Sony’s third console, the PlayStation 3, came out in 2007 in North America, and it didn’t take long for the system to build up a massive library. By the end of the system’s lifecycle, it featured more than 3,000 games, which is a lot of titles, so you know that some of them didn’t measure up to the console’s biggest and best. There were actually quite a few terrible releases on the PS3, and we’ve looked through the archives to highlight the ten worst games released on the system. They were chosen based on contemporary critics’ reviews upon release, how frustrating they were to play, and how much gamers hated them.
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1) The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is a prequel to the hit AMC television series, set in Georgia. It focuses on Merle and Daryl Dixon in the opening days of the apocalypse, with Michael Rooker and Norman Reedus reprising their roles. Unfortunately, the game was a dud on launch, largely due to its terrible controls, poorly written plot, and crummy-looking graphics. It could have been excellent had a bit more development gone into it, as fans of the franchise would certainly have enjoyed diving deeper into the Dixon brothers’ history. But the execution was sloppy, making for a lackluster game.
2) Girl Fight
Girl Fight is pretty much what the title implies — it’s a fighting game that focuses entirely on women. As you expect, it’s meant to be erotic in nature, which likely targeted the primary gaming demographic of teenage boys and 18-35-year-old males. That might have worked had the game not been poorly made with too much focus on the sexualization of its characters. That would have been fine had the game been fun to play, but the AI is just terrible, making it a bad fighting game, and the digitization of the women isn’t appealing. That makes its central theme a non-starter, begging the question, ‘What’s the point?’
3) G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra
Movie tie-in games were pretty terrible throughout much of video game history, but by the 2000s, that wasn’t always a guarantee. Unfortunately, the folks who coded G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra for the PS3 didn’t get the memo, because the game is little more than a lazy cash-grab like the movie tie-in games of old. There were different versions of the game, including one for the Nintendo DS, which isn’t horrible. Still, the PS3’s port amounts to a boring action game with little going for it outside of repetitive, dull mobs and situations players had already seen thousands of times in much better games.
4) Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire
There are tons of excellent Gundam games, and that makes sense — who doesn’t want to pilot a mecha? Unfortunately, Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire isn’t a good example from the franchise, though it did fairly well in Japan. Over in North America, the game utterly failed, receiving widespread critical condemnation for being bland, featuring outdated graphics, an underdeveloped story, and crummy voice acting. It also shipped with plenty of bugs, so the gameplay wasn’t up to par with what players expected from the popular franchise, and this made Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire something of a slog to play, which is never good.
5) Quantum Theory
Quantum Theory is a third-person shooter that was released on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2010. It was coded by the same team for both releases, and the PS3 version actually fared better. That said, it was still a stinker, poorly reviewed across the board. It plays somewhat similarly to Gears of War, at least in its cover system, making it feel like a poorly made copy, so Quantum Theory’s design is uninspired. It’s a game that had some promise had it been further developed, as the story isn’t terrible, but the execution didn’t work well, turning players against the IP, which is why there wasn’t a sequel.
6) Damnation
Damnation is a 2008 steampunk shooter released on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, and it had a lot going for it. The setting is interesting, as it features an alternate history in which the American Civil War stretched for decades into a steampunk era. While intriguing, like so many games on this list, the execution left a lot to be desired. Critics tore the game apart, citing everything from its graphics and voice acting to the sound and controls. One called its gunplay “terrible,” which isn’t great for a shooter, and another said the title fits, as the game was truly damned from the outset, as it wasn’t worth playing at all.
7) Amy
Amy is a 2012 survival horror released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 that focuses largely on stealth. The game is centered on its titular character, an autistic girl with supernatural abilities. There’s a zombie apocalypse, an evil organization, and a woman who protects her. Like so many bad games of the era, Amy took a decent idea and destroyed it through buggy gameplay, terrible controls, bad voice acting, and crummy game design. It fared slightly better on the PS3 than it did on the Xbox 360, but not by much, as both systems’ ports took a lot of heat for pretty much the same problems.
8) Magus
Magus is an action role-playing game released for the PS3 in 2014. The game focuses on the titular character, who begins the game imprisoned but escapes to discover his true identity. He uses divine powers for his attacks, and it’s all quite awful. Magus is considered by many to be the worst one released on the PS3, as it features dated graphics, weird dialogue, bad voice acting, terrible gameplay, and other issues. It’s one of those games that’s almost so bad that it’s good … almost. The title has become synonymous with bad games, such that you can walk up to some gamers and mention a game as being “Magus” and they’ll immediately know not to buy it.
9) Rambo: The Video Game
Rambo: The Video Game is based on the Rambo franchise and takes John Rambo through scenes from the first three movies. It’s a rail shooter, and it could have been a great game, as there’s a pre-existing fanbase who loves the franchise. Still, it was a commercial and critical failure — most of the problems centered around the game’s repetitive gameplay, which gets boring pretty quickly. The graphics are also uninspired and look dated, especially for 2014. The enemy AI is bad, the game is buggy and often crashes, and if you can get it to work through to the end, you can beat it in only a few hours.
10) Rogue Warrior
Bethesda Softworks makes some of the greatest games of all time, but in 2009, it produced one of the worst in Rogue Warrior. The game was partially developed by one studio, dumped, and then rebuilt by another. The result wasn’t a great FPS; it was one of the worst shooters ever made. It featured more glitches than regular content, boring gameplay, broken combat mechanics, bad graphics, terrible gunplay, and shoddy controls. It was a rushed job from a first attempt that was dumped, and the game should never have been published, as it’s absolutely awful and one of the worst games ever released on the PS3.
What’s the worst game you’ve played on the PS3? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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