Wipeout HD+Fury, although the boxed version of Wipeout HD+Fury Expansion was only released in Europe (digital-only everywhere else for base game and dlc/expansion) so it might be rather hard to find on the flea market depending on where you live, the high seas however always have a copy available as an iso... It's my go to on and off "arcade" racer, the campaign mode's "grid" structure they first introduced in Wipeout Pulse helps with this since it throws some varied curated challenges your way. It's also rather challenging if you aim for gold medals.
Real shame Namco never made a mainline Ace Combat game on the PS3 and put one on the x360 instead for some reason. Those games were a good reason to get a PS2.
Final Fantasy X/X-2
Final Fantasy XIII (Edit)
Grand Turismo 5
GTA V
Heavy Rain
Red Dead Redemption
Uncharted 1-3
FFX is really brought down by the absolute garbage corridor walking that forms the bulk of the game. There's no actual level design until the last third or quarter of the obligatory main story path, with the exception of 2, maybe 3 temples along the way with some simple puzzles. On top of that the main story path is extremely linear without even an illusion of freedom let alone actual one, you can't really go visit some optional village or dungeon on the side or something, it doesn't open up allowing you to "easily" backtrack until almost the very end of the storyline. Shame because the combat is rather decent as far as FF games go, both due to the (soft-)counter system and the initiative/speed introduction (being less wonky than ATB was in prior games) not to mention the design around "hot-swapping" party members during the fight, and the sphere grid character system is probably the one I liked the most out of those FF I played (particularly in the "international" sphere grid version where you can easily do hybrid builds from the start or build characters in other than "intended" directions). Also the gear customization mechanic and Aeon stat customization/leveling (even if grindy) were other good mechanical additions.
Good music though (it was
Nobuo Uemats'u last time he did the bulk of the composing in this series, apart from the FFXIV MMO) and a rather decent story, once you look past Tidus' whining/daddy issues and some of the worst weebslop/animu tropes/trends at least. Currently replaying it, the PS Vita version specifically, so this is a very fresh impression.
Gran Turismo 5 is quite good "sim-lite" if you need a racing fix, but it is grindier than prior games and the DLC-cancer struck this game already and locked out cars you can see in the damn car dealears not telling you they are DLC cars until you actually want to buy them in a very dick move. Luckily Sony half-assed the protection and a save editor out of all things can enable all the car DLC packs
One can also argue that the ideal racing line display it introduces is the quest compass of racing games and declineeee. I did however have fun buying some used vintage muscle car and tuning the shit out of it to some obscene horsepower (more or less the core appeal of this series, take junk car, tune the shit out of it) until I needed a proper super/hypercar to win cups. As a bonus it was contemporary to the Clarkson/Hammond/May Top gear run/peak popularity so it has the Top Gear test track and cars you might remember/recognize from that show if you watched it back in the day. At least for me it was a decent bonus when I played it for the first time 4-ish years ago.
I liked the first RDR and even managed to do 100% in it (the only other Rockstar game I ever did that in was GTA:SA), but that's probably because I enjoyed the western wilderness great outdoors and setting, as the shootan is... bland I guess? Forgettable? Not sure what the right word would be. Certainly not the main attraction of the game anyway. It is for various reasons better than the sequel, particularly the story isn't so aggravating, it's not infected with the cinematic-design fetishism ('muh slow walking sequence), and it doesn't have 'muh immersive cinematic long animations for looting and dumb QTE-like interactions to do shit instead of simple single button presses. That is to say it feels more like a game trying not to waste the players time with bullshit and less like an interactive movie made by writers with delusions of being good/deep.
GTA V has a billion better re-releases and playing the OG PS3 version makes no sense, assuming you want to try it despite some common criticism like the open world feeling like empty filler compared to prior games in the series and other claims of decline such as simplified/dumbed down driving physics compared to GTA IV, being more "cinematic" etc.
