Homage? Inspiration? Or a case of Grand Theft ‘Shadow’?

Before I played Ubisoft Montreal’s magnificent new “Prince of Persia,” I saw that comparisons were being drawn between it and Sony’s cult favorite PS2 game “Ico.” Both games are platformers the present a hero who is accompanied and assisted by a lovely woman. In both games, the mechanic of holding hands in fundamental.

But if you thought the “Prince of Persia” team drew a lot of inspiration from “Ico,” then wait until you see how much they drew from the other celebrated game made by Fumito Ueda’s team at Sony, “Shadow of the Colossus.”

Without going into spoilers, let’s look at some striking similarities: 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…

When “Age of Conan” came out in May, the hype machine was in full force for the M-rated MMO based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian.

Though the game released to strong retail sales and started with over 400,000 players, several major issues with the game popped up — including system performance, game balance, Player vs. Player, to name a few.

Matters weren’t helped with the unexpected departure of the game’s director, as well as the recent announcement that the company would merge its servers (which we’ve heard isn’t necessarily a good sign).

With all these problems swirling, Funcom product director Jørgen Tharaldsen got in touch with Multiplayer today to defend the game. He was responding to questions I sent last month regarding the state of “Age of Conan,” what the company is doing with the game moving forward and an update on the Xbox 360 version. Here are his responses:

[Image Credit: Espen Sjølingstad Hoen] Read more…

If you’re not a pro gamer, making big money by playing games seems like a pipe dream.

But World Gaming wants to change that.

The brainchild of gamers Billy Levy and Zack Zeldin, the World Gaming website is a place where gamers can set up matches and compete against each other in Xbox 360, PS2 and PS3 titles to win money.

“You can come and compete on the site, in an environment that is regulated, safe and secure,” Levy said to me during a phone interview with Zeldin last week. “We’re managing things and giving people the opportunity to do online what they’re doing in these live events.”

While they’ve certainly got ingenuity on their side, why should gamers come to World Gaming to place their bets? Read more…

If you’ve played the downloadable Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 demo of “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” you haven’t experienced what the game is really like to play. Consider this a head’s up from MTV Multiplayer, where we’ve played the full game, that the “SW:TFU” demo is a bit misleading.

The demo takes place in the game’s second level, a Tie Fighter factory, and would have you think that you’ll spend most of the game picking up crates and soldiers and throwing them a) into walls, b) at each other, or c) through windows into the vacuum of space.

That’s not how you’ll be playing the game a few levels later. At least, I highly doubt it. Read more…

In one form, the Xbox 360 is now cheaper than the Wii. Microsoft announced price reductions today for all three Xbox 360 models, and brought the Arcade box to $199.

Microsoft is the first company to have hardware cheaper than Nintendo. The company’s director of product marketing, Aaron Greenberg, told me he’s happy with that positioning.

“Our position here is that we’re complimentary to the Wii,” he said in an interview this afternoon. “Our strategy all along has been to secure the core in our first couple of years, and I think we’re done a great job doing that. We’ve always planned to broaden the reach to the masses, and we knew that having the games library, having the price point to do that is very important.”

Greenberg isn’t just keeping his eye on the Wii. He’s also after the 100 million people who purchased a PlayStation 2, many of whom have yet to be converted.

Read more…

When I was writing our round-up of weekly box art reviews yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that the protagonist from stealth-horror hybrid “Vampire Rain: Altered Species” looks just like the lead character from a different PlayStation title. Could it be a mere coincidence? Or did the developers of “Vampire Rain” have “Metal Gear Solid” on the brain?

Need more evidence? Take a look at another set of screenshots: Read more…

I walked four blocks south and one block east from MTV headquarters yesterday to play some upcoming games from Midway. Among them was “TNA Impact!,” a September game for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii based on the generally more athletic if not as charismatic company of wrestlers who compete against the industry’s dominant league, WWE.

Two of TNA’s most physically dynamic stars, Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles were at the event, playing the game and standing within earshot while the game’s designer gave me a demo. The game was pretty fun. I mostly button-mashed and wound up, playing as Daniels, performing some cool high-flying moves and, when in danger, issuing some vicious uppercuts to my virtual opponent’s most sensitive body part.

I ran into trouble when I tried to discuss the story with the game designer. Specifically, I wasn’t sure how to ascertain whether the story treats wrestling as — were the wrestlers listening? — “real.” It’s 2008. We all know pro wrestling is a performance, a physically demanding one that is less combat and more coordination. But still, the word “fake” doesn’t roll of the tongue when wrestlers are standing nearby. It seems so insulting. I asked about the story and the designer told me it’s mostly being kept secret for now. I asked if he could at least say whether it treats wrestling as if it was real or if it acknowledges that it’s f… I paused. Second try: Or does it treat wrestling like it’s a job, I asked?

The designer tried answering my question, explaining that the game will position the player as their own wrestler within the TNA organization. Third try from me: So, it acknowledges that these guys have scripts and don’t necessarily hate each other? (Were Styles and Daniels hearing me stumble through this??). Does it acknowledge that wrestling is … uh … involves a script? I couldn’t say the word. And, really, is “fake” even the right word?

From what I can tell, the TNA game will treat wrestling as if it is a real, unscripted sport. That’s the storyline, which, now that I think of it, is what seems fake. Nevertheless, I don’t think people go to wrestling games for the stories but for the gameplay. I’m no aficionado. It seemed fun for casual players. I told the designer, Daniels and Styles that I enjoyed the game. No, I wasn’t faking.

Next: Time to deal with those taunting me about my “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2” scores.

This week’s Rhythm Game Track Finder update is proof that two of the biggest, most rocking, rhythm game franchises just keep getting bigger.

“Rock Band” added three Weezer tracks that will be releasing later this week alongside the Pixes’ Doolittle album. The new Weezer tracks are from their latest album, which means Weezer now has tracks availible that span their almost fifteen year history.

On the other end of the rock spectrum “Guitar Hero“’s latest game was released, and we completed the track listing for “On Tour” by adding in the last nine songs. The Track Finder was also rounded out the track listing for the upcoming “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,” with the additional of the last 13 tracks.

This week’s updates are summed up below:
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii) 13 Songs Added
Guitar Hero: On Tour (NDS) 9 Songs Added
Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) 3 Songs Added (Weezer’s ” Dreamin’,” ” The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” ” Troublemaker”)

As always, go to trackfinder.mtv.com, for all this and more — it’s the definitive search engine for all your music gaming needs.

Throughout the past three years, Multiplayer editor Stephen Totilo has offered me recommendations on games that he thought I really needed play.

Most of them were titles I either hadn’t heard of, were released outside the United States, or I had simply overlooked. Holding his opinion in high regard, I kept a running list of his recommendations, and made it a point to try as many of them as I could.

I put together a short list of some of the games that Stephen has recommended, and whether or not the games ended up being as good as he said they would be. I rated each of his recommendations on a scale of one to five, one being bad, and five being great. See if you agree…

“Cubivore” (GameCube)
Why it was recommended: It’s one of the most creative, and unique games ever released on the GameCube.

Reason I missed it originally: A quirky game about evolution, published by Atlus for the GameCube only. The better question: how was it originally noticed by anyone?

How good was the recommendation? 3/5 Read more…

As each week passes, the MTV Rhythm Game Track Finder becomes a more complete database for searching rhythm game music.

In fact, we are almost at a point where there are no additional older games to add, aside from a few miscellaneous “DDR” titles. We’ve searched GameSpot, IGN, AllGameGuide, and even Wikipedia, but out list gets shorter and shorter each week. If there are any glaring omissions, please let us know so we can get those games added right away.

This week’s updates includes one of our last archival additions, Tecmo’s “UNiSON: Rebels of Rhythm & Dance,” our weekly “Rock Band” update, as well as the remainder of the “Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore” downloadable content for both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

“UNiSON” was a bit of a surprise; we didn’t even know it existed until we stumbled upon it in Wikipedia last week. Once we saw it, we made sure to add the full U.S. release song list to our database. It appears to be one of the most story-based rhythm games on this list, but it also has one of the smallest track listings as well. It tops out at only 12 songs. but one of them is the classic “O.P.P.” by Naughty By Nature, so it’s okay.

The full update is below:
Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore (Xbox 360, PS3) 40 Songs Added
Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) 3 Songs Added (Blondie’s “Hanging On The Telephone,” Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing,” and The Clash’s “Train In Vain”)
UNiSON: Rebels of Rhythm & Dance (PS2) 12 Songs Added

As always, go to trackfinder.mtv.com, for all this and more — it’s the definitive search engine for all your music gaming needs.

Late last week Patrick and I sent an essay question to a couple of gaming’s most knowledgeable and quotable financial analysts.

We wanted to know when they thought the PS2 would drop in price to $99 in the U.S.

This was our full question:

Sony dropped the price of the first PlayStation to $99 in 1999, four years after the system’s release. The PS2 has been out since 2000, and in almost double the time, still has not dropped to $99. There are many reasons for this: lack of competition for the PS2 in the back half of the last hardware generation; Sony’s struggles getting the expensive PS3 off the ground; etc. The question is: Do you think the PS2 will go down to $99? When and why?

In short order, we heard back from Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities and Evan Wilson of Pacific Crest Securities.

Neither gave us reason to expect a price drop any time soon. And one of them gave us two games to blame: “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”

On Thursday evening, Pachter left us a voicemail, in which he said:

Read more…