"Bionic Commando" is less profane than "House of the Dead: Overkill," less gruesome than "Dead Rising," but publisher Capcom had a good reason for ensuring their game got an M rating. Read more...

After playing several hours with the May-slated "Bionic Commando," I'm expecting a divided reaction to the game, reminiscent of the feedback to "Resident Evil 5" Read more...

Capcom has just issued a press release that indicates that the company's PS3 and XBox 360 versions of "Bionic Commando" will ship on May 19, with the PC version shipping "shortly after console release." The company also indicated that "more details surrounding the PC version will be following in the coming months."

As I quickly learned while watching my girlfriend play "Left 4 Dead," modern games are tough for newcomers to sit down and play.

Controllers as complicated as the Xbox 360's and PlayStation 3's are here to stay, but games need to do a better job of educating new gamers.

"Bionic Commando" isn't the game I expected to do that. But while checking out the game's addictive multiplayer at a San Francisco event last week, I noticed the game's flashy-but-effective introduction.

The screen above shows up while the game is loading. Press a button on the controller and the game gives a text explanation of what it does. A welcome addition would be a video or some kind of graphic showing that action in real-time, but this is a step in the right direction and one I'm hopeful will be included in the final version of "Bionic Commando" next year.

Tap a button. Get an explanation. So simple.

Do you guys know of any other games that introduce their controls as effectively?

Since the last entry…

**I played more "MGS4" but can say no more until 12:01 tonight and I played more "The World Ends With You," reaching "The Last Day." Yeah, right.

**I also attended a four-company showcase in Manhattan, sampling hands-on and hands-off demos from Capcom (played "Bionic Commando"), Sierra (watched "50 Cent: Blood On The Sand"), D3 (played and stank at the impressive "Bangai-O Spirits" on the DS) and Codemasters (watched "Damnation" and "Rise Of The Argonauts.") Lots of interesting stuff there. "Bangai-O" was a highlight because it looks like development studio Treasure is just about melting the processors on the DS with its frenzied top-down 2D shooter -- a game that has new content for the U.S., all importers should note.

"Bionic Commando" gets a commendation for something I also wrote about "Dark Void" today: it's a game for which character movement is a prominent selling point. Shaping a game around how a character moves -- a staple of much SNES and Genesis design -- has long seemed to be a lost art. "BC" and "Dark Void" help bring that back. What you shoot or who you're fighting doesn't always have to be the selling point of an action game, does it? It wasn't that way back in the day.

Next: I felt terrible when I told two "Bourne Conspiracy" developers that I had received their game but ignored it in order to play "MGS4." I'm not sure I can make amends tonight. We'll see. I hear the "Bourne" game's quite good.

A rash of reports appeared this weekend after "Bionic Commando Rearmed" producer Ben Judd said "Bionic Commando" can't come to Wii's Virtual Console service.

The confusion escalated when Capcom VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson followed up complaints by pointing people to Nintendo. "This is NOT, repeat NOT, a Capcom issue," he said.

That's true, but not the whole story. There is no reason "Bionic Commando" can't appear on Virtual Console, Capcom head of public relations Chris Kramer told MTV Multiplayer last night, but it is true that it's entirely up to Nintendo.

Capcom does not control what appears on Virtual Console, Nintendo does, explained Kramer. Capcom licensed the rights to their games to Nintendo. Effectively, Nintendo has complete control over Capcom's library's appearance on Virtual Console. Whenever a Capcom game appears on Virtual Console, Nintendo's made that decision independent of Capcom.

Kramer said they aren't the only publisher who has this agreement with Nintendo.

In essence, there's no reason "Bionic Commando" can't show up Virtual Console, but Kramer has no idea when -- or if -- that might happen. Whereas Capcom is developing and publishing "Bionic Commando Rearmed," they only take a cut of the profits on Virtual Console releases. Nintendo handles the scheduling and technical work involved.

At least now I know who to get upset at for not having access to "Mega Man 2."

San Francisco -- Ben Judd, a producer at Capcom, is sympathetic to many an online complaint about the two "Bionic Commando" games he is producing -- the first major new ones in 20 years -- perhaps because he too can be a pest.

In fact, if Ben Judd wasn't good at being a pest, there probably wouldn't be anything for anyone to complain about. When I asked him last week at the Game Developers Conference why the "Bionic Commando" series was coming back after so many years on hiatus, he told me it was because he kept nagging his bosses about it, for the last four years.

So, those "BC" fans complaining about the new PS3/Xbox360 game's hot dog arm?

Judd has nagged worse, but does feel bad enough about the complaint that the color of the tubes on the hero's arm are now "more like snake skin."

Those "BC" fans not happy with the main character's hair cut?

He's impervious, saying "when you try to re-do a game that's 20 years old, that nostalgia has crystallized." The crew cut isn't coming back, though maybe it could be an unlockable.

Those Nintendo fans feeling left out and aggressively petitioning Capcom to bring some sort of "Bionic Commando" to the Wii?

He's reasonable, saying, "I understand where they're coming from." But he's also realistic about the suggestion that it should involve swinging the remote to make the game's hero swing his bionic arm: "If we did a Wii version it would not be with one-to-one swinging… you couldn't do [that] for more than 10 minutes."

So what about Judd's own nagging? And how does the PSP -- a system the new "Bionic Commando" is not being released on -- play two key roles? You read about one of them earlier today.

For the rest, read on...

Read more...

San Francisco -- "Bionic Commando: Rearmed," a re-make of the original "Bionic Commando," is coming to a PSP near you -- but isn't going to be released on PSP.

Say what?

Capcom producer Ben Judd told me last week that the PS3 version of "Bionic Commando: Rearmed" for the console's PlayStation Network will be playable on PSPs using the PS3's Remote Play feature.

Remote Play allows a PSP user to access content on their PS3 theoretically from any location where they can get a WiFi signal. The feature was implemented in limited fashion for last fall's PS3 dragon-combat game "Lair" and then delivered in full for the PSN game "PixelJunk Monsters."

If Capcom gets Remote Play to work properly, the game may well be one of the first to use the service well and among the first, if not the first, third-party game to use it.

The end result: "Bionic Commando: Rearmed" playable on PSPs, even without the game being released on PSP.

Like I said.

The Xbox 360 and PC versions of "Rearmed" won't support this, obviously. Could this added feature be the differentiator between other upcoming XBLA/PSN cross-platform releases?

I spoke with Judd about some other "BC" matters, including why it's taken so long for a sequel. Look for a full interview at the end of the day right here at the Multiplayer blog.