The LoadDown - 10/25/2010

It's Halloween week here in the US, and time for our regular roundup of the week's downloadable titles before we start a weeklong series of seasonal gaming posts.  The only seasonal title seems to be Costume Quest on the XBox 360 and PS3, but there's a solid lineup of new titles just the same.

WiiWare -- Two new titles this week.  BIT.TRIP FATE continues Aksys Games' retro-psychedelic series, this time in the form of a side-scrolling shooter with one or two-player simultaneous action.  My Planetarium is a cool solar system explorer, with approximately twenty thousand celestial bodies mapped out including stars up to the 7th magnitude.

Wii Virtual Console -- Nothing new this week.

DSiWare -- Four new titles up for download.  Go! Go! Island Rescue! sends the player's squad of fire fighters out to rescue a vacationing family.  Spot the Difference brings those annoying newspaper puzzles to the DSi.  Flashlight is a utility program that basically sets both screens to a bright white (color and intensity variable) light, so the DSi can be used as a very expensive flashlight; I'd say this is a strange idea, but I've been known to use my cell phone in exactly this way.  And GO Series Defense Wars is a tower defense/shooter game.

XBox Live Arcade -- Three games this week, with the long-awaited indie title Super Meat Boy leading the pack.  Costume Quest is the latest from Double Fine (see PS3 notes below), and Hudson's Dream Chronicles is an attractive-looking hidden object adventure game ported from the popular 2007 PC casual title.

Game Room -- Several games were expected this week, including Konami's Jackal, but have not materialized on schedule.  Is this the beginning of the end for Game Room?

PS3 on PSN -- Two new games last week.  Aqua Panic! brings the popular PSP puzzle game in the spirit of Lemmings to the PS3.  Costume Quest is a Halloween-themed adventure/RPG/scavenger hunt game from Double Fine, creators of Psychonauts and Brutal Legend.