Konami press conference recap

If I could use a phrase to describe Konami’s press conference (2:30 p.m. PT, Wednesday, July 16, 2008) it would be, ” It started with a bang and ended with a thud.”

Konami already had a solid lineup to unveil to the masses with two new Castlevania games and Silent Hill: Homecoming and were well on their way to being the bright spot when it came to third party pressers for the event. The conference began with news about Metal Gear Online and the new Elebits for the DS.

From that point on we got some great information, gameplay and demos from the Castlevania and Silent Hill franchises and then not so much. Rock Revolution premiered last as Senior Product Manager, Lauren Facadomo, brought her all-girl cover band to play The Ramones, Blitzkrieg Pop. Talk about bad Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramon are all spinning in their graves right now. It only got worst from there.

Here’s a recap of the conference and a clip from a brighter spot during the conference:

• The expansion pack, The Gene, for Metal Gear Online will be released on July 17, 2008. The pack will come complete with with new characters, maps, and modes, along with a few other surprises.
• Silent Hill: Homecoming will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3.
• Castlevania: Judgment(Wii) and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia(DS) will be released this fall.
• Creator of the Castlevania series, Koji Igarashi, unveiled a new trailer for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and looks pretty good.
• He also demoed Castlevania: Judgment, which he claimed was a, “3D vs. action game.” I don’t care how you try to slice it Mr. Koji, that game looked like a 3D fighting game. The only characters to be revealed for the game so far are Dracula, Simon Belmont, Richter, Alucard, and Maria. The plot of the game involves a character who’s attempting to destroy the thousand year timeline of good (Simon) vs evil (Dracula), which in turn brings together characters from different periods withing the Castlevania franchise.
• Igarashi delves extensively into Judgment, revealing that you can collect items during the fights and that fighters will have keep zombies from attacking them as they struggle with their opponent. Other than the disagreement about its genre this title looks rather impressive.
• Silent Hill: Homecoming game trailer was shown and it was revealed that it will have a new camera system, allowing the player to look freely in any direction. There are no first person in range weapons, but you can look in first person to see what items you pick up and the inventory system is faster to navigate. Dialogue trees will allow the player to interact with characters throughout the story. The transition between controlled dialogue and cut scenes will be as seamless as possible.
• Jason Allen, a developer on the game demoed a boss battle that was pretty intense.
• Rock Revolution appears to not have master tracks as the demoed version of Blitzkrieg Pop on the game had a cover band singing the song (almost as bad as the live cover bad).
• The drum kit for Revolution has seven drum pads. Rock Revolution looked pretty disappointing as Facadomo used a guitar hero Gibson to play through the demo and then got booed by games audience.

Read [Joystiq] Read Also [Kotaku]