This is by far the most important Free Game of the Week feature I've ever done. Read on...
Alright guys, the on-demand gaming service Gametap (which just added its 1000th game, by the way), has added the Tim Schafer classic, Psychonauts, to its free service until December 31st. If you know me, you'll know that Psychonauts is easily one of my five favorite games of the 2000s.
In Psychonauts, you play as Raz, a ten year old boy with psychic powers who was raised in the circus. The game revolves around Raz and the other children at the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp in which Raz has run off to. Along the way you'll meet a large cast of characters, each with their own very unique and hilarious personalities, and uncover a deviant plot to steal the minds of these young children and use them for evil purposes.
All you need to do in order to get free access to Gametap is download the client (click here: 35mb download), install it, and create an account. Once you've done that, launch the client and start downloading Psychonauts (about 4GB, so sorry those of you with dialup). And while you're at it, check out some of the other great games up on Gametap for free. Right now some of the games up for free are Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, Bloodrayne, Second Sight, Myst Online: Uru Live, Bubble Bobble, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2, realMYST, Metal Slug, last week's free game of the week: Sam and Max: Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die, and many many others, all for free. A listing of all the games available for free can be viewed here.
So, you have a long Thanksgiving weekend coming up. Why not spend some of it at the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp and get to know Raz, Dogen, Lili Zanotto, Agent Cruller, Sasha Nein, Bobby Zilch, and all the other people at the camp? Oh and don't forget about the milkman, who's milk is delicious.
Telltale Games has released the trailer for its upcoming second season of the Sam and Max episodic series. For those of you unaware, the episodic series is a continuation of the adventures of Steve Purcell's comic book characters Sam, a 6 foot tall dog, and Max, a "hyperkinetic rabbity thing". Sam and Max have been featured in comic books, an animated tv series, and a LucasArts game. The series got its start after LucasArts cancelled a planned sequel to Sam and Max Hit The Road in 2004 due to "market place realities and underlying economic considerations" (read: people don't like adventure games any more). After LucasArts cancelled the sequel, the employees working on that title left the company and went on to make Telltale Games, an independent game development company. In 2005, LucasArts let the license to Sam and Max expire, and Steve Purcell approached Telltale and asked them to work on a new game. This eventually led to the decision to make it episodic and the financial backing of Turner's GameTap service.
This trailer premiered at Penny Arcade Expo last weekend, and I must say that it's looking just as good and funny as the first season was.
Sam and Max Season Two hits both GameTap and TelltaleGames.com this fall.