Konami Gamers Night 2010 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

At Konami's Gamer's Nite NYC event, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was clearly the star of the show. My impressions were that Konami, developer Mercury Steam and Kojima Productions are sending notice that in the right hands, the Belmont lineage is going to be just fine as a big-budget, highly cinematic action game experience. Everything I saw, heard and played on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions was extremely high quality and extremely worthy of the Castlevania name. Yes, the game riffs on Shadow of the Colossus, the God of War games and a few other titles, but there are also visual and stylistic influences from Guillermo del Toro and some familiar Kojima storytelling elements that make the game highly engrossing right from the opening scene.

Konami Gamers' Night NYC – 2010 Edition

Konami rolled into NYC with a varied lineup of excellent games, this time with the remainder of their 2010 lineup and special guests Hudson Soft for a great gathering of games guaranteed to get you moving in one manner or another. While there wasn't a Snake to be found anywhere in sight, there were more than enough great games to keep everyone who dropped by glued to a monitor, hip-hopping as loudly as possible or flailing away working up a good sweat as a singer, dancer, mini-gamer extraordinaire or sports star.

About 20 titles were on display from both new Castlevanias, two console classics remade for today's consoles, a surprisingly fun wrestling game and plenty of guaranteed musical and mini-game hits headed for the Wii as well as the upcoming Move and Kinect peripherals. I'll be covering a few of these titles in depth over the next week or so with galleries and/or hands-on impressions (denoted by *), but for now, here's a quick rundown of what was on the floor: