Well if you were waiting on any of the below titles, you’ve got one less excuse… the price. For the next little bit these games are only going to set you back 5 bucks….. so cmon, make an impulse purchase (or two). If it were up to me you’d all be buying the first two games listed…

The Last Guy, PixelJunk Eden, Echochrome, Novastrike, and Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando are all getting blasted with the “temporary price reductor-ray” (patent pending)

Kidding! There’s actually none whatsoever, which in this day is somewhat surprising though a wonderful breath of fresh air.

Some quick backstory for those that might not be aware, this week Q Games made the PixelJunk Eden soundtrack available on the PSN for the crazy-low price of $2.99. 12 tracks in total. Yea, it’s a good deal.

So last night I figured it was a no-brainer to pick it up. As it’s unpacking the data onto your HDD (which you can then easily copy off) they give you a heads up that it’s got no copy protection but to kindly keep it to yourself.

It’s a sad state of affairs when I’m taken aback when a consumer is not treated like a criminal. Big high-five for Sony and Q Games on this one, they could’ve gone all iTunes on us and tried to lock down when and where we can play the files we just bought…. but they took the higher (cooler) road. Between things like this and the stance on the upcoming Fallout 3, maybe we’re getting ready to make a turn on this whole DRM bullshit.

I wrote a slightly (ok, totally) rantish “open letter” to Dylan Cuthbert last night, bemoaning the difficulty levels in PixelJunk Monsters and Eden. If you have yet to try these games on your PS3 – run, don’t walk. They are wonderfully crafted, tight little experiences of both the Tower Defence and Platforming genres, respectively. There are demos for both.

Anyhow, Mr. Cuthbert had the good graces to respond, and he has confirmed the following:

• Monsters will be receiving a free patch that allows the player to progress through the game on Easy, Medium, Hard, or a new Expert mode (which I suggested he name simply “Cuthbert”); this will be available for offline play. Online rankings will maintain the existing difficulty level to maintain fairness.
• Eden will also be receiving a patch to enable some new modes of gameplay. He described the swinging mechanic as “much too fun to waste on just one set of game rules”. I agree. He also implied that Q-Games is looking into “a more namby pamby mode for the ‘lighter’ people out there”.

What a nice guy.

You can read my original letter here, and his actual response here. What’s also kind of amazing is that I wrote it to him at 1:25 am my time, and he responded within 25 minutes. He’s 13 hours ahead of me in timezones. I have received email from the future.

Eden seems slightly less abstract now, by a micron. As it turns out you are playing a bit of pollen, sweeping through this 2D, procedurally-generated forest, making things grow. Except, your bit of pollen can swing around like Spider-man, and cause branches to grow ahead of it’s path. I think. Oh and it’s got co-op. Very smart. Looks like 3 players in the video above.

Q-Games has been pretty successful with their PlayStation Network experiment thus far. The mandate was, as I understand it, to build 4 games, each with a 6-month development windows; each with 1080p graphics; and fresh gameplay. While PixelJunk Racers didn’t do anything for me personally (and yes I gave it a fair shot), Monsters was a sublime Tower Defence game, and one I still play all the time.

I wonder if Otograph is doing the music on Eden one as well.

The generation of the “leaves” and other structures looks almost like an animated postscript file; those shapes have a very flash/vector appearance about them. Some freaky Cell things going on there.

With the ridiculous amount of time I’ve put into Monsters, Eden will be an insta-buy for me, although I doubt right now that it has the same replay appeal. Nonetheless I am a sucker for trippy, peyote-induced visions of electronic entertainment, and PSN has got me more than covered in that particular regard.