E3 06: Monster Kingdom First Look

LOS ANGELES--During the Sony press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006, we got an early glimpse of a game that is currently being called Monster Kingdom. Our only previous intel on the game came back in January from a release schedule on Sony Computer Entertainment Japan's Web site, which billed the game as an action role-playing game titled Monster Carnival.

The short trailer began by showing a male character with light brown hair and glasses, who bears a striking resemblance to Metal Gear Solid sidekick Otacon. With moody music playing in the background, the trailer shows the character walking down a lonely street, arriving ultimately at a sinister-looking house with a large tower on the hill. Text appeared on the screen saying, "A wondrous place where dreams and realities come true" and "7 doors and 7 worlds," over a backdrop of a bunch of fantasy environments. The shown creatures included an unrecognizable black, hairy monster; a group of Venus flytrap-esque monsters bouncing up and down; and a giant blue dragon that spit water. In these areas, the main character shown has blue skin and a giant sword, so it seems like this game will infuse both realistic and fantasy elements together. In the last moment of the trailer, the human character that we first saw was shown morphing into a face-tattooed, eye-glowing character, who might be the same one that ventures into the fantasy worlds shown earlier. The final blurb of text said, "The next generation of dark fantasy," before the screen faded to black and the next trailer appeared.

Though we got to see only a few moments of this game, our interest has certainly been piqued, especially because this game is billed as one of the PlayStation 3 games that will be playable on the show floor at E3. If that's the case, you will certainly be hearing more-detailed impressions from us in the next few days when we get our hands on these mysterious characters and figure out exactly how this game is going to feel and what it's going to look like, so stay tuned.