Puzzling Results Monday, October 8, 2007 : 10:00 PM PDT By: Chris

EDIT: Double update this week. Expanded news coming soon.

At long last, Puzzle Quest is coming out on XBL this week. I played this game to death on the PSP and certainly don't mind doing it again in HD. Unorthodox RPGs like this need to become, well...orthodox.

There’s also a totally free game coming out this Wednesday on Live Arcade. Hey, Aegis Wing was great so this game must be awesome as well, right? Right?! Well, if you like subcompact hatchbacks then the answer is a big yes because Toyota is bringing us Yaris – the game, that is. Advergames are no longer mere Flash-based monkey slapping affairs on websites. No, in a move pioneered by the Burger King himself, Xbox games are being provided on the cheap that aim to shove their product’s image into your mind’s eye. Is this wrong? No, it’s not. The market will determine if this is a viable advertising scheme. If a company makes a game that is genuinely fun to play and gives it to you for free I feel it’s a fair exchange, since all they’re asking of me is to merely recognize that their product exists in the physical universe. What’s more, in the case of the 360 you’re getting a free shot at 200 GP, if you’re into the whole boosting your gamerscore thing. If people don’t like the idea of advergames, or the games are not up to par (extremely likely, this one) then we won’t be seeing them for long anyways.

Sorry for the webcomic faux pas density of this comic. The copy and paste artwork, the cliched straight man/funny man framework, etc. make me regret my laziness. That's something I'm going to try to improve on in year 3 of the comic, which begins next week.