It's Critter Time!

This was the first console I ever bought with my own money, and the second console I ever owned (first being the Sega Master System).



The PlayStation 3 launched in 2006 and boy, was it a rough launch. After riding the high of the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, the PS3 had a really rough launch by being overpriced, not having games (PS3 HAS NO GAEMS) and being eaten alive by Xbox 360 (while both were eaten by the Wii). We also had the big PSN outage that lasted 24 days in 2011!

By the time the PS4 was ready to launch, it felt like the PS3 was in an overall better place, but boy, did it feel like a humbling moment for Sony.

For me, I enjoyed the PS3, but boy oh boy do I hate running it. Slow load times, the controller feels like it's lighter than the feather Anubis uses on his scale, installing anything digitally is a massive pain. I think the older this system gets, the more frustrating it's going to be to play on original hardware.

What are your favorite PS3 games? I actually enjoyed the Last of Us back in the day and played a lot of BlazBlue on it. It also has Nier: Gestalt, one of my favorite games of all time. And let's not forget Metal Gear Solid 4, which is STILL somehow stuck on this system.

My Dad bought it at launch for full price
Pretty much just used it as an overbuilt DVD/Blueray player honestly

I am interested in trying its catalogue though, specifically Armored Core For Answer and Demon Souls

And for fun I want to mention the Condor Cluster, a Supercomputer built by the United States Airforce that's just 1,760 PS3s linked together and running Linux. Was the 33rd most powerful Supercomputer when it was built and cost only 1/10th the price of building an equivalent Supercomputer from scratch

EcoHound wrote: Fri Jul 18, 2025 3:09 pmArmored Core For Answer

You rang?

I always loved how dynamic the XMB's default theme was, it will actually change colour and brightness depending on the month and the time of day. The transparent glass icons, the little beepy sounds, all the little design choices makes it feel so alive, makes me sad the XMB never really "took off" outside of the PS3.

I'm still surprised people claim the RetroArch's menus are trying to look like the Nintendo Switch's when I've always thought they were emulating the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable's XMB.

I kinda miss PlayStation Home, if only for all the IREM representation within, also.

Ahhh yes the PS3, while the PS2 was my first console and PC being where I started playing games, my bread and butter was the PS3. It had so many ups and downs, but it was something that fills me with so many memories. I do guess we do have to declare it retro now, dear god. ..w..;;

First got my PS3 back in 2008, and I believe it came bundled with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Killzone 2 but I also acquired the Ratatouille movie tie-in game and The Simpsons Game, which is...Quite the interesting choice to pick for getting on a new console, but I was quite young, and I was enthusiastic to get the latter two games purely for the fact that I remember watching Let's Plays of the games. While I had them already on PS2, these were one of those games at the time where the next gen version was developed in a very different way due to hardware differences, to the point that they both got my attention to grab them and consider the time worth spending completing them both again...I was an easy-to-entertain child, to say the least. ::B

The other standout memory during my time with the PS3 was that it was the first time I actually began to play games online! Back in I believe early 2010, my Dad brought up this Ethernet cable from work that I was able to connect from the router, all along the floor of the house and right to the PS3 in my room (Yes, this was a horrific tripping hazard, and it stuck around for more than half a decade, even when there was complaints... --w--;;). I recall greatly that the first game I had tried and fully committed to playing when I got internet access was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), and I sunk so many hours into it. If I recall, I think there's a video that my Dad recorded of me on that first day of mes playing it (I remember specifically I was playing on the map Wasteland, and was using the FAMAS from one of default starting class (Specifically the second default starting class, I remember this too well, lol.).). I think after that, when Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 came out, I spent so much time with it, and I kind of pine for those days just cause of how straightforward the games were (Though obviously would rather not bring back the gaming culture of that time, amazing I avoided that aspect during my time, LOL.).

There were so many other moments that I could ramble off about (I was literally typing a whole arse paragraph of how the game Journey was kind of responsible for me getting my first forums and finding my first proper friends groups, but I felt like it would've strayed a bit too far from the intention of the thread, fassfaafsafs ..w..;;) but it is a console that I feel really hit an interesting stride, especially cause it felt like it was the last gen before things started getting really weird with the industry.

Beyond this, I think some other notable favourites of mine was the Uncharted Trilogy, specifically 2 and 3 just cause they were waaaay more well designed, Grand Theft Auto 4 for the story and characters, The Mass Effect Trilogy just cause of good dumb, RPG space opera, and The Saboteur, cause doing Just Cause in World War II as an Irishmen can never be any less entertaining. ::B

I would say MGS4 is there as a fav, but boy, do I have such polarising feelings towards it, that makes me love and hate it at the same time. XXD

my brothers and I had a PS3 back in the day, but we were *huge* Nintendo simps during that time, so we definitely didn't use it to its fullest potential back then, which I do kinda regret >_> (though I do regret being even worse during the Wii U/PS4 era, because I missed out on really cool shit like Horizon Zero Dawn and FF7 Remake at the time...)

I still wanna play Metal Gear Solid 4 and both Tales of Xillia games at some point, which are all currently still stuck on the PS3.

as for the games we did have, I remember playing Bionic Commando Rearmed 1 and Rocket Knight on it. Bionic Commando Rearmed kicked ass, and I replayed that one on PC last year! Meanwhile, Rocket Knight felt weirdly slow, and I also wasn't really vibing with the artstyle.

To me, the PS3 alongside the Vita was the last time Sony made supremely cool hardware. I feel like them over-correcting from their issues is partially what got us into our current situation with console gaming.

But yeah, despite the rocky launch, I really like the PS3. Weirdly I think it spent the most time as my go-to for playing PS1 titles for awhile? It's also kinda STILL my go-to for playing Blu Rays.

I remember my Dad getting a PS3 at the same time as getting a Plasma TV, because he wanted to have a Blu-Ray player for it, and that was the cheapest option. This's around 2007 or 2008, I forgot which year.

We only ever really used it for Blu-Rays, and eventually the PlayTV adapter it had, so that we could use it as a DVR. It was an astonishingly good piece of both software and hardware.

Ironically, we never really ended up playing that many games on it. I only got the one or two games a year, even as an older teenager, and I truly didn't know what was "good" or in my interests on the PS3. And life wasn't so good for me then anyway. Still, I kind of wish we got Final Fantasy XIII at the time just to see what the heck all the fuss was about. I never got around to doing that game.

I ended up with my own PS3 independently at some point, but I never wound up with a controller for it. I don't know where I can get one, and its disc drive has seen better days. There's ways to play games without the discs, but I wouldn't have the foggiest where to buy a new good controller. There is some games I'd like to play through on it someday.