If it’s Friday, it must be This Week In Downloads. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving day holiday. Personally, I’m glad my editor gave me the week off, because I had a game-gasm. Last week was the ‘money shot’ of games released before the Christmas holiday. Between now and December 25 the retail game output drops big time. Thankfully we still have a lot of games to catch up on, so it’s all good.

Last week’s releases really weren’t anything to write home about, with the exception of the Xbox 360 Live game “Undertow.” All caught up from last week? Okay, we’re not here to talk about the past anyway; we’re talking about This Week In Downloads!

First off, we’ll start off with the PlayStation Network. On a side note, I imported one of those wonderful DUALSHOCK 3 controllers, and although Sony says that GripShift and GO Sports Ski will be rumble compatible, I still don’t notice any rumbling yet (Uncharted does have rumble though).

Okay, my import gloating aside, there aren’t any new games on the PSN this week but there are some new add ons: first off there is a new Resistance Map Pack available. There are two new maps in the pack which will set you back $4.99. If you never downloaded the first map pack, your procrastination has paid off as Sony will sell you both map packs for $7.99 (this includes the original add on from some time ago).

Is that not enough paid downloadable content for you? Wait there’s more: two new Motorstorm vehicles are now available (oh by the way, Motorstorm does have rumble now) with some new skins for the low, low price of $1.99. Finally the Rock Band: David Bowie collection is now available as a paid download which will set you back a little under $6; I’ll talk about that more in a minute. The final add on this week is the nice-of-you-to-finally-show-up Shivering Isles add-on for Oblivion. This one will set you back a mere $29.99, so again if you’ve already played it on Xbox, it’s a pass.

There is one game of note this week for the PS3, and it’s called PAIN. It’ll set you back $10 but man, if you’ve ever wanted to put a guy on a sling shot and have him impale himself on stuff, this is your game. From the creative bar names (hmm, I wonder if The Man Hole is a gay bar), there’s a lot of adolescent humor in the game, and it’s fun – think of it like Burnout crash mode with a guy rather than a car. And you can grab and throw stuff while in the air. Tempted yet? Just drop the $10 and buy it already. Oh and the game is DUALSHOCK compatible also, just in case you needed additional incentive to import it.

Moving right along to the Xbox 360, the big news was that the console added 80 new “old” Xbox titles to its list of backward compatible games. Interesting how the PS3 removes backward compatibility on their stripped down console while MS added 80 titles, isn’t it? If you told me that two years after the release of the 360 they’d still be working on making original Xbox titles, I would say you were insane, but there you have it. The titles are mostly sports titles but those of you itching to play ESPN NFL 2K5 on your 360 in upscaled brilliance, you are in luck.