Yes, I’ve gotten so preoccupied with real life that I’m getting lazy: I’ve stolen this week’s Free Game Friday from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Through what they term “a minor act of skullduggery”, you can now get yourself a free copy of Peggle Nights. I’ve never been a huge fan of Peggle - I prefer Plants vs Zombies, or maybe Zuma. But lots of people love the game, and now you can get it for free by signing up for a Popcap Passport.

From the day I bought my PS3, I’ve had it hooked up to our flatscreen with an HDMI cable. But recently we had to sell our televisions, and I found need to hook it up to an old standard definition set. The problem I found is that the AV output cables just wouldn’t work. I tried it on more than one TV just to check, and I couldn’t get any signal from the Playstation 3’s AV cables.

Googling around, I managed to find the solution. You’ve got to reset the PS3’s video settings. When you turn on the PS3, rather than using the controller, hold down the power button for 5 seconds or so. The thing will beep, and then the AV cables should work. Viola. Hopefully this helps somebody out. It drove me nuts for the hour or so before I thought to search online.

One Button Bob is a fun little game with a twist. The entire game is played with one button. What that button does changes from screen to screen. It reminds me of Aztec Adventure, or maybe Jumpman.

Play One Button Bob

Although I’m smack in the middle of a big ole writing drought on this site due to real life issues, I thought I’d share my Dragon Age online profile. EA does a lot of stuff that gets on my nerves, and the integration of Dragon Age’s DLC has rubbed me the wrong way a bit, but their online profile system is kind of cool. As you play, your character is continually updated on their site. My main character is a human rogue named Johann, after an old D&D character of the same name I played more than a decade ago. The site shows all your achievements, your main character’s stats and skills, and even what equipment he’s currently using.

You can check out the details on my character here.

SkiFree is not a new game, but I just tried it out. Not a bad distraction if you’re able to download the exe. Give it a shot.

Download SkiFree

Okay, maybe vaporware isn’t the right word for all of these games, although I can certainly apply it to a few here. But there are plenty of games that have been announced but not dated, and I’m eager to play them.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 tops my list. After the teaser trailer, we got a kickass cutscene-looking movie of Jade parkouring through a villiage, on the run from what appear to be Alpha Section troops. But there’s no word as to whether the game will actually be made. Please please mister Ancel sir, make the game.

Half Life 2, Episode 3 is also a game I can’t wait to play. Aside from brief mentions of the integration of sign language into the game, there’s been no real word on it. No release date. But I’m hoping that the brief glimpse of the Aperture Science ship at the end of Episode 2 means that they’ll integrate the Portal world and give Gordan Freeman a portal gun. How much would that kick ass?

Mechwarrior 5 has also been announced, but there’s very little news. I’ve read that they intend to change the game so that light mechs and heavy mechs will all have their individual roles, similar to classes in RPG games. No longer will light and medium mechs be merely stepping stones to that 100 ton assault mech. I don’t know quite how they’ll pull this off, but it should be interesting.

The third (and potentially final) episode in the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series hasn’t even officially been announced yet, but you know it’s coming. I had a blast with the first two games. The comedy is totally ridiculous, and very very Penny-Arcade. I love beating up mimes, hobos, and barbershop quartets with garden implements.

Starcraft: Ghost was delayed “indefinitely”. But it seemed to combine two things I really like: Stealth gameplay, and the Starcraft universe. Watching a mutalisk come at you in first-person would be awesome. I really hope that Blizzard picks the project back up at some point.

The fourth game in the Thief series is going by the working name “Thi4f”. With the horrible jumping and climbing mechanics in Thief: Deadly shadows, the developers have quite a ways to go if they want their game to compete in a game climate that includes titles like Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia. Given that they have no choice but to improve, the fourth thief game should kick ass.

And that’s my list. Starcraft: Ghost may be vaporware, and maybe BGE2, but most are just undated games.

With Dante’s Inferno right around the corner, why not spend your Friday butchering demons and classic works of literature at the same time?  Ok, so it’s not exactly a free game and you need either a PS3 or an Xbox 360 to play it but hey, I’m new to this whole free game thing.   Hell, I just got a PC that can play Torchlight.

Any way, Dante’s Inferno isn’t a bad demo.  It shows off the combat, the various settings, the basics of the plot and it lets you bust Death in the head with his (her?) own scythe.  It’s also fairly ridiculous, but that’s not always a bad thing.  PS3 folks will probably just laugh and go back to the God of War 3 demo that’s been floating around since June but all you 360 only fans that have always wanted to see what the fuss over Kratos was about, well, this is as close as you’re gonna get without dropping 300 bucks on a PS3.

And hey, there’s boobs and who doesn’t like boobs?

The Dante’s Inferno demo is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store.

Yes, it’s another article about stylized graphics. Perhaps I could just say “Stylized graphics age better than graphics that attempt to be photorealistic” and end this article here.

Naah.

I think I’ll show you some comparative screenshots to prove a point that likely doesn’t need a strong argument anyway.

Firstly, let’s start with games from this year. Red Faction: Guerilla, and Borderlands. Borderlands is obviously very cartoony, whereas Red Faction was going for the more common photorealistic look. They both look good. Of course they do. They’re both brand new. But how will they look to us in another five years? Ten?

Let’s look at some older games for perspective.

Both Okami and Tomb Raider: Legend came out for the Playstation 2 in 2006. By this screenshot, they both look pretty good, although I feel that the full-motion cartoon graphics in Okami really would make this example stand out more than it does in a still shot.

Both Psychonauts and Jade Empire came out in 2005. At this point, you can really see that an attempt at photorealism that came only five years ago really looks dated compared to Uncharted 2 or Resident Evil 5. Psychonauts, in contrast, looks like exactly the same cartoony image it always has. It simply holds up better. Click on the image for the big version. You’ll see.

Lastly, let’s go back more than a decade to 1998.

The cartoon images in Grim Fandango sometimes look a big jaggy, but overall they look good. Take a look at poor Eli Vance and Dr. Kleiner in the shot on the right. There was a big leap in graphics between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, wasn’t there?

Yes, my point didn’t really need any proof. But here’s the proof.

I’ve been playing a lot of Darksiders the past couple of weeks taking a whirlwind tour through post-apocalyptic Earth as War, one of the four Horsemen.  Along the way I’ve killed many the demon, rode many the mile and amassed a collection of armaments and weapon enhancements to make Kratos proud.  I found the game to be one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had on my 360 in quite some time.

I must admit, given the great time I’ve had with the game, that I’m a bit surprised to see it ranking in the low 80’s on Metacritic.  Now, I know that Metacritic isn’t the best site to look at for such things having seen first hand how their internal translation system turns a C+ into a 58 thereby skewing a game’s perceived quality downward.  Still though even reading through the reviews the common criticisms seems to be that rather than come up with their own gaming mechanics, Vigil decided to instead lift mechanics of off popular gaming franchises, namely The Legend of Zelda, Portal and God of War.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Darksiders does just that, however I have to question whether or not knocking the game for it is a valid criticism.  I say this because we as game reviewers seem to be incredibly tolerant of this when it comes to sequels but incredibly intolerant when it comes to new IP’s.  Take Uncharted 2, for example.  Uncharted 2 is, hands down, the most thrilling experience I’ve ever had while playing video games but it is, at its core, just a refinement of the mechanics presented in the first game, which, by the way, were taken wholeheartedly from other games such as Gears of War and Tomb Raider.  It isn’t the mechanics though that make Uncharted 2 such a great game, although they certainly help, it’s the pacing, the voice acting, the incredible technical achievements that, when all bundled together, make the game so damn exciting.

While we’re on the subject of unoriginal games you don’t have to look much farther than Gears of War 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  Both games are sequels, both games build upon, or refine mechanics created in earlier games and neither do much to move the franchise into new territory yet both are very highly rated.  It seems that we, as reviewers, are more than happy with more of the same if those same mechanics are presented in the franchises we expect to see them.

On this, I gotta call bullshit.

Now, if you want to argue that Darksiders didn’t implement the cribbed mechanics in a compelling way then I think that’s a valid criticism.  Personally, I wouldn’t agree with you, but that’s just my opinion and what works for me doesn’t work for everyone.  Slamming the game because it uses game mechanics that we’ve come to love in other games is patently ridiculous.  Nintendo fans the world over always complain about the long lengths of time between Zelda sequels.  Fans are similarly vocal about wanting a more mature, more violent take on the franchise, although I personally don’t think Zelda is the place for blood and guts.  When it comes to Portal, Valve develops sequels according to their own strange whims and who knows when a sequel for Portal will be coming, if one does at all.   So we want more Zelda and we want more Portal and here a game gives it to us, wrapped in its own style with its own world, story and characters and we’re supposed to say “no thank you” simply because it didn’t come from Nintendo or Valve?  Yeah, again, I gotta call bullshit.

The simple fact is that not all studios can come up with a new game mechanic that changes the world of gaming.  It’s simply not possible.  There has to be room in gaming for studios that can take existing mechanics and build compelling games around them.  Why we’re tolerant of first person shooters, a collection of mechanics that hasn’t changed in years, yet not so for something like Darksiders is not only stupid, but hypocritical.  It also can’t be terribly comforting to budding, young game designers to think that the only road to critical praise lies in either creating a completely new gaming mechanic or in getting work on an established sequel.

Now, I’m not saying that Darksiders is perfect, but I do think it’s better than that aggregated Metacritic score would lead you to believe.  It’s certainly better than Gears of War 2 a game that somehow managed to use the same mechanics as its forebear yet take a step backwards at the same time.  I love Zelda and while I don’t feel that it is the appropriate franchise for blood and guts, there are times that I want to play a game that combines the mechanics of Zelda and the visceral feel of a game like God of War.  Darksiders does just that and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s easy, as a reviewer to fall into easy critical traps and I’m of the mind that knocking a game for using another game’s mechanics is one of those traps. If I go to a restaurant and order a bacon cheeseburger, I’m not upset that the chef took a beef patty, cooked it and then put cheese and bacon on it.  That’s what I wanted and while I may be happy to entertain some sort of alternate take on the sandwich, for the most part, I want what I ordered.  There has to be a place in gaming for bacon cheeseburgers where the only criticism is based on how good it tastes, the quality of the presentation and how well it fills you up.

Darksiders may not be incredibly original but it is one damn fine bacon cheeseburger.  For me, for right now, that’s more than enough.

Ever crave a low-resolution, ridiculously difficult game? Then Dungeon is for you. No, I didn’t get very far. Maybe you will.

Download Dungeon