They say that the best ideas are the simplest, and it’s true. However, if you’re trading card manufacturer Upper Deck, then making things far more complicated than they need be is a great way to disguise the fact that all you do is give people lots of worthless little bits of coloured paper in return for considerably more valuable little bits of coloured paper. Seriously, if they’d just start writing "strength", "speed", "magic" and "luck" ratings along the bottom of bank notes it would cut out the middle man and the likes of Upper Deck would go out of business overnight. So yeah, all the rules, systems, terminology, and ratings of trading card games – they’re just there to make it seem worth buying more of the damn things. They do not ever, ever, add up to something that could reasonably be called a "good game" and if you need proof, look no further than Marvel Trading Card Game on the PSP.

This is the most tedious, needlessly complicated waste of UMD storage space we’ve ever ejected from our PSP in disgusted disbelief. We would try to give you an idea of how it “works” but there’s not room on this page to even cover the basics. There are dozens of different rules and phases and layers of jargon to wade through, and not one of them seems to have any real strategic significance whatsoever. Once you understand what this means and what that does, it becomes clear that there’s only ever really one sensible course of action anyway. The most obvious choices are always the right ones to make, and if you stick to them and still lose, then you have every right to blame your cards. Obviously, trading card games have to be designed this way otherwise there’d be no advantage in handing more and more money over for more and more cards.

Now, real trading cards might be a ripoff, but at least there’s a certain thrill (albeit an incredibly geeky one) to be gotten from amassing your own formidable collection of cards. Surely though, the fact that those cards are actual physical objects, and that you can actually feel their soft, shiny cardboard caress against your damp, clammy, unwashed hands is all part of the appeal. It’s a charm (a deeply questionable one, but a charm nonetheless) that simply can’t be captured on a single, faceless disc. And without it, all you’re left with is a really, really poor game.

Gavin Mackenzie