Ian Higton talks about his time playing four upcoming Konami games, including the much anticipated Metal Gear Solid: Ma…
With all-new entries in its flagship Metal Gear Solid series still on hiatus, Konami’s release schedule over the last few years has felt thin. Well, except for when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh! games and Pachinko machines I suppose.
It was a very nice surprise, then, to be invited along to a Konami preview event where I got to go hands on with not one, but four upcoming Konami games due out at various points this year. The collection of games on show were rather eclectic and they spanned multiple genres ranging from shmups to family-friendly party games but, crucially, it was just nice to see Konami acting like a video game publisher again.
During the event, I was given 50 minute hands-ons with Super Bomberman R 2, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, Super Crazy Rhythm Castle and of course the biggest draw of all, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1. You can listen to me tell Aoife Wilson all about my time with that, and all of the other games on show, in the video below, or you can go read all about them in word form just underneath the player.
As a huge fan of Super Bomberman R Online’s 64 player battle royale mode, Battle 64, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly disappointed with Super Bomberman R 2.
Super Bomberman R Online started as a Stadia-exclusive game before it jumped over to all the other major platforms as a free-to-play title which provided me with many hours of fun. The fact it was free and had crossplay functionality across all platforms meant that it was an ideal game for some community based live stream shenanigans, or at least it was until December 1st 2022 when Konami shutdown the servers and killed the game for good.
Battle 64 then was the first thing I checked out when I sat down to play Super Bomberman R 2 and it was almost identical to the previously free version that I’d played before, bar a couple of new unlockable characters. That means any fans of Battle 64 will now need to fork out around £45 if they want to play a game that they had previously enjoyed for free. Super bummer, man.
Now obviously there’s more to Super Bomberman R 2 than just Battle 64 and so I also tried out the new Castle mode where attacking players must open treasure chests that defending players are guarding (confusing), the Grand Prix mode where teams must compete to collect the most amount of crystals (boring) and of course the standard Bomberman battle mode that everyone knows and loves (classic).
Super Bomberman R 2 also comes with a single-player campaign which we weren’t allowed to play or record footage of for fear of ‘spoilers’, which seems bizarre to me as I can’t believe there is anyone out there who cares that deeply about Bomberman lore. But you never know, I guess!
Most notably about this collection however, is that I played it on the Switch and it seemed to perform rather badly in moments of high action. Even though I was only playing locally or against bots, often when big explosions happened the game would pause for a second, or chug along until the dust had settled. I’d have maybe expected that if I was playing online with some bad ping going on, but it was worrying to see this happen offline.
As someone who rarely plays bullet hell SHMUPS due to how hard I find them, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing was a very pleasant surprise!
Developed by Scottish studio KeelWorks Ltd, CYNGI is a top-down, twin-stick vertical scrolling shooter that brings both old-school Konami arcade nostalgia and a dose of modernity, thanks to its gorgeous visuals and accessible gameplay that is less punishing for people who aren’t massive fans of the bullet hell genre.
