What a difference a couple of months make. In the past 60 days, the PlayStation Network has done some very bold, forward-thinking things for you and me. For this column, I'll put aside the fact that "Qore," the magazine show, is a debacle and that movies are just too darn expensive for online, certainly when compared to NetFlix. Although it's often tough to believe that a cranky, cynical worrier like myself can concentrate on the positive, deep down I am hopeful and excited about the possibilities of gaming. And there's a heckuva lot to be excited about here.

So pretty yet so creepy. Is this Siren from the East Village?

Siren: Blood Curse

On July 13, Sony put up a dozen episodes of Siren: Blood Curse, a horror-based survival game made in Japan. I decided to download all the episodes at one time, ignorantly figuring the game would be sucked into my PlayStation 3 in a matter of hours. At night's end, after Jon Stewart, it was still downloading. It was still downloading when I got up to pee at 3 a.m. And it was still going when I ate my generic cornflakes in the morning. (Come on, open up that pipeline, Time Warner.)

It was done before lunch time. Yeah, it took too long and that doesn't bode well for a not-too-distant future in which all games will be piped to us à la iTunes. However, each of the episodes appeared to be error-free, which is pretty darn cool. Blood Curse does, however, eat a substantial portion of the free space on the PS3's hard drive.

In this dark, brooding game, which will punish your synapses with fear, you'll meet various shibitos: zombies who not only attack, but try to capture the memories of those they assail. While your first instinct may be to attack the zombies with your fists, that strategy will be short-lived at best. They usually have weapons, like the dude workin' on the railroad who comes at you with a pick axe. If they do get to you, you're supposed to shake the controller to get up, but that will only lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, since you have to shake a lot. You have to be stealthy and attack from behind if you don't yet have a weapon.

While the characters move stiffly and the graphics for Siren: Blood Curse aren't the best as far as realism goes, the creepy environments are sometimes enough to make up for it. As you enter the primordial forest in which half-lit human sacrifices and cannibalism take place, the air of trepidation is so thick, you can almost smell it -- and that's before you meet the evil nun.

Even early on, when I've jumped into a closet to hide and snivelingly peer through a broken tine to witness a shibito cop coming right up and seemingly looking in, the tension mounts. I pick up the ability to see through the demon eyes of the zombies, a skill called SightJacking. Sometimes, through his eyes, I'll see that the monster is just staring at me or where he thinks I might be. This time, I see that the cop-thing has moved away, letting me find a shovel to whack the lumbering shibito into an airborne spray of blood and marrow.

Grimpin': Swing it around in PixelJunk Eden.

The Hellish Charm of Eden

PixelJunk Eden, just a smallish, 107-megabyte file, is something completely different. In real life, I love to explore the outdoors, so while I like the degree of difficulty in the PixelJunk series, I love the idea that it takes place in a pastoral setting.

Here, the goal is to use your tiny creature, a grimp, to swing around and pollinate a garden. In each level as your flowers grow high, you'll be able to collect five Spectra, ghostly star shapes that, when nabbed, allow you to move to the next level. It's like Olympic gymnastics meets Spider-Man web-crawling meets whacked-out Dr. Seuss whimsy.

The artwork here is deft and gentle; the music, mostly relaxingly trippy. While the three-player co-op play is plagued by a quirky camera, the single-player effort is solid, with the exception of a timer that sometimes takes the fun out of swinging with the grimp and turns it into tense play in which you're in competition with your PS3. Don't they know that a garden takes time, and speed isn't part of the process? Yes, you can collect time crystals, but the game's tough enough without it. (Witness that pesky Spectra-protecting boss that spits you out on Level 10, and the blinking background that just might make you nauseous.)

Avast, ye Ratchet lovers. Caves are dangerous places.

The Middling Quest for Booty

While Eden may be the most artistically inspired game of the crop checked out this month, the new, downloadable Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty tries to fill the years-long gap between console-sized releases with slightly better-than-middling results. First, I admire the idea that there's a Ratchet you can download, and this pirate story sometimes features Ratchet in beautifully detailed caves. The story has a compelling dramatic arc, humor that's paced well, a creepy curse and a twist or two, even though the gameplay takes about five hours (three, if you're a Ratchet Master).

But, if you don't mind a music analogy, the 2.3 GB download is kind of a B-side single for a franchise that always produces a hit CD. Further, since Clank isn't in the game, it's like Jack and Jill without Jack. You gotta have that duo together to make a splash.

Also, there's not much new ground that's broken here: as with the others in the series, it's a platformer with crazy weapons and clever ways to construct your path through puzzles, as you do with the failed windmills early in the game. Which isn't to say Booty's not a hoot to play at times. It's just short and not that original, a bridge at best and at worst a placeholder until, as Rusty Pete proclaims in the end, a new game appears in the autumn of 2009.

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In The Last Guy, satellite maps + zombies = gaming heaven.

Superheroics in The Last Guy

Finally, the most addicting new game is The Last Guy, an old-school throwback that feels a little like the classic Lemmings, except this little game is more realistic. Your environment looks like a Google Earth satellite city map with a birds-eye perspective that's about as high as the Goodyear blimp flies.

Basically, you're trying to save people -- literal hordes of folks -- from a zombie invasion. You're the Pied Piper hero they follow, and you find them by using thermal vision on the streets, in clubs and hidden within warehouses. Lead a certain number to safety before time runs out and before, say, a giant zombie cockroach gets you, and you're golden, the ultimate superman.

As you play, you'll think, dang, these first two levels are so easy. What's wrong? It's just a cruel tease to get you to learn the game -- because the difficulty then ramps up quickly. The zombies move speedily and become craftier, and when they near your throng, the people break ranks and race off in different directions, forcing you to start all over again. It's a simple idea, yes, but sometimes even the simple ideas are good ones.