could only described as Jamaican Retard Auschwitz, the
venerable special needs prison, known simply as the Devereux Foundation. There
I’d stay with occasional visits and off campus trips keeping me tethered to the
real world. I’d stay there from 2018 to 2020.
In March of 2020, I and
many others were forsaken by that rat bastard Charlie Baker when he closed down
the state and Devereux shut itself off from the world beyond. Devereux for the
next few months would become a dark twisted shit joke of a simulation of North
Korea with a pang of Iran for good measure.
I stayed there, every
night when a kid would scream and get restrained or that fecal incontinent
manchild P.J. would break into the kitchen or office to steal shit in-between
moments of him pissing and shitting himself or masturbating in front of all us
because fuck you, that’s what! Soon,
a large autistic person named Jacob, a man so large and corpulent he had the
forehead of a beluga whale. One day he threatened to sexually assault me, my
friend Ayden sounded the alarm and I told staff and my mother. Staff rewarded
me by separating me from Ayden and putting me on a temporary separation with
Jacob the fuckhead degenerate.
My mother tried to get a
straight story but three separate staff told her three separate stories.
Showing that Devereux was a force not to be trusted my mom called me and within
24 hours I was rescued from the hellhole called Devereux with no help from the
Shemale Jamaican Schutzstaffel prison guard proving that such Caribbean
jackasses have no heart, can’t imagine why my mom and stepdad like going there
knowing full well that the women there bully special needs people regardless of
age and social disposition.
That summer was spent in
trauma recovery mode, every night was a nightmare of being stuck in a program
that had no care or love for its residents. The summer of 2020, I rediscovered
my love for the PlayStation 2 and soon had expanded the collection by a large
amount and grew fond of games like Dark Cloud and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
2021 was the last year of
major shocking change when I moved into a grouphome. By now my dad’s PS3 had
suffered the Yellow Light of Death after being put into ownership of my younger
second brother. My first brother then took ownership and now it exists purely
in pieces waiting for the time and funds to be found to repair it into working
order. But that younger brother had obtained a slim model PlayStation 3 and one
day in early 2022, took it to my mom’s house. I watched as my two brothers
nailed each other in Call of Duty 4 and then for shits and giggles decided to
look at the list of downloads in the PS3 as my youngest brother was using my
dad’s old PSN account. The nostalgia became overwhelming for me and only made
me want a PS3, to relive the days in which things were simpler and less shit.
Where my adult responsibilities and freedoms were only a thought that would’ve
sounded nice at the time but at my current juncture a fallacy of freedom,
chained to grouphomes and geriatric non-verbal assholes.
The impetus to obtain a
PS3 was hard to ignore and soon I scraped together the funds and items to trade
in at a shop called “Game Underground” in Waltham on the outskirts of Boston. I
came home with a PS3 and a copy of “Call of Duty: World at War”. The next two
months I enjoyed that console very much, download my Lac Megantic mixtape CD
songs to the console, downloading and purchasing both digital and disc based
games and I was having a blast until I grew bored of it. That summer was hard
between a trip to Florida going south both literally and figuratively and
obtaining COVID-19 it was tough going. I didn’t really rekindle an interest in
the PlayStation 3 until October.
From there it caused a
runaway retreat to a past that I could never recover. I grew sad and depressed.
The world around me was crumbling, COVID-19 raged like a Californian wildfire.
The War in Ukraine was slowly destabilizing the international order of things,
even previous years with the capital raid and the fall of Afghanistan and the
sudden and large failure of the War on Terror with the terrorists winning as if
it was a big 20-year long game of Counterstrike. The 2020’s was an awful decade,
but the PlayStation 2 and now the PlayStation 3 helped me see back to a time of
old. Sure the 2000’s were bookended by 9/11 and the Great Recession but I’d
take a missing skyscraper or two and the housing market bubble popping over
whatever the fuck this shit is now.
I wanted to go back, I
wanted to see the PS2 and PS3 in their prime. I wanted to see the old boy bands
and the old techno/Eurodance artists be relevant again. I want to experience
the edgy and snot green 2000’s all over again but this time a little older and
more experienced. But time is a linear piece of rabbit shit and wanted to go
back. Life sucks and I wanted to just go back and see that time and culture all
over again.
For three days in
November of 2022, I remained sad and broken. But there was that PS3 Super Slim
in a cubby hole on my desk. It mocked me with its cheap black corrugated
plastic disk tray cover. Its zombified online feature, a PSN Store that is
slowly falling apart and will soon meet its demise. Games long forgotten and memories
and experiences expunged like a document from the fucking SCP Foundation. But
no matter what it stayed there with the allure of games from a time where 1080p
was greater than great and when Sony meant something. Where you could actually
buy consoles in stores and not from a scalper’s online storefront. That goddamn
fucking console stood there was a horizontally placed monolith. Why did it
forsaken itself, why did it forsaken me, why did I forsaken myself? For three
fucking days I sat there, grappling with it all.
But on that fourth day, I
found the courage to return to my daily life. But the PlayStation 3, with its
memories of an age long gone. My want to return to a better simpler time of
Shrek and SpongeBob and Darude Sandstorm and Crazy Frog.
Today my personal
experiences with the PlayStation 3 remain almost as complex as the religious
and political situation in the Middle East. It was about nostalgia of the past,
an era of gaming now forgotten, a time of excitement and unknowns now known.
These were my experiences thick and thin, and that’s what I had to say about
that shit.
CONCLUSIONS
We had gone over
everything together. From the history of how the PlayStation 3 came to be and
how it lived a life of financial compromise and redemption only to find a peak
shortly before its ultimate replacement came and confined it to four years of
irrelevance and kids and sports games until its discontinuation in 2017.
We looked at the hardware
and the peaks and valleys of console design. We looked at a large amount of
software and why I liked some, loved others, and the few I disliked. The
hardware and software was what made the console what it is and how years later,
people and collectors begin to redefine their opinions of the system as we slowly
approach its 20th year anniversary in winter of 2026, by then the
United States will enter a new presidential election in which everything will
go to shit and the nation will barely survive its 250th birthday
before crumbling into a right wing dictatorship reminiscent of the one in Iran.
We took a look at my
personal experiences with the console from my youth of joy and ignorant bless
to my less ignorant but tragic adulthood of misappropriated time and energy.
From the days of yore to the final days of the world being the same as it ever
was.
The PlayStation 3 will be
in my top five consoles of all time next to its predecessor and the Wii, in the
same list as the Nintendo Switch and the Sega Saturn for reason too complex to
explain as to why the last one was there. Thank for you the journey that was
this paper. Thank you for your time.
