The PS3 has one of the best libraries of its generation, and it also has some games that never should have left the studio. Most of the games here are shooters and tie-ins, and players barely mention most of them. Others were big ideas that fell flat, like a plastic skateboard you stand on, or a survival horror game where you escort a child through a city of infected.
Every one of them came out on the PS3 first, and every one of them scores badly with the people who played it. Here are the 10 worst PS3 games.
10. Tony Hawk: Ride (2009)
Tony Hawk: Ride came with a plastic skateboard you stand on, made by Robomodo for Activision, with infrared sensors that read your movements. No buttons, no thumbsticks, just you on the board. One review found nothing positive to say except that the board was "sturdy", and another site named it the worst game of the year, with the board as the trophy. GameTrailers named it Most Disappointing Game of 2009, and G4TV and Giant Bomb both rated it 1 out of 5. It averages 47 out of 100.
Players hardly mention it. A skateboarding game that needs a living room cleared of furniture and still cannot read your feet was never going to keep an audience.
9. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (2008)
Turning Point is an alternate history shooter by Spark Unlimited, published by Codemasters. Winston Churchill dies in 1931, eight years before the start of World War II, and the Nazis take Britain. You play Dan Carson, a New York construction worker with no military past, trying to survive as a resistance fighter. Get close to a soldier and you can kill him on the spot or take him as a human shield. Sometimes a soldier stands near a furnace or a toilet, and you can finish him off with that instead. It averages 52 out of 100.
Players call it a buggy, broken mess. A setup this strange needs a solid game underneath it to be believable, and this one cracks early.
8. Mafia II: Jimmy's Vendetta (2010)
Jimmy's Vendetta is the second downloadable pack for Mafia II, set apart from the main story. Like the main game it takes place in the early 1950s, but in a different canon. Jimmy, a gun for hire, breaks out of prison and takes revenge on the people who set him up, and his work in Empire Bay unlocks dozens of quests against the Italian and Irish mobs. It came out in September 2010. It averages 38 out of 100.
Players never bring it up. It is a paid add-on to a game most people played years earlier, and hardly anyone came back for more.
7. Shellshock 2: Blood Trails (2009)
Shellshock 2 is a Vietnam War shooter by Rebellion, the sequel to Shellshock: Nam '67. In 1969, new recruit Nate Walker is sent after his brother Cal, the only man who came back from a mission to recover a biological weapon, and who came back mad. Along the way Nate runs into the infected, and a mansion swarming with them waits at the end of a tunnel under a church. It received poor reviews. It averages 48 out of 100.
Players barely mention it, and those who do warn you off. Vietnam and an infection sound like a wild mix on paper, but the game never turns that into anything worth your time.
6. Goosebumps: The Game (2015)
Goosebumps: The Game is a point-and-click adventure by WayForward and a prequel to the Goosebumps film, and it came out on seven systems in 2015. R.L. Stine's monsters have escaped from their books on your walk home from school, so werewolves prowl the woods and gnomes roam underfoot. It averages 35 out of 100.
Players don't mention it at all. It is a children's licence on a console whose owners were mostly grown up, which may be why it vanished so quietly.
5. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013)
Survival Instinct puts you in the boots of Daryl Dixon, voiced by Norman Reedus, with Michael Rooker as his brother Merle. You play from a first-person view and can either fight the walkers or sneak past them. Between levels you drive across Georgia and choose your route: the highway saves fuel but breaks down a lot, while the back roads let you scavenge in small towns. You also decide who joins your group, while watching your food and fuel. Reviews were generally negative, and critics mostly went after the graphics and the controls. It averages 33 out of 100.
Players say it has no redeeming qualities at all. For fans of the show it is a real letdown, because the road trip idea is a good one.
4. Amy (2012)
Amy is a survival horror game by VectorCell, sold as coming from the creator of Flashback. You play Lana, escorting Amy, an autistic girl with supernatural powers, through a city of infected, and since Amy is immune and can heal you, you can never stray far from her. Lana also has to fend off the Phoenix Foundation, an organisation that wants to control Amy and exploit her powers. Reviews went after its technical problems and its controls, and one reviewer found that bad controls plus widely spaced checkpoints meant repeating sections again and again. A patch in April 2012 added more checkpoints. GamesRadar+ said Amy was boring and no fun to play. It averages 30 out of 100.
Players who played it call it the worst game on the PS3. One admits why they finished it: "I played it like one plays Superman 64-out of morbid curiosity."
3. Stormrise (2009)
Stormrise is a real-time tactics game by Creative Assembly's Australian studio, published by Sega. Weather satellites built to stop an environmental disaster malfunctioned instead, and the firestorms they caused split survivors into the high-tech Echelon and the tribal Sai. Your units fight on three levels, from the air down to underground. Critics were kinder to the PS3 version, which got mixed reviews, than to the others. Game Informer's review was headlined "Hope You Weren't Looking for Tight Controls". It averages 39 out of 100.
The few players who bring it up name it among the worst games on the PS3. Real-time tactics asks for a mouse and a keyboard, and a pad was never going to make it easy.
2. The Expendables 2: The Videogame (2012)
The Expendables 2 is a downloadable tie-in to the film, made by ZootFly and released on July 31, 2012, as a prequel to the movie. Four Expendables are hired to rescue a kidnapped Chinese billionaire, and it ends where the film begins. The film stars Stallone, with Statham and Schwarzenegger among the rest, and it co-stars an ensemble of mostly action film actors. Almost none of that star power survives in the game. It averages 26 out of 100.
Players barely mention it. A film built on one-liners and explosions should have been an easy fit for a top-down shooter, and the low score shows it was not.
1. Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013)
Ride to Hell was announced in 2008 as an open world game. Budget cuts and the closure of Deep Silver Vienna left it stuck in development hell, and many sites reported it as cancelled, but Eutechnyx kept working on it until it was announced again in 2013. You play Jake Conway, a Vietnam veteran who comes home to Dead End in 1969, and the riding sections only let you move forward. It became only the second game after Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing to get the lowest possible score from one big games site, and many critics consider it one of the worst games ever made. Eurogamer rated it 1 out of 10. It averages 12 out of 100, the lowest score here.
Players call it the worst game of its generation, and some of them find it funny for exactly that reason.
Which one to play
There you have it, the whole list of the worst PS3 games. None of these ten has many defenders, and most of them are best left on the shelf.
If you want a laugh with friends, Ride to Hell is the one players can still enjoy for how bad it is, and Amy is a close second if you can survive the checkpoints. If you want a good story about a bad idea, Tony Hawk: Ride and its plastic skateboard has one. And if you want to skip the whole pile, start with Turning Point and Survival Instinct, which have nothing to give you.
