It’s Friday, and you know what day that is. Time for your free game.

Title: Bejeweled
Developed and published by: PopCap Games
For: Windows and Mac OS
ESRB rating: Everyone

The archetypal “match three” puzzle game, “Bejeweled” is a habit-forming brain teaser. The goal is simply to swap gems horizontally or vertically to make a match of three or more; do it right and with a little luck you can set up combos as falling gems stack into more pairs. It’s controlled enough that you can almost figure out the sort of chain reaction you’re about to set off, but random enough that it’s impossible to truly predict what will happen. The game is available in a free browser-based version (as per the link), or you can download a fancier edition with a limited free demo. And if you like it, you can always check out the sequel.

(Screen capture by Justin Hoeger)

You might have heard of a game called “Beyond Good & Evil.” It was, like last week’s Free Game Friday selection, an imaginative and well-regarded game that didn’t make much of a splash at retail, quickly relegated the Ubisoft release to bargain bins and clearance racks (you can find used copies pretty cheap these days, or play it with a GameTap subscription).

Maybe the game was too unique to succeed. The photojournalist heroine was tough and competent, and not played up for sex appeal the way most female game protagonists are. The gameplay was a bit like a “Zelda” game, but with a sci-fi setting. It had its own look and feel, and the matter-of-fact cast of humans, aliens, robots and anthropomorphic animals was bizarre.

Arriving as it did in November 2003, during the crowded holiday release season — and facing competition from Ubisoft’s other releases, like the “Prince of Persia” remake, to say nothing of other companies’ games — it’s perhaps not much of a surprise the game didn’t take hold.

“BG&E” ended on a cliffhanger, but for years there was no solid word on a sequel. A few rumors surfaced here and there. Conventional wisdom was that the game hand’t sold well enough to warrant a follow-up. Some people gave up hope. But not I! And now, here I sit, vindicated — Ubisoft is developing a sequel.

I’m curious: What games do you want to see sequels to? Let me know in the comments!

(Image courtesy BeyondGoodEvil.com.)

For this installment of Free Game Friday, I give you …

Title: Psychonauts
Developed by: Double Fine Productions
Published by: Majesco Entertainment
For: Windows
ESRB rating: Teen

This was something of an underappreciated gem when it first came out. Nevertheless, it was a critical favorite in 2005 and has developed a strong cult following since then.

In “Psychonauts” you play as Raz, an oddball kid who infiltrates a psychic training camp and has to learn all he can before his parents arrive to pick him up. He’s a natural at the psychic basics, and much of the game is spend crawling around inside the minds of various characters, each of which reflect their personalities. The art style is intentionally twisted and deformed, and the dialogue is hilarious — much of the game was written by Erik Wolpaw, who wrote the script for last year’s darkly funny “Portal.”

The game isn’t available for free on its own, though you can likely find a used copy pretty cheap online or in a game store. However, it’s free to play through the end of the year on GameTap, a service that allows you to download and play games as long as you do so through the service’s front end.

Most games on the service require a paid GameTap subscription to play (about $10 a month, or $60 for a year), but “Psychonauts” is among a few dozen titles that can be played with a free account. You’ll have to sign up, download and install the GameTap client and game data, and sit through an ad before the game will start up, but aside from the hard drive space and time involved, it costs nothing. But remember, it’s only free through Dec. 31 of this year, so don’t dawdle!

(Image courtesy of Psychonauts.com)

If you hang around gamers long enough, eventually you’ll discover the online comic Penny Arcade. It has been around for nearly a decade now, and in that time the thrice-weekly strip has grown into a mini-empire with an annual convention and an ongoing charity program that has raised millions of dollars in cash and gaming products for children’s hospitals around the world.

For all its popularity, Penny Arcade can be an acquired taste. Understanding the punchline usually requires a close familiarity with gaming terms, culture and trends. The strip jumps right into things with no preamble, and assumes the reader has the knowledge of minute game-related details, news and the comic’s own history needed to get the joke (Jerry Holkins aka Tycho, the writer of the comic, types up a lengthy newspost to go with each strip that explains the context). Take this one, for example:

That’s pretty straightforward for a Penny Arcade comic, but if you don’t get it, trust me — it’s funny. It’s also quite clean — the strip (and newspost, even) frequently features profanity and violence, so readers beware.

Now, this comic about video games has become a video game itself. Click that link and you can download a demo for Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems; there’s also a demo available on the Xbox Live Arcade, for you Xbox 360 owners. But please, don’t be misled by the comic art — the game is rated Mature for a reason. Type the title into this blog’s ESRB widget to see the criteria.

The full version of the game, titled “Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness,” is about $20, and is the first of several planned “episodes,” gamelets that connect to form a larger adventure. The setting is a version of the 1920s filled with Lovecraftian creatures and steampunk creations. The gameplay looks to be a mashup of classic point-and-click adventure games, like the “Monkey Island” or “King’s Quest” series, and turn-based battles like you might find in a Japanese role-playing game.

Tycho handled the writing duties, and Penny Arcade artist Gabe (aka Mike Krahulik) did the visual and character designs. The title was developed by Hothead Games, and the non-Xbox 360 versions are being distributed through a fledgling service called Greenhouse.

(Image courtesy of Penny Arcade)

Games don’t grow on trees. Most of them are $30 to $60 each, sometimes more for special editions or unique packages, like “Rock Band” with its custom instrument controllers. And that’s not even taking into account hardware costs and extra controllers and yearly subscriptions and you get the idea.

Bottom line: Gaming = expensive. But it doesn’t always have to be. If you have a computer, there are countless games available for free on the Internet. I’m not talking about pirated “warez” or otherwise illegal downloads. These games are legitimately free for all.

My plan is to feature one of these gratis games each Friday. And look, here’s the first one:

Title: N
Developed and published by: Metanet Software
For: Windows, Mac OS, Linux
ESRB rating: None (Xbox 360 version rated Everyone 10+)

“N” is an action-oriented puzzle game. You’re set loose as a jumping, wall-clinging ninja in a gray room, and have to get through the exit door before time runs out to reach the next room in the current set (collecting gold adds to the timer, which carries over from level to level).

Did I mention there are traps and hazards galore? Well, there are traps and hazards galore. Take a long fall or a single hit from anything and your little assassin is instantly struck dead (there’s often a small amount of unrealistic blood, and sometimes the ninja breaks apart into pieces). There are numerous levels in the game, and you can create more with the built-in level editor, or download mind-twisters that other players have constructed.

(Image courtesy of Metanet Software)

Hello there, and welcome to my blog! You can find a little bit of information about me here. I’ll be writing about video games in this space, so if you’re interested in gaming as a hobby, or simply as a curious party, I hope you’ll stick around. And please, feel free to leave comments and engage in discussion!

So, let’s talk about “Grand Theft Auto IV” for a bit. I’m guessing most people reading this have heard of the game by now. If you haven’t, read on for a bit of a primer.

In its first week of release, “GTA IV” sold around 6 million copies and raked in $500 million. This is more than San Luis Obispo County’s budget. This is at least twice what the hit movie “Iron Man” pulled in over its first week. This is not a niche product for stereotypical antisocial gamers. This is mainstream entertainment. Tomorrow is the two-week mark — what will the numbers be like then?

Critics — mainstream and enthusiast — laud the game. The New York Times loves it. Time magazine was impressed enough to do an early review and write a follow-up.

However, as is now the norm for the “GTA” series, there are many detractors. One, a columnist for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune worries about the game’s influence on men of my generation. She frets, “The average 32-year-old man who plays violent video games … is likely to be someone’s husband and father. What qualities of character will his wife find when she looks to him for love, steadiness and fidelity?”

I double-checked with my wife this afternoon: She’s satisfied with my love, steadiness and fidelity even though I’ve played the game for a number of hours now, and have played others like it for many years. She thinks the mild guilt of playing “GTA IV” drove me to do a sink full of dishes earlier than I otherwise might have; there appear to be no further ill effects. But hey, I won’t be 32 for a few years yet; maybe the game will break down my moral fiber by then.

I could go on (and on and on), but I’d hate to kill off my potential blog readership with a long, boring first post. So I’ll cut my losses and let it go as a short, boring first post. I’d like to direct you to a few resources, however.

The first is the widget on the upper-right corner of this blog. This tool from the Entertainment Software Rating Board lets you plug in the name of a game and instantly get back a rating and criteria — “Grand Theft Auto IV” is listed as Mature for intense violence, blood, strong language, strong sexual content, partial nudity, and use of drugs and alcohol. By all means, search for a game if you’re wondering about it.

The second is a Web site called GamePolitics. Owned by the Entertainment Consumers Association, it’s a great resource for tracking legislation and controversy concerning video games. The site doesn’t hesitate to call out the game industry when it makes itself look bad, but it’s quick to rebut spurious arguments and criticize opportunistic pundits and politicians.

(Images courtesy of Rockstar Games; illustration by Justin Hoeger)