Let's bitch about horrible demos

[Margalis]

90% of the demos I've played on XBL start with one of the two:

An unskippable cutscene
An unskippable tutorial

It's like the people who make these demos forget that the demo is supposed to make me want to play the game. Examples:

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway: Not only does this start with an unskippable cutscene, it starts with an unskippable cutscene plastered with creator names and horrible graphics. Why create a in-engine cutscene if in the first 5 seconds you are going to zoom in on an airplane dashboard that clearly was meant to be viewed at long distance and turns into a pixellated mess? Why show a panoramic shot of a plane flying by a single flat green polygon for the ground? I turned off the demo before the cutscene even ended. Maybe that's just me but when I try a demo I don't want to be tortured with meaningless credits for two minutes, I want to see if the game is fun. THE GAME.

Starting a demo with a cutscene intro is like starting a movie trailer with the opening credits sequence.

Fracture: Move here. Now shoot here. Investigate this. Blow this up. Pick this up. Move this way. I am the God of the Tutorial and this I command! I will force you to learn how to play this game whether you like it or not!

Guys guys guys...before you tell me what every button combination on the 360 pad does first show me that your game is worth learning. Giving me a homework assignment doesn't get me jazzed.

Drop me into an awesome situation that makes me say "holy shit I have got to buy this game." Not "holy shit I've been playing for 10 minutes and I still haven't done anything but shoot at crates."

[Velorath]

Demo or full game, bad tutorials suck regardless.

[UnSub]

Vampire Rain: Any vampire who finds you will rip you to pieces in 3 seconds. Demo over. Would you like to try again? O GOD NO.

[Yegolev]

I have had the problem with demos just being worse than the game even when I play the gameplay part.  Can't think of an example just now but I really slacked off on grabbing demos because nine out of ten are terrible even when the release game is not.

[Margalis]

Nice av.

[Rasix]

Force Unleashed demo was terrible. Apparently the regular game is somewhat fun.  If you have QTEs in your game, don't put them in your demo.  In fact, quit fucking putting these things in your games altogether. They are NOT fun.

The Darkness demo was terrible.  Really disjointed with no flow at all.  Jumped all over the place in regards to plot and never really gave you a solid feel for the game.

Too Human demo was hurt by only allowing action in really short bursts.  Action, bad cut scene, rinse, repeat.

[kildorn]

If you have QTEs in your game, PLEASE put them in the demo so I can know that your game sucks and the entire credits list should be used as a blackball list for game development companies.

[schild]

If you have QTEs in your game, PLEASE put them in the demo so I can know that your game sucks and the entire credits list should be used as a blackball list for game development companies.

Yea I know, God of War and Resident Evil 4 sure were shit.

So how is the boycotting of SCEA and Capcom treating you?

[Ingmar]

If you have QTEs in your game, PLEASE put them in the demo so I can know that your game sucks and the entire credits list should be used as a blackball list for game development companies.

Yea I know, God of War and Resident Evil 4 sure were shit.

So how is the boycotting of SCEA and Capcom treating you?

Think how much better they'd be without shitty QTEs.

[schild]

Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy is one of my favorite adventure games. It was 100% QTE. To say the least, they don't bother me. And they won't bother me in Heavy Rain, RE5 or God of War 3 either.

[Yegolev]

I didn't care for it in GoW or RE4.  The problem is that I cannot watch the fucking action while I'm staring at this one spot on the screen waiting for a button to show up.  RE4 did a lot of things right, but that wasn't it.  Didn't the action pause a bit in GoW for the button presses, or am I imagining that?  If you pause the cinematic and show me the button, I don't feel like I'm missing out on the experience.  Force Unleashed might as well have skipped the possibly-cool cinematic sequences because I'm not fucking watching them.  There's usually a wrong way to do anything, and that's what this is.  Like them or not, GoW and RE4 did them better.

I extend this complaint to draw-a-symbol-on-the-boss in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.

I need to fire up Psi-Ops again.  It's a better Force Unleashed.

[Strazos]

Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy is one of my favorite adventure games. It was 100% QTE. To say the least, they don't bother me.

QFT ...but, the QTEs sorta made sense in this game.

[Velorath]

I'm not a huge fan of QTE's as they are currently being used, but I do at least applaud developers for trying to keep people interacting with the game in some form during cutscenes (given that interactivity is supposed to be the whole point of the medium).

[Margalis]

I have the same problem with GOW, can't actually watch the action as I do the QTE. Kind of defeats the purpose of an awesome psuedo-cinematic if you can't see it.

Don't even get me started on the last boss of GOW2. QTE to finish the game? (And an unskippable cutscene each time you die...)

[Cylus]

I'm not a huge fan of QTE's as they are currently being used, but I do at least applaud developers for trying to keep people interacting with the game in some form during cutscenes (given that interactivity is supposed to be the whole point of the medium).

If you need to force the player's interaction in a cutscene just to keep the player interested in the game at that point in time, the cutscene shouldn't be there.  Make the cutscene interesting and informative enough that I forget the fact that I'm watching a cutscene and there wouldn't be a need for a QTE.

Of late, was disappointed to see the QTEs in the Ninja Blade TGS demo (didn't help that the camera cuts needed work).

[Azazel]

I have the same problem with GOW, can't actually watch the action as I do the QTE. Kind of defeats the purpose of an awesome psuedo-cinematic if you can't see it.

Don't even get me started on the last boss of GOW2. QTE to finish the game? (And an unskippable cutscene each time you die...)

Yeah, it's great if you're watching someone play the game, because "wow, that looks awesome!" but the player can't actually stop to see it, because they're looking for the button prompts.

Kind of like how the animated action in the GH series is secondary and really quite unimportant to the actual guitar playing, except that the guitar playing itself has musical feedback keeping it interesting enough to play even though you can't watch your avatar rocking out.

When the game's focus is mostly on your avatar then you need to stop and press prompt-buttons for awhile, it can be bearable, but it's not awesome fun.

[Sky]

I don't really play the kind of games that have those in them, but I was playing Prince of Persia Sands of Time on my xbox (someone gave me a copy). It was SO MUCH FUN to be playing, what I'd think is a cut scene starts and all of a sudden halfway across the screen some button shows up, by the time I set my beer down I'm reloading.

[stray]

I don't mind them, but it's not like I prefer them either. Surely, I'd rather have cinematic action sequences to be as interactive as the rest of the game. I suppose, umm... some games are getting close to accomplishing that too (Uncharted maybe? It's nothing like GoW or Indigo, of course, but there are some frantic scenarios, combined with the great animations, that make it both thrilling to watch and fun to play. I'd rather play that than a QTE sequence that I don't really get to see).

[kildorn]

Same argument I've used elsewhere against QTEs:

What is the functional difference between a QTE sequence with animation going on behind it and one with a black screen behind it.

QTEs alter the fundamental gameplay of action games (entirely QTE games are different in that respect, it IS the gameplay, even if said gameplay is DDR without the dance pad), wherein somehow your character can magically not swing a sword to hit the badguy anymore, and now must do something the developers thought would be badass. They've replaced cutscenes, which had the same basic flaw (who cares how you like playing and your character would react, THIS IS HOW YOU WILL HAVE FUN DAMNIT).

In essence, you abandon they interactive story telling that a game is trying to be, and turn into someone lecturing you on gameplay but repeatedly asking questions to make sure you didn't wander off to get some coffee.

Moreover, QTEs don't add Shit to the game. Let's take mercs 2. Mercs 1 was fun, entertaining and mindless. Mercs 2 decided that all the fun mindless entertainment would be BETTER if you had to hit random button matching games in the middle of it. Jarringly stupid, out of place, and just like Force Unleashed's large monster QTEs, appears to pause time for no reason to do some stupid action event werein magically everyone stops fucking shooting you while you stand around like a jackass pressing X.

[stray]

I actually like cut scenes... But that comes down to whether the writing is stupid or not.

Granted, in most games, the writing is stupid.

[Yegolev]

The most interactivity I really want in a cutscene is what you find in Too Human.  Basically your equipment is visible and you can walk around a bit but your attention is on the actors, whose faces even continue to look at each other.  That tiny element pulled me into the scene more than anything else, ever.

[kildorn]

Some of Too Human's cutscenes were great. The first goblin fight, because you could walk forward during it AND KILL THE GOBLIN if you wanted to.

Some were stupid, like the funeral room, where you get to watch the long assed hallway scene and don't get to do anything during it. It broke the flow of the game.

[Margalis]

I only played the demo but I did like that fact that for example when the enemy sees you and the camera is through his eyes you can move yourself around from his viewpoint. Hell even being able to wiggle the camera a bit in Shadow of the Colossus is nice.

I too have put down a beer only to try to quickly grab it again during a cutscene event.

[stray]

Now that you're at Square, you can be awash in cutscenes.