The 7 best PlayStation exclusives of all time

A week after PlayStation celebrated its 15th Anniversary, we're mixing nostalgia with the modern day and deciding once and for all what PlayStation exclusives you should have had on your shelf at some point to get the best out of Sony's consoles.

Here are our picks for the best of the best across all three consoles:

1. Metal Gear Solid
This is Solid Snake before the 28 hour cut-scenes, the unwieldy socio-political storylines and the never-ending endings.

Even if you've been a fan of Hideo Kojima's sneak and peak series right up to Guns of the Patriots, the original Metal Gear has to be considered the best in the series for propelling Kojima and his mullet-wearing shadowed stalker into PlayStation stardom.

The fact that Kojima stuck a level from the original Metal Gear into Guns of the Patriots and fans lapped it up - smooth, pixelated faces and all - just goes to show how much the original Metal Gear means to PlayStation users.

Rich gameplay, an engrossing story and bosses that have become infamous kicked off one of gaming's biggest franchises.

2.Uncharted 2
The first game set up the play and the second scored one of the most spectacular gaming touchdowns in history. What other game gives you scenes as massive and as epic as that first train level?

Slowly and strenuously fighting gravity, Drake jumps from one seat to the next as his particular carriage is unfortunately hanging off a cliff face. Public transport; what can you do?

But it's not just the massive set-pieces that keep the player in control, it's the range of personalities that are brought to life with impeccable acting and real character development.

Sure when you've got your mates round you're playing it for the gun-slinging Indiana-esque action adventure. But you're really keeping one eye on that love triangle aren't you? Thought so.

3.God of War Collection
You think Uncharted 2 was epic? Who told you that? Uncharted 2 is about as epic as Question Time in comparison to the day-to-day life of the mighty Kratos.

In fact, if we were to squeeze any game into a time-capsule to show future generations just how in your face, over the top epic "that old-timer tech" used to be, it'd be a God of War title. Scrap that, it'd be all of them.

Put aside the rip-your-head-off-and-throw-it-down-a-volcano violence (which we love by the way) and you've still got a game that somehow manages to serve up and adventure on a scale like no other.

We're not ones for hyperbole (ahem) but the game begins with a cut-scene that would make any top-paid Hollywood animator green and it certainly caused our mouths the drop an inch or two.

It's one thing to see beautifully rendered, incredibly detailed Titans of giant proportions scaling a cliff-face, it's something else entirely to find that your adventure begins on one of the Titans itself.

A platforming slash-em-up on a massive stone bloke? You won't see anything even close to it in any other game.

OK so maybe we've cheated by going for the God of War Collection but if you can have all three why on Earth wouldn't you?

4.ICO
Let's put the smoking guns and decapitated heads to one side now (maybe on the bedside table for later).

These days, with all the "FPS this" and "Punch him in the face that" it can be hard to find some real heart in the world's gaming output.

In fact if we were to even mention the word "tenderness" you might feel a strong urge to slap us really hard in the head. That's why a game like ICO deserves a place on the PlayStation's best of album.

Not only was it a great puzzler but it managed to completely step aside from the rock 'em sock 'em rut that so many games fall into and replaced the massive action hero with a small boy dragging a princess by the hand to keep her out of harms way.

You can hire the best writers, craft the perfect soundtrack, spend hours getting the perfect shot and you still won't invoke the same feeling of attachment in an audience that Sony managed with the simple gesture of holding a hand.

5.Final Fantasy VII
This is the game that put RPG's on the mainstream map. Final Fantasy VII will stick out in the minds of anyone who was a PlayStation gamer back in the 90s (Oh how we miss the 90s).

June 1997 to be precise, a time when you didn't even have to have played Final Fantasy VII to know what it was all about. It was on shelves, on pages and on the lips of everyone with the same kinds of words being thrown about in every case.

One of the best graphical achievements of its time, Final Fantasy VII hit gamers with multi-pronged pleasure adding an in-depth, grown-up narrative to engrossing RPG mechanics with spectacular spell-augmented combat.

While the JRPG genre might be waning somewhat these days, if you're still a die-hard genre defender, Final Fantasy VII is probably you main inspiration. Fight on brother.

6.LittleBigPlanet
It's a platforming game with a potentially infinite number of levels and the most user-friendly development tool ever, inspiring some of the greatest examples of creativity in the video games industry today.

LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy became a PlayStation icon overnight as the game kicked off Sony's Play. Create. Share mantra, which has gone into the likes of ModNation Racers and even the upcoming Motorstorm Apocalypse since.

The fact that Media Molecule now has people working on LittleBigPlanet 2 who were snapped up as LBP hobbyists and had a knack for level design illustrates just how wrapped up gamers became in the LittleBigPlanet world.

It's another case of shunning the gunning and instead creating a thriving, passionate community and a testament to the potential creativity of the human mind.

Bit heavy? Oh Ok. It was also lush in the looks department and immensely playable if you weren't of the creative persuasion.

Even without the engineer's tool box of bells and whistles ready for creating your own contraptions, LittleBigPlanet is one of the best platforming experiences of recent times.

7.Gran Turismo 4
In terms of graphical integrity Gran Turismo set a new standard that was well beyond the reaching distance of anything that had come before it.

But it was sheer depth in every direction that made Gran Turismo the ultimate racing game and the reason why the GT series has stayed ahead for as long as it has.

It wasn't just about ragging your wheels around the track, it was about passing your racing license, setting up a garage, buying some blockmobile Peugeot, fine-tuning it as best you could, entering races and saving the cash to improve your ride.

Eventually you'd be racing at break-neck speeds in Nissan Skylines, Dodge Vipers, Aston Martins and special concept cars well beyond all of them.

On top of all this Gran Turismo provided carefully nuanced driving mechanics making it the first true driving simulator.

Gran Turismo 4 was all of that but using the extra punch of the PlayStation 2, which meant more cars

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