Micah's Take

Spring brings with it so many beautiful things. Poets have often cited the freshly blooming flowers, budding leaves, and burgeoning love.  What most poets have glossed over, however, are the bevy of events thrown by publishers to promote their upcoming games during these fleeting months. Those events are the true bounty of Spring. Publishers go out of their way to make sure that press gets a long, hard look at upcoming titles in the hope that those same critics will spread the word about the greatness of the games they played. As such, it was no surprise that Konami had a surplus of games on display at its Konami Gamer’s Night. Games like Rocket Knight, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker have been hotly anticipated, although the rest of the games on display were pretty much a mystery to those of us at GameXplain.

That said, it’s unfortunate to note that despite there being more than enough games on display, there was hardly anything that we found ourselves wanting to play. Before getting some much-needed hands-on time with any of these titles, we had to sit through a horrendous marketing presentation about how great all these games are going to be. While I more than understand the necessity of having a demonstration like this, the way it was framed was so awkward and the presenters so stiff that it all felt like a formality; a really long, dull formality.

There were some brief highlights interspersed throughout the boredom. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow looks like it could actually prove to be fairly fun. Most of the trailer was intriguing, although I think they sort of lost me when they got into the whole wrestling Titans hullabaloo. The game already had some trouble feeling wholly unique. I’d think at the very least could have tried to change the name of these foes from the still-being-enjoyed-by-millions-of-gamers God of War III. I’d heard that the game had a greater sense of freedom and exploration than the God of War titles to which it has often been compared, but none of this really shone through in the trailer. There were several environments hihglighted including a verdant forest, an icy castle, a European village, and a gothic cathedral. The trailer touted the fact that we’d get to take this latest Belmont hero out of Dracula’s castle, but that makes me wonder if anyone at Konami has played a recent Castlevania title. The last several handheld games have all allowed players to explore varied environments in their hunt for Dracula’s head.

I will admit that Konami had me totally fooled by its final reveal. It almost seemed they unintentionally forgot to show off the trailer for this big unveiling. Tacked on to the very end of this presentation was a brief teaser trailer for yet another hallowed Konami franchise. That’s right, a new entry in the Silent Hill series was sort of slipped into the end of this showcase as if it weren’t all that important. The trailer itself really showed us nothing. The visuals looked like standard fare for “next-gen” consoles, and the nightmare world wasn’t really revealed. Still, there was some amount of tension in the trailer, and that was enough to at least get me interested in going back and playing Silent Hill: Shattered Memories like I should have done months ago.

Finally, at long last, we got to play the games. I got to try out my most anticipated game on display at the event, the Rocket Knight revamp. Apparently this game is being made by the fairly talented folks over at Climax, who made the excellent Overlord: Dark Legends and the aforementioned Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I always loved both Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster back on the 16-bit consoles, so I was pretty psyched for this game after watching the trailer. It’s too bad that the first three levels of the game left me with no desire to play more.

Rocket Knight was really the most basic platforming title that I could possibly imagine. All I did was leap over pointless hazards, dash through enemies, and bounce off of walls. There was no variety and no discernible reason to keep moving forward except that I didn’t want to insult the good gentleman from Konami PR. Interspersed throughout the experience were some levels that played out like side-scrolling SHMUPs much like in the original Rocket Knight Adventures. Unfortunately, even these stretches lacked any of the inventiveness that featured so prominently in the original game. Like the rest of the demo, these portions merely felt like the devs were just going through the motions. On top of the horrendously mediocre gameplay, the art style was also garish and ill fitting. Everything looks really blocky and awkward, and nothing I saw felt the slightest bit interesting. Of course, the game may get much better in the later stages, but what I played did not give me much hope for this one.

Another sequel to an old franchise, Rush’n Attack: Ex-Patriot, was on display, though it was slightly less playable than Rocket Knight.  By that I mean that the game seemed to be in perfectly playable shape, but for some reason, Konami had decided that only the PR guy demoing the title got to touch it. The game actually seemed like it had a fair amount of potential. It borrowed heavily from Shadow Complex, one of my favorite games last year, and in my eyes, that’s a good thing. Apparently, though the core focus of the game is still combat, there is plenty of exploration, platforming, and stealth gameplay to be found. Throughout the game’s vast three levels, you’ll find yourself snagging new weapons and items to aid you in your attempt to kill everyone. Some of these are consumable, but others (like the night-vision) will be usable for the entirety of your adventure. It all seemed rather fun; like a more action-oriented take on the side-scrolling Metroid formula.

The final game I got to play was Saw II, and boy was it a doozy. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, I am no fan of the Saw movie franchise. While I understand its gruesome appeal, I can’t really get into any of the films. I’m sure you can surmise what I thought of Saw II as I played through this tortuous demo.  The demo was pretty much just a series of puzzles, none of which were all that interesting. Cut a key out from under your eyelid by doing a QTE, turn off the lights and wander blindly through a room to find a lock combination, press X to avoid collapsing buildings. Hooray! I can’t say that any of these challenges thrilled me, though some of the background torture was at least a little disgusting to behold. I also really hate integrating the symbols for the buttons I’m supposed to be pressing into the environment. It just doesn’t make any sense, and kills any tension or immersion. Someone has to come up with a better way of quickly dodging a guillotine than pressing the Y button when it flashes on the screen.

All in all, I can’t say that I took much out of this Konami event (other than the Luchadore mask that came in the shwag bag). There weren’t all that many playable titles that I really cared about, and even the ones that I was interested in let me down. I have to add at the end here that though I didn’t play Def Jam Rapstar, I really did not understand what was up with that game. It looked like the old FMV “Make My Video” games from the SEGA CD that weren’t even popular back when they seemed like new technology. On top of that, the game uses the radio cuts of all of the songs, and that means that there’s none of the colorful language that I expect out of Hip Hop. To me, this seems completely contrary to everything that Hip Hop stands for, and it kills the game for me. I understand that there should be a family friendly version of this game, but to neuter all the songs like that is a total let down.

One final thing I have to add is that Lost in Shadow looked totally rad from the trailer, and I am saddened to report that I didn’t realize it was playable. That is one game that I am sure will blow us all away. The game had the art style of a Team ICO title matched with incredibly clever side-scrolling shadow manipulation. Although I wish that I had gotten to play the game, it’s not a total loss as I still left the event with at least one game I still anticipated.

Andre's Take:

As a moderately big Metal Gear Solid fan, I made it my mission to sneak over to the Peace Walker kiosk without alerting any PR folk who might interrupt my playtime with a bullet...point (many of them, even). At any rate, Peace Walker plays most similar to Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, with a similar camouflage system and fully controllable camera--and it looks beautiful to boot. Unfortunately, it's this painstaking devotion in bringing a PS2-quality title to the PSP that is also its greatest weakness. Metal Gear Solid has always made full use of of the PlayStation controller, and the sad truth is that the PSP is missing much of that functionality, including several buttons and a control-stick. Because of this, camera-control has been delegated to the control-pad while Snake is moved using the control-stick. Basically, this means that in order to survey the environment, you have to stop moving Snake completely in order to move your thumb from the control-stick to the control-pad. So if you're taking fire, this turns you into a sitting duck while you try and familiarize yourself with the environment. It's a very jarring, if not nearly game-breaking misstep that I can only hope becomes less obnoxious with time. The developers do try and mitigate this by having the L-Trigger center the camera behind you (similar to the 3D Zelda games), but even this isn't quite enough to offer satisfactory camera-control while roaming the environment, let alone during battle. Because of this, I really feel this game would have played substantially better if it used a top-down camera, similar to Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and the first release of 3.

With that said, the game is definitely a Metal Gear game through and through, even if it controls sub-optimally. Like with MGS3, this game takes during the 70s with a strong emphasis on using camouflage to remain hidden while exploring jungle environments. However, one important distinction is that you can't change your camouflage pattern on-the-fly--instead, you now select from one of four presets at the start of each mission, each with its own pros and cons. For example, the Battle Suit won't exactly keep you well hidden, but you'll be armed to the teeth and have the ability to carry more items with you, whereas the Jungle Fatigues features less room for inventory, but will actually conceal quite well against the jungle backdrop. Fans of MGS4 will be pleased to know that the over-the-shoulder style of shooting return here, except  the lack of a second analog stick rears its ugly head once again. In order to free-aim, you need to come to a complete stop and hold a second-button, which then allows you to re-aim using the control-stick. It's complicated and annoying. However, the game does feature a much needed, but optional, auto-lock-on that works pretty well for the most part.

Besides Metal Gear, I also had a chance to try out Frogger for DSiware, only now with 3D graphics and 4 levels. The concept is still the same: cross the street to get to the other side. But now there's a few new twists to mix things up. Specially, scattered throughout the mid-section of each level are some power-ups that have various effects when activated, such as stopping time briefly, or causing everything to move backwards. It's a small, but welcome addition. In addition, the levels are much more expansive than they've ever been before. In the one we played, we had to cross two distinct streets and a park (complete with roaming dogs) separating them. The game played pretty well, though the 3D graphics did make it somewhat more difficult to gauge when to move, as there were several times that I died when I was sure I should have made it.

Even though arguably the biggest games at this event weren't actually playable, Konami promised more for us at E3, so make sure to check back as we go hands on with Castlevania: Lord of Shadow and Silent Hill.