Case File: The Mystique of the PS3 Exclusive

I find that I read the following dialogue (or a paraphrasing of the same) way too often on the PinoyPS boards:

Noob: Hi, you l33t haxxor motherfuckers! I'm new to this PS3 thing, what games should I get?

Lovable PPS member: Oh, that's easy, pal. Just get all the PS3 exclusives, except for (insert exceptionally bad title here, usually Lair/Haze or something else to that effect)

HAZE! Being used to scare small children into behaving since 2008.
"Sige ka, kung ayaw mong tumahimik... ibibili kita ng HAZE!!!!"
"Wag po, wag po!"

I have nothing against this view - some of the people who dispense this advice are my friends/trading partners, after all, and are people whose opinions I highly respect - but is this really a 100% solid buying recommendation to make? Simply snap up the PS3 exclusives (EXCEPT LAIR AND HAZE!) and you're good to go?

Let's take a look at six of the usual suspects (taking into consideration how much you can get them for nowadays), and some non-exclusive alternatives you can get for the same price or less.

(Please note that a lot of these games are actually quite GOOD -- some of them I even included in my 2009 top ten. What I'm trying to show here is that there may be superior alternatives for the same amount of money.)

Killzone 2

At what price, graphics? Killzone 2 is an absolute visual monster, eating most PS3 games alive (with a few notable exceptions, like the pushing-dangerously-close-to-photographic Uncharted 2: Among Thieves), but gameplay-wise I can't honestly say that this is better that either of the Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty games. True, it's still a GREAT game, and this might be a good choice for a new PS3 owner who wants to show off some current-gen power (especially if they have an HDTV) but in terms of how it plays it's no contest - the aiming mechanic is less user-friendly and the multiplayer isn't anywhere near as good. It doesn't help that the best part of Modern Warfare is easily the multiplayer component (which is something you can't get on a modded Xbox 360 due to the XBL permabans for modding) - if you haven't played either, you have to keep things like these in mind when making a decision.

Heavenly Sword

This hasn't aged well, at all.

Ninja Theory's somewhat controversial exclusive PS3 actioner has long had the PS3 audience pretty much divided. Some people love it because of its delightful art direction and intense, Lord of the Rings-level epicness. Some people hate it because of its incredibly brief length and God of War-cloned hack-and-slash gameplay. I'm personally on the side of the people who hate it, but I can understand where the people who love it are coming from. Here's the beef, though: mostly due to the fact that not too many people actually BOUGHT it (partly because of its notorious shortness, and partly because the PS3 install base was so small back then) there arent too many copies in circulation... which of course means that HS' resale value has held up remarkably well over time. The question is, are you buying the game for collection purposes or for pure enjoyment? If you fall into the latter category, you could arguably just add a couple hundred bucks and get a brand new copy of Dante's Inferno.

InFamous

I wish this was as exciting as it looks.

HEY! Don't give me that raised eyebrow!

Yeah, I know that I've been hard on inFamous in the past. I still have a great deal of respect for Sucker Punch, and I'm (pretty) confident that they'll fix things up in inFamous 2 (which has reportedly been in development for quite some time). Going back to the first game, though, I know I wasn't alone in my indictment of the title - while the story was pretty entertaining and the wide-open, no-loading city remains a remarkable technical achievement, more than a few people took issue with the constant repetition of the side missions you had to do in between major jobs. For a "new" PS3 gamer who's just beginning to build their library, it could be argued that fellow open-world genre titles Red Faction: Guerilla or Saints Row 2 probably give more variety and gameplay bang for the buck, with the added benefit of costing even less than a 2H copy of inFamous.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift

There's no question that Pacific Rift is a great, great game - fun in multiplayer AND single player, with more replay value than you can shake a stick at. However, it's misleading to say that this is a game you can recommend to just anybody, as the title by its very nature is a niche product - the overwhelming majority of people who play racing games prefer track/road racers like Forza and Need For Speed, and the market for "extreme" racing, with the high jumps and environmental hazards is comparatively small. Unless you're already a fan of said subgenre, a much better "general" recommendation for a first time PS3 user is EA's exemplary Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box. A ridiculous amount of stuff to do, plenty of variety, and the best sense of speed ever demonstrated in a racing game, all at a bargain price (you can get a non-Ultimate Box version of Burnout Paradise for almost nothing, as it's positively ancient).

Folklore

Looks trippy? It is, and pleasingly so.
It's also a terrible, terrible game.

I don't think I've ever seen a game go from "eagerly anticipated" to "get out of my sight" so fast in my life. As some of you may know, I traded away my first copy of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction for a copy of this game (I was new to the PPSX trading scene at the time), and the tears of blood I cried after the fact will remain in my memory forever. While there are definitely positive aspects to Folklore (the concept is solid, collecting monsters can be somewhat fun, and the graphic style is nice in a trippy, I'm-so-high-right-now kind of way), the laundry list of negatives is overwhelming: the story is all over the map and very difficult to understand, the translation was obviously rushed, the camera AND the control are clunky, and the role-playing elements are so light/non-existent that it's embarassing to even call it an RPG (despite the classification on the back of the box clearly saying "RPG"). To a new guy looking for some level-up action, I would honestly recommend any other PS3 RPG over this (even the bad/mediocre ones, like Cross Edge and Eternal Sonata) because all of them have substantially greater RPG elements than this substantially flawed PS3 exclusive.

Now THAT'S a PS3 exclusive.

All that said, it IS true that a pretty good amount of PS3 exclusives are truly worth giving unqualified recommendations (Metal Gear Solid 4, both Uncharted games, LittleBigPlanet, and to people who can understand SRPG's, Valkyria Chronicles) so there's still a fair amount of merit to picking up exclusives. I'm just saying that new members of our current-gen Sony community shouldn't just blindly whip out their wallets when the term comes around...

Unless of course, you have a jacked, non-RROD 360 that you can use to play said non-Sony locked titles for cheap. (ahem)

If so, go right ahead and snap up those exclusives! Only on PlayStation, indeed!