Sony’s latest State of Play featured a raft of new Konami announcements, including Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and a new JRPG series.
When we reviewed the recent Super Bomberman Collection we mused on the fact that Konami had revived almost all of its old school franchises but somehow left out the most famous one, bar Metal Gear. But now they’ve finally announced Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, although it’s not the big budget 3D game you might have been hoping for.
Why Konami is being so cautious about Castlevania, given the success of the Netflix show and the fact that it fits the Soulslike template to a T, is unclear but Belmont’s Curse is by the developers of the Dead Cells series – which already has its own Castlevania themed expansion.
The new game is set in France (because so is the developer) and stars series regular Trevor Belmont, who first appeared in Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse on the NES. The game will be out this year, but there’s no specific release date yet.
We can’t say we’re big fans of the art style they’ve shown so far, which seems a bit too bright and angular for Castlevania, but Dead Cells was great so hopefully this will be too.
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The game was unveiled as part of Sony’s State of Play event on Thursday, which featured a sizeable section made up entirely of Konami games (although only Townfall is a PlayStation console exclusive). And that was on top of a new Silent Hill Transmission straight after.
A number of new games were announced, starting with Metal Gear Solid Master Collection 2, which will include remasters of PlayStation 3 title Metal Gear Solid 4, PSP game Peace Walker, and little known Game Boy Color spin-off Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.
Master Collection 1 will also be getting an update this week, which improves the resolution in Metal Gear Solid 1 and 3, while remake Metal Gear Solid Delta is currently 50% off – if you’ve been waiting for an excuse to get that.
Konami also revealed a Metal Gear homage in promising new indie title Darwin’s Paradox, featuring a very cute looking octopus. The game’s by new developer ZDT Studio and will be out on April 2.
Next up was Silent Hill: Townfall by Scottish studio Screen Burn, who did the excellent Stories Untold and the awful Observation, so we’re not sure what to expect there. The game did look the part though, with a new guilt ridden protagonist and a first person view. It’ll be out this year, but with no date yet.
Finally, Konami unveiled new Japanese role-playing franchise Rev.NOiR, which looked very anime. Konami aren’t entirely strangers to the genre, but it’s never been their forte, so it’ll be interesting to see how they approach it given the current state of the market.
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