Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time runs at a sillky-smooth 60 frames per second, and it looks great doing it. But it may end up being the last Insomniac game to run at such a high framerate for the forseeable future."One of the long-standing sacred cows here at Insomniac is framerate. We've long viewed a solid framerate as both a sign of a quality product and professionalism as developers. It's always been point of pride in our work and considered an extremely serious part of our development process," wrote Insomniac's Mike Acton in the developer's official blog."However, during development, there are hard choices to be made between higher quality graphics and framerate. And we want to make the right choices that reflect our commitment to providing you with the best looking games out there. To that end, our community team did some research into the question of framerate. The results perhaps confirmed what I've known for a long time, but found it difficult to accept without evidence."

  Given the first-hand reports, Famitsu review scores, and general impressions coming out of this year's Tokyo Game Show, it's not exactly news that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Platinum Games' Bayonetta differ. But when our import copies of the game (which just released in Japan, and will be available in the U.S. on January 5th) arrived yesterday, I was determined to sort out the extent of that difference.Over the past two days, I've spent about 12 hours split between the two versions, and I've ended up very disappointed the PS3 game. All the complaints you may have heard -- that it looks faded and blurry, and struggles through its framerate -- are true, and more significant than I've seen in any PS3/360 game in recent memory. The 360 version runs into occasional light framerate issues, but nothing that really affects the game. The PS3 version feels sluggish for the majority of the game -- at least, when put side-by-side with the 360 one.

  Forza 3 has officially launched in North America, and just as in 2007, the Internet has exploded with custom paint jobs. There's livery for every taste, from sports to anime to, of course, gaming, and many of Forza 2's most popular community artists have returned for the sequel.New for Forza 3 is the storefront feature, which allows artists to sell their designs for in-game credits. Some designs may go for free, others may go for 10,000 credits, but it's an interesting way for community artists to get even more recognition than before.To give you an idea of what's out there, we rounded up some of the best designs from around the Internet, with themes ranging from Zone of the Enders to Transformers. Check them out below, and if you like them, it's not hard to download them. Before you know, you too will be driving a stylish Okami-mobile.

  Darksiders' Joe Madureira Talks Comics, Delays, SequelsWe go crazy in-depth with the famed comic artist on his company's first game.By Andrew HaywardTHQ's Darksiders has been on the horizon for more than two years, but the original action IP will finally make its debut in January. Much of the hype to date has centered around the guidance of artist Joe Madureira, and perhaps rightly so -- the 34-year-old was hired by Marvel Comics while still in high school, and penciled a three-year run of the Uncanny X-Men, followed by his own Battle Chasers series for WildStorm. As his studio, Vigil Games, finishes up work on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title, we spoke with Madureira to discuss his transition from comic creator to game designer, the genesis of (and religious/gaming inspirations behind) Darksiders, and what we can expect to see in a potential sequel.

  Just as promised, LocoRoco Midnight Carnival is releasing today exclusively on the PlayStation Network for $15. It comes complete with the addition of multiplayer play (locally, over ad-hoc) and the ability to race others around the world by way of global leaderboards. Replays of the top five players on any given leaderboard can be downloaded so that you can hopefully pick up some tips and improve your LocoRoco'ing technique.If you're not convinced you want to shell out $15 for the latest iteration of the game (or eat up 190MB on your memory stick or PSP Go), a demo will be released today alongside the full version of the game. No word on what's contained within the demo, but hopefully it's got a large enough chunk that gamers will be able to make an informed decision about whether or not Midnight Carnival is worth it.Look for both the demo and full version of the game on the PlayStation Store later today.

  Since they're launch at the beginning of the month, we haven't seen much in the way of new PSP Minis titles. That changes today, two days before Halloween, with the release of the very timely Zombie Tycoon from Frima Studio. Rather than eliminate zombies, as seemingly every other zombie-infested game allows you to, you'll instead take control of the undead and attack cows, people dressed like giant hot dogs, and anything else that dares to be alive.As with all PSP Minis to date, it looks again like the price might be a sticking point. At $7.99, Zombie Tycoon costs more than half what LocoRoco Midnight Carnival costs, which also releases today. If Sony is hoping for Minis to compete with games on the iPhone App Store, they'll need to help third parties to take a look at the not-quite-impulse-buy pricing scheme that's currently in place.

  True to its trademark humor, Valve has whipped up a little extra treat for Team Fortress 2 players this Halloween weekend. The "Haunted Hallowe'en Special" starts today and lasts through Monday, November 2. They're rolling out a new King-of-the-Hill map called Harvest, with a few spooky gameplay tweaks. The map is haunted by the "restless spirit of Zepheniah Mann," which apparently freezes players with fear if they happen to come across it. Harvest is littered with exploding pumpkin hazards. The update is also said to make "the mangled corpses of the recently deceased" plague the living with candy, though it's anyone's guess exactly what that means.Finally, five new achievements will roll out for the weekend, and getting them will result in five new Mildly Disturbing Halloween Hats. The achievements are called Candy Coroner, Scared Stiff, Ghastly Gibus Grab, Costume Contest, and Attack o' Lantern. No descriptions are listed quite yet, so feel free to take guesses at what those might entail.

  Videogames seem to make pretty regular appearances on South Park, and last night's episode offered another gem. This time, the gang were playing a fair rendition of Lady GaGa's "Poker Face" in a Rock Band-style game -- until Cartman started improvising lyrics to mock Stan's concern about Japan's whaling practices. "I don't give a crap about whales so go and hug a tree," he sang. You can see the clip below:To see the full episode, along with an entire "Poker Face" montage, check the official South Park Studios site.

  Even though Epic Mickey is about a year away, Warren Spector already jokes about what will be in Epic Mickey 2. So during a follow-up interview, I asked Spector the simple, and obvious, question, "is Epic Mickey a stand-alone adventure, or will it be a franchise?" He bluntly replied, "I don't do anything that isn't extensible. And I will certainly feel like that I have not done my job if we can't make other games in this world with these characters. In my head, I've got two more planned. In the business world of reality, those games have not approved, and who knows if we'll ever see them. I had three games planned for Deus Ex, and you see where that got me."

  Remember when some crazy looking concept art for Epic Mickey leaked? The kind of art that showed off tanks modeled after the Seven Dwarves in Snow White or a giant whale with Spaceship Earth on its back? Some of you might feel a bit disappointed that the official screenshots released to date don't quite reflect on that crazy steampunk aesthetic, and during an interview, I asked Warren Spector to discuss the disparity between the leaked art and the official art today. He answers, "There are a couple aspects to that. I think I've mentioned before, that I'm a big believer in finding out where the line is by pushing past it. There are lines that are on every project; every project exists in a creative box. For most of my games, I create that box and the team has to sort of work within it. In this case, there's a creative box that I create, and there's the creative box that Disney overlays on that. I know where my lines are, but I don't know where Disney's are. I had a lot of stuff generated that was very specifically designed to be provocative and to cross that line. I know it's too far -- or is it? You tell me. So it forces a confrontation or a decision. Some of what you saw was beyond the line, and so I learned something from it. Some of it was early design ideas that are no longer relevant. Some of it is stuff that's still in the game, and I'm not saying what."