25 Best PS3 Multiplayer Games

Destiny marked Bungie's first new console series since Halo, and the PS3 got it on day one. It came out on September 9, 2014, the first game in a 10-year deal between Bungie and Activision. You play missions and fight other players, and the game matches you with people as you go instead of dropping you into one big server where everyone talks to everyone. The Taken King expansion later changed much of the core gameplay.

It sold over $325 million at retail in its first five days, the biggest new franchise launch of all time, and it won the BAFTA for Best Game. Critics went after its story and its emphasis on grinding. Plenty of players found the daily routine boring and quit, which puts it last here despite the money.

Confrontation is an online multiplayer tactical third-person shooter made by Slant Six Games for Sony. There is no story mode to fall back on, because the game focuses on online play. Sony sold it bundled with the PS3 Bluetooth headset, and you could also buy it on its own. You customize your character from a list of set items and go in with a squad.

The launch was rough. A patch later added missing features like trophy support, and after it the number of online players went up by 50%. Sony turned the servers off on January 28, 2014. In 2021 fans reverse engineered the servers and made online play possible again through private servers. Players rank it just above Destiny.

Lost Planet 2 is set ten years after Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, on the same planet. The campaign is told in episodes from the side of different factions, from the Snow Pirates of the first game to New NEVEC and the desert bandits called Vagabundos. Energy now only drains when you pilot a VS, the walking mechs, and fire a weapon that needs it. You can change far more of your character than before, down to the legs, face and torso.

The story has a twist: the soldiers of Task Force First Descent turn out to be clones of Ivan Solotov, the man who betrayed NEVEC in the first game. The Xbox 360 version was rumored to have cuts to fit on one DVD. It plays best with a full squad of friends. Players who recommend it usually put Army of Two in the same sentence.

All 4 One is the third spin-off in the Ratchet & Clank series, and it puts four heroes on the screen at once. Dr. Nefarious botches another evil plan, and Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark and Nefarious himself get caught in the same machine. The galaxy's biggest do-gooders and its worst criminal have to work together to get out, which is the whole idea of the game.

It came out on October 18, 2011, in North America. Reviews were mixed. Critics liked the soundtrack and the humor. They were frustrated by the partner AI and the glitches, and that AI is the best reason to bring real people. With three friends on the couch it is a better game than its reviews suggest.

Dead Nation is a top-down shoot 'em up from Housemarque, the Finnish studio, and it came out on November 30, 2010, in North America. You and a friend fight through a city full of zombies. Kills give you score multipliers and money, and the money buys and upgrades weapons at checkpoints. Every hit you take costs you multiplier, so the best players barely get touched.

There was no online voice chat at launch, and an update added it in March 2011. One small detail settles who carries the team: in co-op, money from a box goes only to the player who opened it. Players keep naming it among the PS3's best downloads. The PS4 version was later free for PlayStation Plus subscribers.

Starhawk was first reported as a "Warhawk in space", and that is what LightBox Interactive made. The studio was founded in January 2009 by former Incognito Entertainment staff, Dylan Jobe among them, the people behind Warhawk. LightBox made it with Sony's Santa Monica studio. Its big idea is building in the middle of a fight. You call down offensive and defensive structures from a drop ship in orbit, in real time, so an open field can turn into a fort in seconds.

The campaign follows Emmett Graves, a gunslinger left partly mutated by Rift Energy. The multiplayer is the reason it is here. Players put it next to the other Sony exclusives they want people to try, and it still has fans who wish it had a bigger crowd.

Castle Crashers started on the Xbox 360 in August 2008 and reached the PS3 through the PlayStation Network on August 31, 2010, in North America. A dark wizard steals a magic crystal and captures four princesses, and you and your friends go get them back. The music comes from members of Newgrounds. In the Arena minigame you either survive waves of enemies or fight each other.

The Behemoth later remastered it with better textures and a higher frame rate, and that version came to the PS4 in 2019. Reviewers praised the humor and gave the gameplay high marks. Players recommend it as a co-op game above anything else on the PlayStation Network.

Battlefield 4 is the thirteenth game in the series, set six years after Battlefield 3 during a fictional War of 2020. It came out in October and November 2013, right as the new consoles arrived, and the PS3 got it too. Spotting enemies for your team made it into the single-player campaign for the first time in the series, and the campaign unlocks weapons for multiplayer as well. You can paint camos on jets and tanks.

Reviewers praised the multiplayer and the graphics. They also criticized the campaign and a long list of bugs and glitches in the multiplayer. Players rank it below both Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2, the two it had to follow on this console.

Borderlands is the first game in the series, and Gearbox called it a role-playing shooter. You pick one of four characters on the distant planet of Pandora and hunt for the Vault, which can only be opened once every 200 years. The guns are the hook. Enemies and chests drop randomly generated weapons, and the developers said the system could make around 16 to 17 million variations. The cartoon look was there to show more detail on the weapons and the world.

Up to four people can play together, and the enemies get tougher as more players join. It sold over two million copies by the end of 2009. The sequel fixed almost everything, but the first trip to Pandora with friends still has a charm of its own.

Dragon's Crown is a Vanillaware beat 'em up for up to four players, locally or online. George Kamitani first planned it as a Dreamcast sequel to Princess Crown, his 1997 Saturn game, and spent years pitching it and getting turned down. When it finally got going, its first publisher, UTV Ignition, pulled out of games and Atlus took over. Kamitani drew on old arcade games like Golden Axe and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, and every bit of it is hand-painted.

Programmer Kentaro Ohnishi gets the credit for turning it into a beat 'em up, something Vanillaware had never made. Critics praised the gameplay and the art, and were less kind about the story and the repetition. It sold over a million copies by 2017.

Army of Two is a shooter built around two players. You go through it with a friend or with the partner AI, using two-man tactics against a conspiracy that threatens the whole world. Some of the plans did not survive. The game was meant to have a jeep and a tank you could drive, and both were cut for pacing, so the hovercraft only shows up in the China and Miami levels.

It was one of the first PS3 games with region-locked online play, so players in Europe could not play with players in America. Online had three modes of its own. Players still recommend it as a co-op pick, and The 40th Day followed in 2010.

Diablo III came to the PS3 in September 2013, more than a year after the PC version. It is a dungeon crawler where you fight hordes of demons to save the world of Sanctuary from Hell. There are four difficulty levels, from Normal up to Inferno, and you will want the last one only with friends. The Ultimate Evil Edition in August 2014 added the Reaper of Souls expansion.

On PC it became the fastest-selling PC game, with over 3.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, and it passed 30 million sales by August 2015. Critics liked it, though the always-on DRM drew complaints. Players recommend it as a game to play together on one couch.

Warhawk is a remake in name only. The PS1 original was a single-player flight game, and this one is team multiplayer on the ground and in the air. It was announced in May 2005 and shown working at E3 in 2006. You fly a Warhawk or a Nemesis, two planes that differ only in looks, and each can use nine weapons. The Tow Missile is the only weapon you steer yourself, and while you guide it your whole screen is the missile. Everyone else gets a free shot at you.

A photo even came out showing a server room with PS3s in racks. Split screen works in the battles that allow it. Starhawk followed in 2012. Players who loved it mostly talk about it in the past tense, because the servers and the crowds are gone.

Black Ops is the seventh Call of Duty and the sequel to World at War. Treyarch had made World at War next to a James Bond tie-in, and this time the studio worked on Black Ops alone. It came out in November 2010. The campaign has two playable countries, Russia and the USA, and the characters you play finally talk. New moves included diving to prone and flashlights on some weapons.

The soundtrack by Sean Murray sits next to licensed songs from the Rolling Stones and Eminem. Critics praised the story and the multiplayer, and some criticized the linear levels and technical issues. It was nominated for Game of the Year at several shows. In July 2026 ports came out for the PS4 and PS5.

Resident Evil 5 came out on the PS3 in March 2009, and it is the first game in the series designed for two players. One player is Chris Redfield, and the other is Sheva Alomar. When your partner's health runs out they go into a dying state, and you have a short time to get to them. It plays like Resident Evil 4, and critics saw it as the first main Resident Evil to leave survival horror for something closer to an action game.

Jun Takeuchi produced it, the man who directed Onimusha: Warlords and produced Lost Planet. Capcom recorded the music in Los Angeles to get a Hollywood soundtrack. Reviews were positive, with some criticism of the controls. Plenty of players still name it on its own as a PS3 pick.

Modern Warfare 3 came out worldwide on November 8, 2011, the third and last part of the original Modern Warfare trilogy and the eighth Call of Duty overall. The campaign starts right after the last mission of Modern Warfare 2. Work began in 2010 with more than one studio. Infinity Ward's co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella had left to form Respawn Entertainment, Sledgehammer Games joined the work, and Raven Software helped build the multiplayer.

In Japan, Square Enix published it, with its own subtitled and dubbed version. Players rank it above the first Black Ops. For a lot of people it was simply the next year of the same online lobbies, and they were happy with that.

Fat Princess is capture the flag with cake. You rescue your princess from the other team, who has been feeding her magical cake to make her harder to carry back to your castle. There are five classes, and you can switch between them at any time. In one mode, the first team to lock up the other princess three times wins.

It came out on July 30, 2009, from Titan Studios, and it was the only original game the studio made. A free patch later added same-screen co-op. Not every critic loved it. The A.V. Club gave it a B− and said that long matches turn into slogs "worthy of a Russian winter campaign". Players tend to suggest it alongside LittleBigPlanet.

Bad Company 2 came out in March 2010, the direct sequel to Bad Company and the ninth Battlefield. Its Frostbite 1.5 engine lets you blow large parts of most buildings apart, so cover is only cover until someone brings explosives. Multiplayer is class-based, with Assault, Engineer, Medic and Recon, and the maps are full of vehicles, from ATVs to tanks and helicopters. The campaign brings back B Company in a more serious story.

It scored 88 on Metacritic on the PS3 and sold more than twelve million copies. Seven map packs followed, and the Vietnam expansion came out on December 21, 2010. One player summed it up: "Sunk so, so very many hours into that."

Black Ops II took the series into the near future. It was the first Call of Duty with futuristic weapons and the first with a story that branches on your choices, and you can pick your loadout before a mission. Zombies came back for the third time, now running on the multiplayer engine, with modes other than plain Survival. It was also the first in the series with a competitive mode. On the same day, November 13, the Vita got its own Black Ops: Declassified.

Critics praised the variety and the multiplayer, while the Strike Force missions drew criticism. It made over $500 million in its first 24 hours, the biggest entertainment launch ever until GTA V, and sold over 24 million by November 2013. For a lot of PS3 owners it was the last Call of Duty they played every night.

Borderlands 2 came out in September 2012, and the first game's surprise success got Gearbox a budget of $30 to 35 million for it. You play one of four new vault hunters against Handsome Jack, the head of Hyperion. Dameon Clarke voices him. Anthony Burch wrote a script seven times longer than the original's. Four players can team up online, and the game also has split screen. You can trade guns with friends or duel them for agreed stakes.

Critics praised the writing and the guns, and criticized the mission design. It shipped more than 20 million units and became 2K's most successful release. Players rank it far above the first game.

World at War took Call of Duty back to World War II in November 2008, to the Pacific and the Eastern Front. One campaign follows a US Marine across the islands against the Japanese army, and the other a Soviet soldier from Stalingrad to Berlin. Kiefer Sutherland voices Roebuck. Treyarch made it more violent than any Call of Duty before it, with limb dismemberment and burns, and kept the levels and killstreaks from Call of Duty 4 for multiplayer.

It also brought in Nazi Zombies, where up to four players hold off waves of undead and buy weapons as they go. Retrospective reviews call it one of the best World War II entries in the series, and the Zombies mode is a big part of why. It sold three million copies in the US in its first two months.

Battlefield 3 is the twelfth game in the series and the sequel to Battlefield 2, out in October 2011. DICE started on it in 2009 after Battlefield 1943 and built it on an upgraded Frostbite engine. On the PS3 the whole game fits on one Blu-ray Disc, while the Xbox 360 version needs two discs. The Engineer class looks after vehicles and blows up the enemy's. Some guns take a bipod you can deploy lying down for much better accuracy.

It sold 5 million copies in its first week. Critics praised the multiplayer and the graphics, but not the campaign or the co-op missions. Plenty of players name Battlefield 3 by itself, no explanation needed.

Call of Duty 4 left World War II behind in November 2007 for a modern war told like a film. Its storylines switch between Sgt. Paul Jackson of the US Marines and Sgt. 'Soap' MacTavish of the British SAS. It took two years to make. The multiplayer is where it changed shooters for good: you level up, each level unlocks weapons and attachments, and you always feel one match away from the next unlock.

It won a pile of Game of the Year awards, and retrospective reviewers call it one of the greatest video games ever made for its campaign and its multiplayer. Raven Software remastered it in 2016. Players rank it above every other Call of Duty on the PS3.

LittleBigPlanet 2 was first announced on May 8, 2010, in Game Informer, and Sony sold it as a "Platform for Games" instead of a platform game. The slogan was fair. Creators can record their own sound effects, make cut-scenes and write music with a full sequencer. Most of the more than 3 million levels players made in the first game still work, and you can edit them too. A later update added PlayStation Move support.

It was the last major LittleBigPlanet made by Media Molecule, and critics praised the creation tools and the art direction. The community site LBP.me has been offline since November 2020. Players name it in the same breath as the first game.

LittleBigPlanet came from Media Molecule, a studio four former Lionhead employees started after making Rag Doll Kung Fu. Their first pitch played down the building side on purpose, out of fear it would be turned down, and showed the prototype as a plain game. The finished one is a platformer with over 50 levels from the developers, built around making your own levels with the Popit menu and sharing them online. It is at its best with friends grabbing each other on the same screen.

It slipped briefly to remove controversial lyrics from a licensed song, then came out in October and November 2008. Critics loved it and it won several Game of the Year awards. Sales started slow, then reached 4.5 million. Online publishing of levels ended in March 2021. Players recommend it more than any other multiplayer game on the PS3.