Timesplitters 2 was the absolute peak of me playing shooters and still my undisputed multiplayer GOAT. I remember coming back from raves and spending an entire day and/or night playing it with mates as a student. God only knows how many hours I put into it, more than any other game ever for sure. I probably put more hours into the level editor than most games I’ve played since. High camp, perfect multiplayer, and just a crazy amount of content all wrapped up in a single game.
I fucking looooved Kula World. Great post rave / club game. It sounded great as well. The music’s rad and the sound effects still live in my head, from that heavy single this beach ball bounce, to the jingle of coins, to nom-nom-nom mouth noise when the ball eats(?) the bonus fruit, to the WEEeeOOooH when it takes(?) the psychedelic pills.
It was expensive, but I think people forget what a stupidly good blu-ray player the PS3 was.
I, like many people, bought it because it was the best way to watch movies - with the added bonus of games. It was at least £100 cheaper than any decent blu-ray player. It worked better and more reliably than any of the other ones on the market. It was the only one that could access things like online blu-ray features for years and it got basically every future blu-ray player feature not only as a patch instead of having to buy a new unit, but sometimes months or years ahead of other blu-ray player manufacturers.
It really was so good. A genuinely wildly cool and intuitive thing to have on a console game.