Could you imagine owning a PS2 and never having played Shadow of the Colossus? Or a GTA: Vice City? Ha ha. That’d be dumb. Well, if you have a PS3 — if you’re moving into the PS4 era — without having played Puppeteer, you’ve made a big mistake that you need to fix posthaste.
Puppeteer is (mostly) a sidescroller. It came out late last year. You can play it solo or co-op. I don’t think many people bought it. And, truth be told, it’s not perfect. It’s got a bit too much talking and has some odd difficulty spikes.
But!
Just look, will you? Here’s a smattering of late-game action that will not at all ruin your ability to love this game:
Puppeteer is beautiful, constantly. It boasts a fine new gameplay idea: the hero propelling himself through parts of the game world using giant scissors to cut through parts of the landscape (or his enemies) that are made of cloth. The whole game is presented as a play, complete with its “actors” breaking the fourth wall to address the audience. It is smart, funny, well-written.
See?
It’s wonderful.
Puppeteer came out right as the world was going on and on about Grand Theft Auto V. Hell, that’s why I’m telling you about it again now. I was loving the game last September and that got pulled away by GTA V and other bigger games and then those new consoles. It’s a damn shame. But, just yesterday, I went back and finished Puppeteer, capturing the footage you can see in this post.
My god, this game is amazing. Its visuals are great, but even that didn’t help Puppeteer last fall. It’s too bad, but so it goes. In years of new console hardware, everyone gets distracted talking about next-gen graphics while ignoring the artistry of an old-gen masterpiece. (In that respect, the game is very similar to another artistically incredible “old-tech” sidescroller, the magnificent Kirby’s Epic Yarn).
Find a copy. Play it. It’s $US30-40! Here’s an Amazon link, if that helps — full disclosure, our parent company makes a cut if you buy it there. Or buy it through GameStop. Or Wal-Mart. Wherever. It doesn’t matter. I mean, you can just download it right now right to your PS3. I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed.
To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.
Comments
24 responses to “The PS3 Game You Have To Play (But Probably Didn’t)”
I tried the demo and just didn’t get into it. Didn’t hate it, but didn’t like it enough to warrant a purchase. Might give it another look if it’s on sale sometime. Or maybe it’ll show up on PS+ at some point.
I picked this up on a recent PSN sale for $7! I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but it looks gorgeous.
Aw man, $7? That sounds like the kind of price I’d like to play. Guess I can just wait till that kind of sale comes round again.
Well it was a tiny bit of a hassle to get it. It was $7 on the US PSN, with a US PS+ subscription. There was a sale on for US Playstation Plus at the time too, so it was enough of an impetus to set it up. Glad I have now though, prices are a fair bit better on the US store.
Yeah I recently dipped into doing that. I picked up puppeteer $7 wolf among us $13 and tales of xillia $10. The most ridiculous thing about it was the aus psn store had puppeteer marked down to $20 and xillia for $50 during the same time span.
I remember being very interested in this, but didn’t realise that it ever came out. Fine, I guess I’ll have to check it out now.
Well to be honest it was made by Japan Studio (owned by Sony) so it will probably be on ps+ in a few months in my opinion.
it sits atop my pile of shame. it’s literally next.
Hello..
Never playing it?? This is the first time I’ve ever heard of it.
Youtube. Go. Now. Then run to your local game retailer and get the HD Collection for PS3.
Oh I definitely checked it before posting this. Looks pretty good, Guessing it plays similar to god of war?
Not really. The only thing they have remotely in common would probably be climbing the colossi.
*Gasps in horror*
You, sir, have well earned your monicker.
:O GET OUT!!!
Heh, I jest. But no it isn’t like GoW, it is blindingly simple in it’s delivery and yet epic at the same time. A true gem
I may well have to check it out then! I just started skyrim again though, so there’s just that one small obstacle standing in the way at the moment :/
Its a game with a cult following. Definately overhyped. It has some elements which are cool, but ultimately the game fails on execution. Very pretty, and Zelda could learn a lot from it.
Even if I was give this for free, I couldbt be bothered.
Shadow of the Colossus is bad, in many ways – terrible game
Ha! Terrible opening gambit. I wanted to play Shadow of the Colossus since PS2, finally did on PS3 & was underwhelmed. Ico is still great!
I think it was rather foolish of the developers to release this for the PS3 and not the Wii U. We, the Nintendo folk love this quirky, artsy, colourful stuff, not to mention, platformers. PS3’s player base is full of dudebros that wouldn’t dream of playing this kind of stuff in-between their sessions of tea-bagging opponents in the latest gritty FPS game for fear of being seen as childish.
I guess they were playing a risky bet hoping to entice the LBP players, but I really haven’t heard much about that niche as of late.
The none “dude bro” PS3 demographic is probably the same as the WiiU install base, but?
Also, teabaggin’ is pretty great. Helps break up the grittiness, you know?
There’s a lot more quirky, artsy stuff on the PS3 than on on the Wii & Wii U. And it’s been pretty successful there as well.
Flow, Flower, Journey, LBP, LBP2 (thereby demonstrating the first was successful), Mod Nation Racers (thereby demonstrating that PS players do actually have standards), EyePet, all the PixelJunk games, Noby Noby Boy, Guacamelee, Tumble, Rock of Ages… that’s just the stuff I can see on initial glance through my library. Plus Tearaway on Vita (also a story-based platformer with some interesting mechanics.)
Part of that’s Sony deliberately encouraging indie titles. Part of it is that their library in general is huge, since they’ve done a lot more work with third parties than Nintendo has.
The main issue with Puppeteer is that it came out simultaneously with the push for PS4 and as such has had no publicity to speak of.
Now, it’s true that Wii and Wii U is better known for platformers. There are the Mario games, and… the other Mario games. Then there are the games with characters from the Mario universe. The 3DS has a lot more variety in the quirk department. (Seriously, I’m trying to think of non-Mario platformers for the Wii U and coming up blank. Googling “wii u platform games” comes up with Mario, Luigi and a bunch of cross-platform titles.)
Robust response. As for a third-party platformer for the Wii U, there’s Rayman.
Was interested in this from the first time I saw it. Played the demo when it was available. Bought it on Boxing Day. Platinum a week later 😀