Your weekly guide in wading through the sea of downloadable games. Let Tom hold your hand and take you on a journey through the marketplace. Separating the shining successes from the repetitive filth, this is DLC Do’s and Dont’s.

Do yourself a favour and go download flOw, if you haven’t already. This one’s an oldie, relatively speaking. flOw hit the PSN right at the launch of the PS3’s online marketplace, and it was immediately hailed as an independent and new experience that everyone owes it to themselves to try. It became the “cool” game, the “it” experience, created by a down-to-earth group, not a huge, faceless corporation. It had the street cred that Portal has now. You haven’t played Portal? You don’t know shit. Same with flOw a year ago.

In case you don’t know, the highlight feature in flOw is the use of SixAxis motion controls to guide your tiny plankton through various levels of ocean depths. The objective is to devour everything smaller than you to, in turn, make yourself larger and larger. Once you’ve spent enough time feasting on the weak, you can take on the big boys: Other plankton, amoebas, and small fish-like creatures await your challenge in your journey to become lord of the ocean (or just live out a sad microorganism’s life).

The minimalist art-style of this game is completely unforgettable. The beautiful white glow of your character coupled with its jagged and chic body design always seem unique and pleasing. 1080p doesn’t hurt, either. Also, the soundtrack is the most soothing thing I’ve ever experienced in a game. Many a time have I moved my cursor to flOw on the XMB and left it there, just to listen to the serene choral experience the game provides.

With seven different modes/lifeforms to play through as, a gorgeous theme and soundtrack, and a quirkily charming play style and premise, PS3 owners owe it to themselves to check out flOw. And hey, you wanna be cool, right?

Don’t bother with Undertow. I know it was free for a while, I know Microsoft’s been pushing it on its Live subscribers for some time now, but just don’t. Maybe the idea of battling undersea civilizations seems cool to you. Hell, it sounds pretty rad to me. Too bad its execution is the most tragic attempt at a strategy game I’ve seen in a while.

First of all, the play style wants to be an RTS, though you only have control of one unit at a time. When your side little diver meets his end, you can spawn as a different class of character if you wish, complete with different speed and range. The objective is to maintain control of your three glowing points on the map, and seize the enemy’s. So swim on over, spray your bullets all over the enemies, and hover around that glowing red area until it turns blue. Oh, too bad while you were busy completing that objective, they took two of yours. Back you go, little diver!

Now if that doesn’t sound like enough fun, hold onto your O2, little aqua-marines! Pathetic-voice-acting-island waits for you just beyond the reef of disturbingly ugly character models. Sure it had to be capped below 150 megs to see life on the XBLA, but does that justify pumping out a butt-ugly gaming experience? We’ve seen many examples of beautiful games that don’t just go the way of Unreal Engine Jr., crammed down until it’ll fit on a smaller game.

Undertow doesn’t know what it wants to be, but I know I want it off my hard drive.