The 50 Best Video Games To Download From PSN

Love it or hate it (or have just never heard of it), Noby Noby Boy deserves a spot (albeit a high one) on the the list for its sheer oddity. As the extendable caterpillar-like Boy, you have to help Girl stretch across the length of the universe, which is dependent on syncing up your personal interactions in NNB's aimless game world with the rest of the world. Uh, yeah.

Ah, Battlefield-you'll barely recognize this WWII class-based multiplayer shooter after the bombast of the series' third (main) entry. But it's still fun.

With games like Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, Tim Schafer has more than proven his prowess at making weird, interesting games-Costume Quest takes the dress-up of Halloween and puts it into a lite job-class RPG. Cute.

Before Capcom seemingly turned their back on Blue Bomber fans with the death of Mega Man Legends 3 (and confusingly tried to make amends to some degree with the recently released PC-only Mega Man vs. Street Fighter), Mega Man 9 was the best kind of fan service players could ask for: hardcore, traditional and tough as nails. Still a great retro revival.

Arguably Michael Ancel's finest hour (until Rayman Origins, anyway), Beyond Good and Evil puts you in the role of a photojournalist that, in an interesting gameplay twist, must expose widespread government corruption in this Zelda-esque adventure. Where's the sequel?

A darkly comic racing puzzler, this one forces a tough balance between killing off hordes of Swarmites and letting enough survive to make it through the checkpoint in an industrial hell wasteland. It's even got a wonderfully twisted sense of humor.

Though it's sure to be easily outclassed by The Last of Us, Ubisoft's take on survivalist design after a terrible cataclysm is eerie and fascinating for its surprisingly (mostly) mature themes. If that wasn't enough, conserving your stamina and ammo (seriously, if you've got more than a bullet or two for your pistol you're doing great) is a constant challenge. I Am Alive definitely makes you feel desperation.

Don't expect Shank to be anything like Klei's follow-up Mark of the Ninja; despite the visual similarities, this one trades on brawling ultra-violence rather than the straight stealth. A good alternative for sneaking around in the shadows.

If you ever wondered what would happen if you mixed Icaruga with a Metroidvania-style design, Outland is the answer. Crazy polarity puzzles and stark, colorful art direction make this one really stand out.

Outside of the four-player arcade only Pac Man Battle Royale, Championship Edition DX is probably the ultimate version of Pac Man. What more do you need to know?

A successor to Contra in every way but its name, Hard Corp is what you'd probably imagine Konami's classic hardcore shooter series would be like as an anime. We won't complain.

For those of us who prefer old-school tomb raiding, Guardian of Light is a nice throwback-style adventure. Though the game was showcased for co-op, every puzzle in the game was also designed to be played solo as well, with different solutions.

If you like your Golden Axe-style hack-and-slash soaked in surrealism, Castle Crashers offers just the right kind of freakish fever dream. Half the time you can't even see your character, there's so much insanity happening on-screen. Did we mention there's four-player co-op?

Way of the Samurai has often added unique perspective to common tropes of the setting-in this case you're dealing with burgeoning Japanese expansion in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, British political trade relations and oddly fetishized violence. Think of it as the low-budget Yakuza.

Ever wonder what the world would be like if you had to splatter paint all over its blank canvas? No? Well, Unfinished Swan is noteable for its art direction alone.

One of the best match-threes out there, Super Puzzle Fighter pits chibi (baby-like) Street Fighter and Darkstalkers fighters against each other with penalty block combos and a whole lot of insanity.

Sony's underused Japanese horror series hit its stride with Blood Curse, which follows a television crew attempting to document an paranormal investigation in Nihon's mountainous countryside. What makes Siren work is its emphasis on stealth and powerless, as well as constantly shifting perspectives within the narrative framework. If you're looking for a good, original scare, this is it.

Telltale's last season of Sam & Max is arguably the best, with the titular freelance police dealing with ancient prophecies and Max's newfound psychic powers taking a number of ridiculous turns, tonally and otherwise, along the way. Might be a good palette cleanser after Walking Dead.

Probably the best Oddworld game yet, Stranger's Wrath isn't a puzzle platformer, but a bizarre homage to Westerns that also happens to be an FPS (first person shooter) with living ammo. Odd, indeed.

Not much needs to be said about Super Stardust, aside from it being a great example of a dual stick shooter with a wonderfully vibrant color palette. Play it when you're feeling arcade-y.

Lucasarts' hilarious classic point-and-click, done up in HD for a new generation. We recommend keeping the original graphics on, but as long as you're playing it that's what counts.

Brian Provinciano's 8-bit love letter to Grand Theft Auto and classic gaming is more addictive than it has any right to be. Plus it's littered with more ridiculous pop-cultural references than a whole season of Family Guy. Probably.

Futuristic hovercar racing has never looked (or been) better. Now where's ours?

A Dreamcast classic, this shoot 'em up assumes an alternate reality WWII with the German and Allied forces' roles (or at least your part in them) essentially switched. With helicopters. Also, it's one of the inspirations for Sine Mora. That should count for something.

After being a PC-exclusive for years, Crysis finally hit PSN in 2011, introducing players to the series' nanosuit and choice-based level design (and in some pretty gorgeous environments, too) without breaking the bank. It still holds up.

Echochrome might be the puzzle game that M.C. Escher made if he had been a game designer. Moving your avatar around architecturally impossible levels is as simple as rotating the camera to, say, obscure holes in the ground or connect staircases. Spatial awareness a plus.

Sidescroller is what happens when the Pixeljunk series does its best Gradius impression. We're not complaining.

Originally a disc-release game, Out of Bounds has become next to impossible to track down, so a PSN release is welcome. Hot Shots hasn't changed too much over the years, but where Clap Hanz has staid the course they've also improved with each passing game. Now if only the Vita's World Invitational would get a PS3 port.

Quite possibly saving the Vita's downloadable launch line-up from failure, Mutant Blobs Attack is sort of Katamari Damacy wrapped in the cute premise of a monster movie. The more you eat, the bigger your blog gets, until your overtanking tanks and cities. We dare you to not fall for its charms.

Pre-Nate Drake, Naughty Dog's adventure series showed the industry you could have an interesting GTA-style open world experience without appealing strictly to 18-year olds, and in HD they still hold up well. For those interested in the beginnings of Naughty Dog's storytelling sophistication, look no further.

What if a game was like a soundtrack with different artists? That's the baseline for Sound Shapes, which lies somewhere between a rhythm game and platformer. What's interesting is that with each new has music and aesthetics created by different artists, including DangerMau5 and Indie Game: The Movie's Jim Guthrie. (Pixel artist geniuses Superbrothers are also on board.)

There's old-schol and then there's Rearmed, which is essentially a hardcore platformer without a jump button. As the level design gets progressively more and more devious, you'll need to master the intracies of using just a grappling to get around; no small feat, but it's great when you finally hit that stride. Though you could really just play it solely for Simon Viklund's sountrack.

What is more bad-ass than a post-apocalyptic Tokyo where only animals have survived? Tokyo Jungle may not be what people expect; it's actually quite a brutal roguelike with a heavy emphasis on Darwinist adaptabilty. But, y'know, it's also game where you can make a hog kill a mountain lion. If you're lucky.

Thatgamecompany is good at letting their designs speak for themselves; in Flower you control the wind, blowing petals across wide open spaces in a zen-like naturalistic excercise that's far flung from a typified game experience. A good barometer for the developers' future.

We could tell you that Dyad is something of a genre hybrid between a puzzle game and a shooter, and that it gives Child of Eden a run for its money in the visuals. Or you could just play it, because it's something that's really better experienced firsthand.

Trash Panic's environmentally-friendly premise is odd-how much trash can you safely and efficiently break down before you're overwhelmed-but we have lost many nights to its goofy (and really tough) escalatingly difficult stages. Plus, who doesn't want to break down massive oil derricks, skyscrapers and small islands? Not to be missed.

Back when Resident Evil still had the promise of evolving into something great, RE4 was a beacon of hope. Post-RE6, the series' quality remains in a questionable state of flux, but Leon's intense 25-hour (no filler!) adventure in Plagas-infested Spain remains better than what came afterwards. If you somehow haven't played this one yet, get on it.

We survived the atmospheric puzzle purgatory of Limbo and all we got was this stunning black and white art direction.

There is little not to love about Machinarium-the gorgeous hand-drawn visuals, charming character designs and impressively cerebral approach to this former PC-exclusive point and click adventure are just as amazing on the PS3. If only it were longer.

On its surface, you might take Papo to be a Brazillian Ico, only starring a boy and his monster instead of a girl he must protect. Once you realize that the game is actually a deeply affecting allegory of the designer's relationship with his alcoholic father, it becomes something so much more.

Have you still not played Braid, even after The Atlantic's profile chronicling how designer Jonathan Blow single-handedly changed the landscape of indie developers? Yeah, all hyperbole aside, Blow's debut is still a towering achievement.

Pixel artist Paul Robertson and Anamanaguchi lend a great deal of charm to this homage to River City Ransom (and about a million other old-school games). It's impossible to not walk away from this game smiling.

MGS2 and 3 are two of the best stealth games ever made, and while we fully endorse you also picking up the PS One original from the PSN store (inexplicably absent here) before diving in, we'll just say that you can be prepared to experience some of the most innovative game design of this or any era. Plus, y'know, HD.

Theodore Reiker's brilliant shoot 'em up is so much more than just a very pretty shooter-it's a twisting, dismal tale of existentialist misery and the consequences of familial revenge that you won't want to play just once.

Probably the only boy-girl relationship you ever need to care about in video games, period.

Although lacking a PS3-specific port (Yeah, you can play the PS One original on a home console, but it's not the same), the Macbeth-esque War of the Lions is easily the best thing you can buy-outside of maybe the equally as brilliant Tactics Ogre-for your Vita. but you'll be missing out on a host of breathtaking hand-drawn-looking cutscenes, and, more importantly, a quasi-Elizabethan translation done with aplomb enough for any Lit major. (Let's not forget the hundred-plus hours of cerebral strategy battles, either).

We think Okami's sumi-e inspired art speaks for itself, especially popping in HD. But if you still need convincing, how does 60-plus hours of Zelda-style gameplay and Move-functional calligraphy gestures sound?

Compared to Ico, Shadow of the Collosus is a brooding-indie monster-film of a game that makes you question the ethics of your own actions. A master study in loneliness, and one that looks better than it did on its original platform.

Although its narrative beats may be more or less on-rails, the profoundly affecting Walking Dead forces you to make-and live with- split-second heartwrenching moral choices. Profoundly affecting, it's not just the best game Telltale has ever made, but proof that games can be more than just violent power fantasies.

As a nameless traveler, the only direction you're given in Journey is to move forward. You will likely encounter other players on their respective sojourns to a faraway mystical mountain, and it's up to you whether or not to interact with them or not. But more even than Journey's oblique narrative premise and jaw-dropping visuals, its value is in its own identity: simply put, there has never been and never will be anything else like it.