Rumours circulating suggest that backwards compatibility is going to be a cornerstone of the promotion for the upcoming successor to the Playstation 4, which of course gets a massive thumbs up from me! The most successful games of the PS3 era have since been re-released or remastered for the PS4, but I want to talk about some of the unsung heroes who deserved another go on current-gen hardware, but have had to wait until the next generation.
This list is definitely going to be very personal to me, so please let me know your choices in the comments and on Twitter @MaliceVER
If you’ve heard of or played this game before (and not through me) then you truly are a rare specimen. I loved this game and its sequels, and have played it fairly recently on PS3 and still enjoyed it and the comedy it provides. If you’ve not experienced it yet, and like the idea of a comedy centred button-bashing game then you should absolutely try it out if you still have access to a PS3.
The main reason I want this on current / next-gen is so I can use the share button to annoy everyone I know with my favourite clips from it to wear them down until they purchase and play it for themselves. ‘Against my better judgement, I’ll get you that tank!’.
The grand daddy of rage who would make even old school Greek God slaying Kratos consider anger management, coupled with the cult following this game has accrued, the fact Asura’s Wrath doesn’t already exist on current-gen baffles me. Played in an episodic format, split into three chapters (four with the DLC, but we’ll get to that), Asura’s Wrath isn’t the first to utilise this idea but is certainly the most fun to do so.
The over the top boss battles, from Gongen Wyzen who is larger than the size of the planet you fight him on, to Augus whose fight starts on the moon and involves him stabbing through Asura AND the planet itself with his impossibly large extending sword. The absolute madness and likeable, memorable characters this game displays constantly are just a couple of reasons why I played through it so, so many times.
The reason this game has soured in the mouths of many who played it was because the game seems to wind down and end, only for it to be revealed that the last quarter of the game is hidden behind a steep (at the time) pay wall as downloadable content. This was later revealed to be the case as the developers were holding off on some content for a sequel, that failed to get green lit, but was nonetheless a terrible move that harmed this games standing in video game history.
The Playstation 3’s best launch title, though that’s not hard as Lair totally sucked and Motorstorm was average at best (OK fine, Resistance: Fall of Man was great too). While this game did rely too heavily on the Sixaxis controls gimmick, the Dualshock 4 controller is more than capable of supporting this aspect of it.
Rumours of a sequel to this title circulated for many years, but at time of writing, nothing concrete has been announced and so it appears the plans for it may have been abandoned. Regardless of that I believe this game would sell very well if ported to a newer console, and if a sequel ever does happen, would lay the necessary groundwork for the follow-up to succeed.
This game was very very buggy, so much to the point that I got over halfway through it and a bug blocking a character dialogue prompt prevented me from getting any further. However, if they would only patch the damn thing, it would be a great official Lord of the Rings franchise game to appear on current hardware.
What I did play of this title, I loved. You choose the race of character you’ll play as when starting a new game (man, elf or dwarf), and I chose to play as the dwarf, Farin, as who doesn’t love using an axe in games? The combat was intuitive enough that you couldn’t just tank all enemy hits, even on the easiest difficulty, and had to use strategic ranged attacks and frequent dodges to stay one step ahead of the enemies at all times.
With (probably) very little tweaking, this game would be a great addition to any console roster, and it is a crying shame this game didn’t receive the support it greatly needed after its original release in 2011.
Aside from a couple fiddly and vexing puzzles, this game was a masterpiece that I must have played through 10+ times. The combat combination between the cross and scythe was incredibly fun, and I always enjoyed the brutal combat and sometimes disturbing environments that the game was set in.
Name me one other game who can boast that their opening boss fight is with Death, wielding a giant scythe made of bone. You can’t, and the fight is amazing to watch and play.
The small cast of characters were great to watch too, and I have to give props to Lucifer (voiced by John Vickery) for his stellar performance as the Devil Himself. I used his ‘the faithful has lost the faith’ speech as the opening for my Galactic Pollution EP, as (even taken out of its original context) it’s an incredibly badass speech, and is yet another reason why this game deserves the Playstation 4 / 5 treatment.
As I said at the start, this list is personal to me, but I definitely want to hear your picks in the comments and on Twitter @MaliceVER. Why not also follow @RespawningUK next time you’re on Twitter, and you can listen to the afore-mentioned Galactic Pollution on my YouTube channel, Void Euphoric Records.
Thanks for reading, I’m outta here!