On Thursday, June 2nd, Konami held simultaneous events in Toronto, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles for the video game media and their die-hard fans to give them a preview of what they could expect from Konami in the up-coming year. I happened to be fortunate enough to attend the preview that was held in Toronto at the Real Sports Bar and catch a glimpse of what’s new. Here’s the run-down, game-facers.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater

Available for the Nintendo 3DS, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater is will feature a return to the feel of the original and is designed to highlight the features of the 3DS gaming platform. Set outdoors in a jungle environment with a Special Forces style of play, Snake Eater will have a few cool new features:

Photo-Cammo: The new photo-cammo feature will allow players to take a snap shot of anything using the 3DS camera and use the colors to customize their own unique camouflage for their characters in play. I myself am looking forward to creating a “dog-shit brown” Snake Eater character.

accelerometer: The character in the game will react with the jostling of the 3DS itself. If you’re going down a dirt road in a car with bad suspension, you might want to consider playing a different game, as Snake will fall off a cliff if it moves around too much.

MY CENT (Since it’s worth less than two): The gameplay looks great and the new features play well with the 3DS console. It’s definitely the sort of game you could get wrapped up with on the go.

Pro-Evolution Soccer 2012

Pro-Evolution Soccer 2012 will feature expanded gameplay and looks to ramp up the freedom of movement allowed to your players. They have updated the delay to add a greater sense of sophistication to gameplay, and have altered the games artificial intelligence to create additional player support.

MY CENT (Since it’s worth less than two): I find that sports games tend to evolve very slowly, and with a new title coming out every year, it’s hard to get too excited about every single time. From what I can tell, PES 2012 doesn’t offer much different from PES 2011.

NeverDead

An immortal demon hunter? Severed Limbs? Megadeth? The sum of these angles can only equal awesome. NeverDead is a third-person shooter and combat game with a unique twist: your character cannot die, no matter what happens to him. The trailer features the game’s hero, on fire, throwing his own severed limbs at the enemy, and generally exuding a vast amount of badassery.

The Japanese and European Konami teams have joined forced to produce NeverDead, which has the look and feel of a standard third-person shooter with handguns, medieval weaponry, and a badass 500-year-old hero battling immortal monsters from beyond hell. Oh, and Megadeth produced an original song for the game trailer entitled, you guessed it, “Never Dead.” \m/ \m/

The story of the game focuses on the trials and tribulations of the Bryce, a demon hunter forced to witness the death of his own wife and cursed with immortality (which I’ve never figured out — why do demons always curse their enemies with the ability to never die and thus perpetually be a pain in their ass?). He now seeks his vengeance on those who wronged him.

MY CENT (because it’s worth less than two): A truly immortal character is an interesting twist on the classic third-person shooter, even though plot and creative design are hardly anything groundbreaking. It will be interesting to see what kind of challenges they create for a game where you never have to hit the reset button.

Silent Hill: Downpour and the Silent Hill Collection in HD

To say that Silent Hill has a cult following would be to deliver a great understatement: Silent Hill revolutionized the horror genre and created an entirely new RPG experience that left players too terrified to even move their characters forward. At the Pre-E3 event, Konami announced that they would be releasing Silent Hill 2 and 3 in HD, which fans have been demanding for years. In addition to the re-releases, Silent Hill will also be releasing the newest installment in the Silent Hill franchise, Silent Hill: Downpour.

Murphy, a convict on his way to his release, is suddenly set free as his bus crashes in, you guessed it, Silent Hill. Murphy smells freedom, and won’t let anything get in his way. But Murphy is a man with many secrets, and as we all know Silent Hill has a way of turning your own dark past against you”¦..

MY CENT (because it’s worth less than two): I love Silent Hill. I love the rich story lines, the full incredible art direction and, of course, the truly terrifying creatures that stalk you in the darkest corners of a sleepy little town. Downpour won’t be anything new for Silent Hill, but it looks to carry on the proud tradition of scaring the bejeezes out of gamers everywhere.

Transfarring

By far the most exciting announcement of the night came from Kojima Productions, which pulled in the boys from Mega64 to announce its revolutionary new Transfarring system, which, if it does what it’s supposed to, could change the way gamers play. The system will allow the transfer of console video games to portable systems. That’s right: you can take the game you’re playing on your PS3 and “transfar” it to your PSP, allowing for completely fluid gameplay. As of right now, the titles that have been announced that will carry the new Transfarring system include Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Zone of Enders. According to Kojima, the ultimate goal of this system will be a new “gamer lifestyle” where there will no longer be a division between portable and console systems, and the entire video game world will be integrated.

MY CENT (because it’s worth less than two): Everyone had expected there to be some sort of announcement at E3 from Konami concerning Cloud Computing technology or something of the like. Of course this wasn’t exactly what everyone was expecting. The big question mark surrounding Transfarring would be how to match PSP with PS3 technology. However, if it works, it will change the way gamers play.

Overall, the event played on Konami’s franchise strengths. Of course, the Contra logo at the very end of the video presentation got everyone in a tizzy, but at the same time there was no announcement, beyond NeverDead, of any new titles.

However, that being said, there are a lot of interesting things being done at Konami. I’m sure E3 will be a real splash.