Some PSN Games

Peggle/Peggle Nights
Peggle is a fun little waste of time. It's downright addicting until it gets buried underneath it's own weakness. . You launch a ball from the top of the screen and try to shoot in a direction that will bounce around and hit as many pegs as possible before it's lost at the bottom of the screen. Along the way, you'll encounter levels where certain pegs will cause special things to happen, like helping you aim better, or making all the pegs around it explode.

So you get about fifty levels with the basic game. I had a lot of fun with them When you're done, there's a mess of challenges. But they were basically harder versions of the previous levels. And these challenges hammered home for me that weakness that I mentioned: the harder it gets, the more it becomes a game of luck.

But it didn't stop me from shelling out another $5 down the road to upgrade to Peggle Nights and get another fifty levels. Mild Recommendation.

Flower
Pretty. Relaxing... well, until you get to that fourth level anyway.

You are a flower petal. Or maybe you're the wind.... I'm not sure about that. At any rate, you guide your flower petal across pretty green fields, waking up other flower petals. Waking up enough flowers will activate other sections. Pleasant chimes play as you activate the flowers.

There's not a whole lot of challenge here, and I think you can beat the game in an hour or two. But every once in awhile I want to revisit those green fields. Mild recommendation.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed
To clarify, this is the remake of the original, not the disappointing successor that this was released to promote.

Bionic Commando is my all-time favorite NES game, and so when I heard they were doing a remake, I knew I had to have it. What the created is truly a labor of love, as this isn't just a fresh coat of paint, but rather tightening everything up and making it worth to stand alongside the other new and shiny platformers of this console generation.

What's funny is it's pointed out to me how lazy a gamer I've become. This was not an easy game originally. It was a game like Super Mario Brothers where you had to play over and over to master the early levels until you were good enough to play through it in one sitting, and there was no turtle waiting in world three to give you hundreds of lives.

Gameplay wise, the best comparison would be to another Capcom game.. Castlevania. Basically they replace your whip with a mechanical arm which is your primary mode of transportation. It's used to move from one platform to another, swing across pits, pick up itens, and knock back enemies.

I can only guess how many hours I put into getting good enough to beat the original, and even then I still liked to go back on a Saturday afternoon and see how quickly I can beat it.... seem to recall it could be done in about two-to-three hours. I no longer have that kind of dedication, but fortunately this remake had level setting the original didn't have, with unlimited continues, unlimited lives, and the easiest settings cover some of the pits of death so that if you miss a swing you escape death altogether.

This game also had an interesting multiplayer setting as well, but this wasn't one I cared to play with strangers, and didn't know anyone else who bought it.

A Rearmed 2 has since been released.. I can't imagine it being bad, but I understand they added a jump button which I feel completely misses the point of the game.

They took one of the games of my childhood, and made it better without changing anything that made it great. I can't imagine anyone who calls themselves a platform fan not liking this game. Highly Recommended.