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TGS: Konami Report

Edge Staff's picture

By Edge Staff

October 9, 2008

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The saving grace for Konami’s booth is the presence of DS strategy RPG Suikoden Tierkreis, which seems to have all the visual character and deep tactical gameplay of the early PlayStation games boiled down in a potion that the DS hardware can stomach.

After last year’s Metal Gear Solid 4 crescendo (even if Konami did peak a little early with that), Konami’s showing at TGS 2008 is perhaps expectedly a little on the anaemic side.

Metal Gear Online is still being plugged, albeit with the promise of a new expansion pack (the Meme Expansion, for the record) to invest it with some worth. But Little Magician’s Magic Adventure on the DS is actually little but an embarrassing homage to Animal Crossing, right down to the character and world design, insect collection and room customization. Blame Nintendo for granting Konami a license for this…

Elsewhere, “Castlevania has been reborn as a 3D fighting game!” (That’s right out of the press release.) Castlevania Judgment is a far sight prettier than Soul Calibur Legends, which is ostensibly its closest same-format competition, but Judgment appears unlikely to offer Wii owners any real compensation for missing out on Soul Calibur IV.

Catlevania: Order of Ecclesia on DS is a more interesting proposition, as it continues the 2D platforming line of Castlevania, which has always been the series’ strongest suit.

Silent Hill Homecoming is looking gory as expected – and very polished gore it is too.

Winning Eleven 2009 still seems to be a PS2 game transplanted to the PS3 (in spite of Konami’s protestations), which is hardly an encouraging sight for Japanese gamers who will get the game next month. And while muddy gameplay was formerly the domain of FIFA, Konami seems to have acquired the rights with this edition of its flagship footy sim.

The saving grace for Konami’s booth is the presence of DS strategy RPG Suikoden Tierkreis, which seems to have all the visual character and deep tactical gameplay of the early PlayStation games boiled down in a potion that the DS hardware can stomach.

Like most of Konami’s games on show at this year’s TGS, Tiekreis will be available at retail in Japan before the end of 2008. As a preview of what we can expect from Konami in 2009, however, this showing disappoints.

LittleHell786's picture
On October 11th LittleHell786 said:

Not mentioned above, but a new Castlevania game has been announced for the X360/PS3 also , but there are no details apart from the teaser trailer , I hope it's in 2D rather than 3D ,....

Kim_Naroz's picture
On October 9th Kim_Naroz said:

Metal Gear Solid 4 dropped all the way to #34 in the sales charts in just ONE MONTH's time.

That is VERY DISAPPOINTING...so I DEFINITELY AGREE with you that MGS4 "peaked a little early." I bet Konami and Sony were very disappointed with how "early" it peaked, and even more disappointed with how early it dropped all the way to #34 in the sales rankings, and then was never mentioned much after that again.

The actual gamers just didn't like Metal Gear Solid 4. Everybody knew that the early reviews of Metal Gear Solid 4 were 100% bogus, because of the contract that Konami made the review websites and review magazines sign so that factors such as the looooong and annoying "installs" of 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes located throughout the game could not be a factor in the review that would penalize the rating of the game.

Sadly, there were reviews and ratings that wanted an early copy of the game, so they signed Konami's contract and were unable to penalize the game for those annoying factors. That's the whole reason why the later reviews of the game were quite a bit lower than the initial reviews. The reviewers who didn't get an early review copy went to the store and bought the game on their own, but they reviewed it honestly and gave it the lower scores that it deserved.

Metal Gear Solid 4 had those annoying load times, a terrible storyline, worthless online play, low-resolution textures of only 1024x720p, and it didn't even have features like rumble in the controller. That really SUCKED...spending $60 on a dualshock 3 controller and still not being able to use it in new games like MGS4 and Soul Caliber 4.

It was pretty funny in MGS4 how the game tries to make fun of other systems that might need to switch discs, yet it seems to forget that most people believe it is better to switch a disc once every 20 hours in less than 1% of games (since over 99% of games don't need more than one disc) rather than wait 5 minutes for "installs" located all throughout the game.

I'm one of the many people who thought Metal Gear Solid 4 followed in the footsteps of the disappointing Metal Gear Solid 3 and was a true disaster. The fact that the game sold well for only one month really shows that word-of-mouth for the game was not positive. People bought it without playing it based on false hype. Most people were very disappointed with the actual game and its lack of replay value.

mtofu's picture
On October 10th mtofu said:

I took the bait! Metal Gear as a series has always sold extremely well and then drops off the board rather quickly. I think it goes more towards who wants to play the game versus who doesn't. If I have one complaint about MGS4 it's the crazy log in they require to play online... absolute madness.

German's picture
On October 9th German said:

Like Kris said, there's really no need to answer to this kind of post. I just will say that I still dream the day that Kojima brings his master piece to the 360.

Indeed, GO SNAKE!

Kris Graft's picture
On October 9th Kris Graft said:


I'm glad that most people on this site don't go for your flamebait (which actually is what got you banned from Next-Gen several months ago). Rein it in. Going through your posts, you come off as the biggest Xbox fanboy I've ever come across.

And I love MGS4. Go Snake.