The Best and Worst Games on the Playstation Network (Playstation 3)

#5 - Rocketmen: Axis of Evil

Capcom's multiplayer arcade-shooter packs in tons of bosses and enemies to tear apart with sweet weaponry. However, it moves at a snail's-pace. Enemies swarm at you but have the combined fighting tactics of a tire-iron. The visuals bother the hell out of me; despite the 50's kitsch, the whole game looks like an un-antialiased Flash game, and the graphical hindrances are only made more apparent during the horrifically long and boring cut-scenes.

To be perfectly honest, I never bought this game. I played through the demo, and the only impression it left me was enough to warrant this spot on my 'Worst of' list.

#4 - Texas Hold 'em

It's virtual poker, plain and simple. The gameplay is uninspired, your characters relatively uncustomizable, and the whole game is unnecessary. The thing I hate about virtual poker is that you can't read your opponents, and that neuters the game.

Poker = 70% reading and manipulating your opponents + 30% dumb luck.

I'm not 'Maverick' but isn't the whole premise of poker to read your opponents, and to bet and fold based on whether or not you think they have a good hand? Then how the fuck are you supposed to do that when you are looking at your opponents' 3D avatars? Sure, you can hook up a PS Eye camera and broadcast yourself so others can see you, but then you will be the only one whose ugly mug your opponents can read. That is like telling your opponents in a race that you will only hop on one foot. All you are doing is putting yourself at a disadvantage.

The whole game revolves around online gaming, but does anybody still play this game? Last I checked, the number of people on the Texas Hold'em server was rapidly dwindling, and that was a week after I purchased this game.

Here's a suggestion: Take the $9-15 you would have spent on this game, go out and buy a pack of playing cards for $2, buy cheap beer with the remaining money, then call up some friends and tell them to bring junk food. You will get more fulfillment playing a REAL game of 'nickel-and-dime' poker than you will with Texas Hold'em.

#3 - Texas Cheat'em

What's worse than Texas Hold'em? A shittier version of the same game, except that it allows you and your opponents to cheat: Swap out your cards for better ones, steal your opponent's chips, and view their hand

Yeah, cheating against your online opponents sounds fun... until some jerk cheats against you, and then you will never play this game ever again. There is nothing remotely fun about Texas Cheat'em, and all it does is incite screaming matches between you and a half-dozen other people.

The whole game also looks neutered compared to Texas Hold'em. In Texas Hold'em, you were treated to 3d avatars you could somewhat customize; however, in Texas Cheat'em, all you ever see is a 2d avatar against a backdrop that looks like a Yahoo! Arcade game. Texas Cheat'em looks horrible.

#2 - Gauntlet I and II

If you are old enough to remember this game, then you remember a time when the whole point of arcade games was not to see the ending of a game, per say, but instead the goal was to get the highest score on the local arcade machine. Arcade players either played to de-throne the jerk with the highest score, or (if you happen to be that jerk) you would continually try to best yourself, making your score even more untouchable against competitors.

Gauntlet was a great game for amassing high scores, with its hordes of enemies ambushing you from every direction. However, the high score arcade games translate poorly on home consoles. Since Gauntlet seemingly has no ending, it is not a game that you play in order to finish like the majority of games since the introduction of the classic Nintendo. And, since it is a high score game on your home system, the only cling to fame is the online scoreboard. However, Gauntlet has aged so poorly that you probably won't find anybody who actually cares about your high score. The PSN version of Gauntlet is especially terrible: You can't join a game in progress, there's no voice chat, and if any player quits the game, everyone else is booted out. It gets horribly boring with single player, and will eventually get boring soon after with 2 player.

#1 - Championship Racing

Okay, this one is a stretch. Sure, it's not on the Xbox or Wii, but it IS on one of the 'Midway Arcade Treasures' bundles, which appear on nearly all consoles, so in a way, it counts.

Back in the 80's I must have spent about $150 pumping quarters into this arcade classic. It was one of the few arcade games I ever saw (as a child) that had not just one racing wheel, but FOUR. My grade school classmates and I would spend an hour after school every day racing against each other, all of us cranking the wheels as fast as we could as we tried to edge out our opponents and claim victory. Great memories of this game.

But that is all I have now. Championship Racing for the PSN has not only aged poorly, but the majority of the game's fun-factor rested in the steering wheels. The game is not at all as fun to play sitting alone in your house or apartment with a controller in your hand. The gameplay with a Sixaxis is abysmal, and with its dated graphics, the odds of finding someone who will play this with you (even online) is slim to none.

My summation: If I had the old school arcade machine, I'd be as happy as a pig in shit. But without the nostalgia factor and the multiple steering wheels for arcade-style multiplayer, this game offers NOTHING.