We thought we'd take a break this week from our usual Flash-based fare this week on the Free Game Club to talk about a slightly meatier experience that you could be having for for free right now: Psychonauts. Yeah, that's right. Tim Schafer's bizarre, hilarious action-platformer is available right now as a free selection on GameTap.

So here's the question: Why haven't you played it yet? You might have had an excuse a couple of years ago, when it was just a poorly-marketed Majesco game. But how has it not made its way onto your must play list at this point? It's cleverly written, it's got some really memorable levels and characters, it's just an all-around great way to spend your time. OK, so maybe some of the actual platforming and combat gameplay is a touch spotty from time to time. But we can look past it, and we're betting you can too.

If you've played the game, feel free to use the comments below to share your thoughts/gushing adoration. If you haven't, we'd love to hear your excuses. If you're about to play it for the first time ... well, don't let us keep you. We'll still be here when you're done.

Alright, Tim Schafer, you win. After targeting various industry folks with a typically contrived adventure game puzzle and then assembling their responses in our GDC Quest Quiz feature, we simply weren't prepared for your relentless response to our silly challenge. Not only did you trick us into doing all the hard work, but you successfully navigated through our made-up-as-we-went-along chicane of bizarre logic. But don't grow complacent in your victory -- we'll get you next time.

The Player
Double Fine's Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and upcoming god of gwar epic, Brütal Legend. Prior to the release of those games, he worked on The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2 and Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

• (1) perforated parasol
• (1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
• (1) sealed manila envelope
• (1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue

Make your way past the break to read our adventurous e-mail exchange.

We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.

The Player
Erik Wolpaw, co-author of the now-defunct Old Man Murray. He's written for games such as Psychonauts and Portal, and once accused the adventure genre of committing suicide.

The Puzzle
You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.

The Inventory

• (1) perforated parasol
• (1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
• (1) sealed manila envelope
• (1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
  

The Solution
"How is the pulley attached to the rubber chicken? See, this is why I hate adventure games. I think you're expecting a joke answer, and I'm actually trying to figure it out. OK, type 'quit.' That's what I would do. Go to the menu and type 'quit.'"

(Catch the rest of our interview with Wolpaw later this week!)

Valve's Steam service is having a last-minute holiday sale from today until January 1, with everything on the online store reportedly 10% to 50% off. While all they have to do is make one game 50% and the rest 10% to make that statement valid, there are some good deals going on. Highlights include:

• Orange Box - $37.45 (25% off)
• BioShock - $37.45 (25% off)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - $22.45 (25% off)
• id Software Super Pack - $52.45 (25% off)
• Psychonauts - $9.95 (50% off)

There are very few hours until Christmas. On this coast, most stores are closing down. Wouldn't be great if you could find the perfect gift for the ones you love? How about a downloadable copy of Psychonauts (no, we don't shut up about this game) for only $10? And while we're at it, you can afford to purchase Rag Doll Kung Fu ($13.45) and Bookworm Adventures ($17.95).

Okay, so a Weighted Companion Papercraft is cute but overplayed, the coin box is creative but part of the ages-old Mario fan art category ... is that a representation of Sasha Nein's mind from Psychonauts as a papercraft doll? No way! Schafer love knows no bounds it seems. (Thanks, Tim) Check out the highlights for today:

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New PSP, PS3 firmware goes live
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Sonic the Hedgehog and Peggle come to iPod
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Valve enables 'Steam'y gift purchasing

Rumors & Speculation
Intel predicts camera-powered, controller-free game system
Pachter insists Mass Effect coming to PS3

Culture & Community
E3 returns to LA Convention Center next July, remains invite-only
Sony places twice in list of business blunders
GameDaily 'Persons of the Year': #1 - 3 and readers' choice

Alright, the internet, you can officially stop dreaming about a sequel to Psychonauts and go back to dreaming about Brutal Legend. After a darkened version of the game's logo with the words "Coming Soon" on it appeared on the Double Fine site and started the rumor train, chief Tim Schafer had to be the one to put the penny on the track. He told Next-Gen, "the truth is we are just putting together a new page about 'The Excellent Game Psychonauts.' We're not announcing any new games or anything. Sorry if we confused anybody! We lightened up the image to hopefully make things clearer."

Why do you build us up (build us up), buttercup? ... And why did we just call a man who could squish us between his meaty palms "buttercup"?

Hot off the heels of Double Fine's announcement of Brütal Legend, we get this tasty little morsel of potential excellence. On Double Fine's projects page, beneath the link for Brütal Legend, we have the teaser image pictured above. No great mystery regarding its contents -- that's clearly Raz, and the logo for the first Psychonauts.

Is Tim Schafer trying to not-so-subtly tell us that a sequel is in the works? Or is this some sort of twisted joke? (Schafer does, after all, have a "twisted mind," as many a press release have said). Not much else to speculate here. We'll keep our eyes peeled for any further announcements or information.

[Update: Sadly, it seems that the "coming soon" image was merely intended to indicate an eventual info page for the original Psychonauts. Double Fine has recognized the confusion, and quietly un-darkened the image to make it more apparent. So no Psychonauts 2 after all. Color us disappointed.]

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

"A Rock 'n Roll roadshow through the twisted mind of Tim Schafer?" That sounds fantastic, though we imagine it comes across like nails on a chalkboard to the publisher hoping to hear terms like "shooter," "sequel," "football," and "based on the hit movie" in the game pitch. Preferably, it'll be all of those.

And for all we know, Double Fine's Brütal Legend could contain any of the above. For now, the only information we have is that obtained from the cover of the latest Game Informer magazine (we've confirmed the image is real), graciously snapped and posted by "Iksenpets" on the official Double Fine forums. The image reveals who we assume to be Jack Black's character -- an axe-wielding, axe-wielding roadie named Eddie Riggs. Oh, and when you check between the pages to find out more about Mr. Schafer's latest road trip, be sure to find out how NF HELL 4K2: The Movie: The Game is coming along.

[Thanks, Max]

As any video game journalist with a few free minutes will tell you, Psychonauts is a brilliant classic that never got the attention it so richly deserved. Thankfully for all of us tired of game journalists yammering on about his last stroke of brilliance, Tim Schafer and Double Fine studios have returned with a new stroke, a title perfectly poised for mass market success: Epic Saga: Extreme Fighter.

We all love dark wizards and gnome kings, right? But what if a gnome king fought a dark wizard? That's the sort of question that ES: EF dares to simultaneously ask and answer. If your puny desktop rig can manage pushing all the pixels, you need to start playing this game today. Oh, didn't we mention? It's free!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]

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Game designer Pierre-Alexandre Garneau ("just call me Pag") has written a piece for Gamasutra that is essentially a Magic 8-ball for determining the success, by means of marketing, of a quality title. The piece, entitled "10 Minute Game Sales Potential Test," presents six questions for determining whether a publisher will be able to successfully market a title.

It's a fascinating read. The words of wisdom one can reap from the piece, if you believe Garneau's analysis, is that original, complex ideas have a steep curve when it comes to profitability. Spore without Will Wright would likely not garner so much attention and anticipation, and we're inclined to agree. As much as one might despise EA for rather annually "rehashing" Madden titles, the company still manages to sell millions of copies of each iteration -- as a business, they are acting as we'd expect.

Also presented in the piece are examples where the test explains the financial success and failure of quality titles (Grand Theft Auto 3 and Psychonauts, respectively). It would be interesting to see how the analysis stacks up to other games both deserving and undeserving of their sales.

See Also: Ad Critic

We won't be satisfied until every Xbox title is compatible on 360, but today's backwards compatibility update is a major step in that direction. Sure, we knew the patch was coming, but it's a relief that it's here, Pyschonauts now playable -- as are Shenmue II, Indigo Prophecy, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Buffy, Destroy All Humans, and others.

The update's final list of games also features some additional surprises (unrevealed during the premature posting on Xbox.com), most notably Soul Calibur 2 (North America only) and Conker: Live and Reloaded. Still, each of these bc updates is bitter sweet, inevitably lacking games we've been longing for. It's been a year, and still no Panzer Dragoon Orta?

For a brief moment in time, an updated version of the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility list was exposed for all the internet to see. Though it was yanked in a matter of minutes, one new entry stood out like an atomic mushroom cloud in a serene, children's playground. Not to imply that Psychonauts is capable of melting children or flooding large masses of land with deadly radiation, but its presence was rather devastating to the psyche.

In case you weren't aware (and clearly you aren't much of the time), Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine did extraordinary things with Psychonauts, managing to take the seemingly incompatible platformer and adventure genres and mash them together like two pieces of clay. That's before they twisted the whole mess into a variety of amusing shapes.

Oh, there's a whole bunch of other new games too. However, when asked about the exact release date of this December update, Microsoft warned us that the list is not final. "We'll have more news soon -- as I'm sure you're aware with any software development, things can change at any time so we want to make an announcement when we're sure we've got the final, solid list."

View the non-final, slightly wobbly list of additions after the break.

[Thanks Nick! Thanks to Richard from Xbox 360 Fanboy for remembering to take a screenshot.]

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer told Gamasutra that while he's mostly a single-player kind of guy, he has really enjoyed the Xbox Live system that "facilitates ... playing with people you know," he said.

Schafer, speaking in general about all the new generation consoles, also suggested that Xbox Live incorporate some of the features found in social networking sites. "You know how funny it is to go on MySpace or Friendster and write testimonials," he said. "I wish you could post those kinds of things about each other."

Schafer also expressed glee with his Nintendo Wii, specifically the controller, Twilight Princess and the Mii channel. "As soon as I got it, just sitting there making Miis and sending them to all my friends was incredibly entertaining for about the first four days." That prompted the developer into suggesting XBL incorporate testimonials. We're imagining a Mii-like avatar creation tool for Xbox Live, and how enjoyably devious that would be.

Double Fine is responsible for last generation's award-winning, scholarly media darling Psychonauts, which suffered from economic-centric maladies (read: poor sales). Before that, Schafer's work included Grim Fandango and contributions to the Monkey Island series. Double Fine is currently working on an unknown project for an unknown medium.

Sony's PlayStation site now features a handy little Javascript program that lets you check on any compatibility issues the PS3 might have with the PlayStation catalogue. Instead of a list, however, you have to type in the games about which you are curious into the search box to find out all the glitches.

We understand not making a list of every PSOne and PS2 title that has compatibility issues, but at the same time we are not sure to what extent BC problems are prevalent. We are impressed with how detailed every glitch has been chronicled, so that you know exactly how the game will screw up (major or minor) while being played on the PS3. We decided to run of a few searches ourselves:

• Psychonauts, unlike its Xbox counterpart, "has no major problems" with the PS3. Huzzah!
• The Ratchet series works fine.
• The Jak series is okay, except for a handful of issues with Jak X: Combat Racing.
  
• Almost surprisingly, every Madden title works well. Only Madden NFL 2007 has some issues with static IP / DHCP and online gaming.
• Every SOCOM title has at least one or two issues.
  
• The Final Fantasy series is a mixed bag. X, XII, and Tactics work, but Anthology, Chronicles, Origins, VIII, and IX have issues. FF VII has one graphical anomaly during one of the first battles in the game. Final Fantasy XI has problems using the PS3's HDD, but a future software update promises to fix that.
  

Mess around the search box and let us know what else you find. Don't throw out your PS2 until you check your favorite titles first.

[Via CVG]