Video game review: 5 essential bargain bin games for the Playstation 3

As dedicated gamers, my family and I run through an alarming number of video game titles in any given year. Online and retail outlets encourage buyers to trade in old games for store credit, creating a healthy recycling ecosystem. The stores make money with this racket, of course, but the practice also brings down prices for the buyer, particularly if you like to feed at the bottom of the food chain: older games.

In this edition of the bargain bin chronicles (we previously recommended 5 bargain bin Wii games), we recommend five older games for the PlayStation 3 that can be picked up online or in stores for under $10. These are games that have survived the brutal Darwinian culling of trade-in deals to earn a permanent spot on the shelf.

Disney Interactive has a solid track record for making movie tie-in games that are much better than they strictly need to be. Such is the case with “Cars 2,” a very good game spun off from a very mediocre movie.

Essentially a cartoon racer in the spirit of “Mario Kart,” the game earns bonus points for offering a half-dozen different modes that play out like mini-games in and of themselves. Players choose from 25 cars from the franchise (Lightning McQueen is, of course, the fastest) then compete in split screen on various racetracks and arenas set in exotic locales.

Set in postwar Los Angeles circa 1947, “L.A. Noire” takes the free-roam crime drama of “Grand Theft Auto” and threads it into a stunningly accurate approximation of Hollywood film noir movies. The game was an enormous critical and commercial success upon release in 2011.

For fans of the classic noir genre, this game is a must-play. It’s like being dropped into a Raymond Chandler novel where you control all the action. Dialogue and voice acting are topnotch, and the designers have populated their virtual world with accurate and era-specific architecture, apparel and sound design. Highly recommended.

Another successful spin-off game from Disney/Pixar, “Toy Story 3” might be the single best movie tie-in game ever made. That’s largely because it’s quite literally two games in one. Legend holds that, during development, Disney had competing design teams working in parallel with the idea of following through on the stronger idea.

Both ideas were so good that they threw everything into the final game. As such, “Toy Story 3” is both an open-world sandbox game and a series of interactive adventures based on scenes from the film. The result is endless replayability, with outstanding level design and an infinite virtual toybox for the kids.

An arcade racer with an action-movie twist, “Split/Second” imagines a future reality TV show where racers must drive their souped-up cars through massive demolition zones as everything explodes all around them.

As you might expect, it makes for some white-knuckle moments on the steering wheel. Things get blown up real good. “Split/Second” generates a real sense of rumbling verisimilitude as you dodge collapsing buildings, falling airliners and runaway trains at 150 mph.

My vote for the best PS3 game ever released, “The Last of Us” presents a sophisticated (dare I say literary?) approach to the venerable zombie apocalypse game. If you like the artier end of speculative fiction – novels like Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One” – you’ll want to experience this video game.

As with “L.A. Noire,” the designers here have created an immersive virtual world in an established area of genre fiction. “The Last of Us” takes things to the next level, with rich characterizations and an original story line that explores complex themes and ethical dilemmas. Also, the zombies are scary.

This story was originally published May 10, 2017 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Video game review: 5 essential bargain bin games for the Playstation 3."