On Tuesday we reported that Jack Black will host the Spike Video Game Awards, an event that will host gameplay footage premieres of some major titles.

But, you asked, what about the painted naked women? How could they not be returning? I got an answer. Read more…

Would “Mirror’s Edge” pay the price for its brief campaign because consumers wouldn’t pay its price? Had gamers rejected the slimmer “Wii Music” in favor of the hefty “Guitar Hero: World Tour“?

There are no buttons on the iPhone*. That should stop most console-style games from working on the device, despite power comparable to the PSP.

That didn’t stop Gameloft from bringing the “Brothers in Arms” series to Apple’s handheld, however, and I have good news to report: it actually works.

I booted “Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes” with low expectations. The game promised dual analog controls on a device with no analog sticks.

No way, I said! Yet, it works. Here’s how:

*When we say iPhone, we also mean iPod Touch, unless noted.

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You can request any video game movie through Netflix’s normal delivery service, but with Xbox 360 streaming, why wait?

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to, unless  “The Legend of Zelda: The Complete Series” is something you’re dying to see.

We sorted through Netflix’s list of video game (or video game-related) movies currently available to stream, and here’s what we found.

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“It’s been a great high for the last couple of weeks,” Daniel Suarez, Activision’s executive producer for “Call of Duty: World At War” told me in an interview last week. Happy is any man whose game has launched so well that it topped — his words — the “bajillion pound gorilla” that is “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” in sales in the U.K in its launch week.

Suarez and I talked about a number of things during out interview, some of which I’ve covered here on Multiplayer this week — plans for upcoming DLC for the game and where the game’s surprising Nazi Zombie mode came from.

The first topic of my interview, however, was how the development team at Treyarch dealt with making a game in the shadow of “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.” That was the bajillion-pound gorilla as far as I was concerned.

It’s not every year that a development team puts out a game that so many critics don’t expect to be better than last year’s installment. How do you deal with that pressure? Read more…

A few months back at a press event for “Resistance 2” I asked Sony and Insomniac producers why their new first-person shooter existed.

I wasn’t asking a business question or a philosophical one. I was asking from a gamer’s perspective.

I argued that important FPS games need to satisfy, well, a need in gamers’ appetites. I suggested that “Call of Duty” serves an appetite for gamers to experience a first-person thrill ride. “Halo” fulfills the need for great competition, both against sophisticated artificial intelligence in its campaign mode and against millions of competitors online.

You could go down the list of great first-person series and find a reason each one might be essential for a gamer. But, I told the “Resistance” guys, I struggled to identify what the essential “something” of “Resistance” is. Without that “something,” I figured, the series wouldn’t be seen as a leader in its genre, but instead just another solid game that happens to be a PlayStation exclusive.

I finished the “Resistance 2″ campaign a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed it. I didn’t think it was amazing, but it was fun and ended in a very interesting way. Yet I still didn’t think I’d found that “something.” The Insomniac guys had argued to me that the series’ alternate world history might be the series’ distinguishing mark. I considered that the games’ unusual weapons might be the thing. But neither idea is really helping “Resistance 2″ move to the forefront of the FPS pack, not in my mind and, I suspect, not in some other gamers’ minds.

Yesterday, however, I finally played a round of the game’s mission-based co-op with friends. I had only played it at that aforementioned press event, briefly. Last night I played it for an hour. And in that hour, in playing eight-man mission-based, character-class-defined, team co-op, I think I found “Resistance”’s “something.” Eight gamers against an army. A balance of skills and responsibilities. Teamwork. A defense of Earth.

It works. It’s the “something,” I think.

And now I have something to look forward to in the inevitable sequel.

Next: Do I go to the Wired store tonight to watch Media Molecule’s Alex Evans speak? Or do I go home and play “Banjo” and “Prince of Persia”?

When Stephen opened up the copy of “Animal Crossing: Wild World” that Nintendo send him to demonstrate the ability to transfer items to “Animal Crossing: City Folk,” he didn’t expect one of the town’s inhabitants to drop a racial slur.

Nintendo had since released an official statement about the incident.

“Previously played copies of the 2005 DS game ‘Animal Crossing: Wild World’ were sent to 14 members of the media to demonstrate the ability of players to transfer items to the new ‘Animal Crossing: City Folk’ for Wii.’ We regret that an offensive phrase was included without our knowledge via a wireless function that allows user-generated catchphrases to spread virally from one game to the next. This version is limited to 14 copies created for media review purposes only and is not available at retailers. We sincerely apologize for the incident and are working with media who received the game cards to return them to Nintendo immediately.”

Considering how much effort Nintendo has put into protecting its users from offensive content via Friend Codes and the like, this accident is a bit humorous. Have you encountered anything like it in your own “Animal Crossing” adventures?

If you’ve beaten “Call of Duty: World at War“’s main campaign, then you’ve unlocked the the Nazi zombie mode.

The special mode allows four-player co-op and has gamers battling throngs of Nazi undead that become increasingly difficult with each wave.

Activision executive producer Daniel Suarez shared with Stephen Totilo what inspired the team to make the mode in the first place.

“It was one of the pet projects of one of the designers,” he said. Read more…

The guys who founded “World Gaming,” a website that lets gamers win money while sitting on their couch, thought it was a great idea.

But they weren’t the only ones who thought so.

Woodrow Levin also had a similar idea. Levin is the founder and CEO of BringIt, another new website dedicated to helping gamers set up matches in order to win (or lose) money on a variety of games and tournaments.

So what’s the main difference between BringIt and World Gaming? You’ll be able to wager on games played on the Wii right from the get-go. But how? Levin told me it was simple… Read more…

We know Activision Blizzard loves sequels.

Just moments ago, the publisher revealed a slate of follow-ups coming this year at an Massive Inc. upfront attended by Stephen Totilo.

An upfront is where publishers showcase their upcoming lineup to advertisers and are a new practice for games. Upfronts occur every year for TV and movies.

This event is being held in downtown Manhattan to get advertisers pumped to buy more ads in games. Massive is a Microsoft-owned firm that did the Barack Obama ad in “Burnout Paradise.”

At the meeting, Activision Blizzard showcased new games that would make sense for in-game ads, including the vaguely titled “Guitar Hero 5,” which included a screen shot of gameplay with a Burger King ad to the right of the note highway.

The publisher confirmed rumors that “Tony Hawk” will be different this year. “You’re not going to be playing this game with a controller in your hands,” said the company. The new “Tony Hawk” arrives on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and DS in October.

Additionally, Activision Blizzard acknowledged the “Call of Duty” series will move forward yet again with “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ coming this fall. No details on the game were released.

We’ve also heard rumors that Bizarre Creations was working on a racing-oriented “James Bond” game, which have turned out to be true. The original Bond adventure, not tied to a movie storyline, is coming this September. The former “Project Gotham Racing” studio is also working on an original racing IP for the publisher, which they tagged as “‘Mario Kart’ meets ‘Forza.’”

Curiously, the lineup included absolutely no Blizzard Entertainment games.

If any more news breaks from the Massive Inc. upfront, we’ll let you know.

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It finally happened: A year when little “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2” might have been the best Xbox 360 game and the two-man “World of Goo” could be argued as the finest work released for the Wii. It was a year that you could argue the epics vs. the shorts, April’s “Grand Theft Auto IV” against August’s “Braid.”

Many of the “dungeons” in “Fallout 3″ look exactly the same. They may have different layouts, but the art keeps a consistent, if eventually tiring, look.

How Bethesda Softworks counters this is by hiding creative stories about the world of “Fallout 3″ inside through computers, audio books and more.

Because of “Fallout 3″’s setting, they were even able to include themselves. Mostly. The “Bethesda Ruins,” found just southwest of “Germantown HQ” in the wasteland, is technically where Bethesda’s apocalyptic offices are.

Unfortunately, Bethesda didn’t do much with it.

Read more…