E3 2011: Konami

WOOOO E3! Time once again to look at the year to come in games, and what we can look forward to. Kicking things off before E3 even starts is Konami with a video compiling interviews with various designers about the projects they're working on. So let's get started!

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3DS
Personally I could never really get into the Metal Gear series. I played and enjoyed Sons of Liberty, but when I moved on to Snake Eater I just got bored with the gameplay and completely lost in the story. However, for those who do enjoy some tactical stealth with everyone's favorite box hide and go seek champion, Snake Eater 3DS looks to incorporate some interesting, though not necessarily wise, features. The best, and easiest, decision was to put inventory on the bottom screen, allowing quick changing of items. A fun, though not necessarily useful new tool is the ability to take pictures with the 3DS camera and then incorporate that into Snake's camouflage. And finally, easily the worst decision, the incorporation of the gyro sensor so that you have to tilt the 3DS while Snake is doing something like crossing a bridge to make sure he doesn't fall off. Didn't we go through this with sixaxis, people? Especially incorporated into the 3DS where even a slight tilting of the screen can ruin the 3D effect. Still, no doubt fans of the series will enjoy another foray into the shoes of Snake despite, or even possibly because of, these new features.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2012
I don't follow soccer and hate the idea of yearly iterations of sports games rehashing the same old formula. But for you soccer fans out there, they've improved enemy AI, focused more heavily on not just the ball holders' movement but the movement of the rest of the team as well, and refined the mechanics of doing special moves like feint plays. Woot.

NeverDead
This new IP starts with a very simple premise: you cannot die. You face big horrible monsters and can get smashed to pieces, but then you simply roll your head around, collecting your body parts back until you kill the thing. Well where are the stakes if you can't die? Sounds a bit boring right? Well apparently the game is actually more centered around how you use your body parts once detached to defeat the enemy (or I'm guessing solve the puzzle) at hand. Also, I lost count of how many times the guy said this was "new". They're banking on originality and innovation, but I'm waiting to see whether this game will bring something new and fun, or simply new.

Silent Hill series
In an interesting turn the focus shifts to the upcoming movie Silent Hill Revelations, with the director talking about how he was inspired by the games. Drawing from Silent Hill 3, let's hope this movie turns out better than the rather average first one.

Brief statement about how they're releasing the Silent Hill Collection, Silent Hill 2 and 3 in HD.

Silent Hill: Book of Memories will be a new title exclusively for the Next Generation Portable (NGP) from Sony. I really hope Sony chooses a better name soon cause NGP just ain't cutting it.

Silent Hill Downpour is coming out soon and from the trailer looks...pretty impressive actually. Creepy environments, lots of misshapen baddies hiding in shadows, and a convict with a mysterious past as the lead. What more could you ask for?

Kojima Productions
The man behind Metal Gear Solid releases a rather hilarious video of this guy interviewing him about why he wouldn't be at E3 this year. After taking a voice activated elevator that had sounds of moving trains and cows as they traveled, and which identified the random guy as an unknown demon entity before Kojima cleared him, random guy and Kojima sit down and a video within the video starts to play of these masked men from another game company try to interrogate a janitor as to what the big E3 reveal this year is going to be. After Psycho Turkey, an obvious homage to the weird Metal Gear villains, uses his "nanobots" to read the mind of the janitor, a video within the video within the video starts to play and reveals that Kojima is introducing a new service called Transfarring wherein you can essentially transfer your saves from certain games (the first being Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker) from your PS3 to your PSP and vice versa so you can continue to play at any time on either system. Also introduced is the Metal Gear Solid HD collection, which will include MGS 2, 3 and Peace Walker (which won't be like the Sony barebones PSP remasters, it will have trophies and is being fully remastered), and the Zone of the Enders HD collection as well. And in a surprise move, both collections are coming the 360 as well as the PS3.

But Kojima wasn't done there. He lays out his master plan, which is to use Transfarring not just between PSP and PS3, but eventually to step it up to PS2 games on PS3 and NGP, and in the final phase, being able to play PS3 games on the NGP and vice versa. Personally, if he does end up doing that and Sony doesn't adopt it or a version of it for all games, a lot of people including myself are going to be very upset. Go for the kill Kojima!

And he does. He reveals that he's developed a new engine called the Fox engine, which is being used in the new game he's developing that he can't talk about, and that it will be multiplatform and hopes it will become the new standard engine for other developers. It certainly did look very pretty.

And that does it for Konami! A couple interesting titles, several remasters, and a few blows to Sony's midsection from Kojima. All in all, shouldn't be a bad year for them.