The thread wherin game Demos are discussed

[Azazel]

Since my 360 got back from the hopsital and I now have a bit of time to play with it, I thought I'd check out a couple of the game demo titles that have been sitting on the HDD for awhile. The experience was so much fun, I decided to write it up and post it. 

Tomb Raider: Underworld.

Hmm.. graphics look quite nice. I see Lara has now been modelled quote a bit on Angelina's facial fatures in a general sense. oh well. I'll explore the boat. Oooh. Invisible wall. I guess I'm supposed to swim over to that platform she was looking at using her handycam. Shark in the water? Guess I'll shoot it. Damn, that shark took a lot of bullets. Anyway, time to swim across to that platform. OK, it's like an indoor climing wall here. Press A to jump, eh? Okay. Damn, I fell. No worries, I'll do it again. And again, and again, and again. And again. hm, check the control scheme and see if there's a grab-on button. Hm, can't find the control scheme from the options menus. Oh well, I'll try it again.  And again, and again, and again. And again.

Fuck this shit. Quit Demo. (and never consider buying this game).

ok, next demo....


Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

OK, it wants me to select a character, from a choice of one. OK, it's the punky guy from the boxcover, who is apparently svedish. Well, people are already shooting at me while I'm stuggling to hear the mission brief. That's not a very clear mission brief. I'll jump down this hill bit by bit and.. take 60% damage? OK, into the car. I'll drive over to all those guys and ..damn thats a lot of machineguns. I'll run some of these suckers over. Hm, my car is about to explode. Bail!
These guys are shooting the crap out of me. WTF am I supposed to be doing again? Damn, dead.

OK, try again. Damn, still lost more than half my HP jumping down from the hill. And I was too busy RPGing those clowns down below to pick up on all of the objective. Hm, d-pad controls extra attack type things. Back into the car, essentially the same shit again, except I was busily trying to spam buttons to figure out how to drop listening posts or some shit into the base I was busily trashing.

Last try. Ok, accidently clusterbombed my car, but I got down from the rocks with only a 20% loss of health! Run around, shoot some guys. Run up to a light tank and ah, the much vaunted QTE. Damn, that was not only not especially fun, but also not very good to watch. I see that even in the tank, no matter how many little fuckers I kill, theres always 29,423 more still shooting at me nonstop. I get out, run around and get shot a whole lot, and just before I die again...

Fuck this shit. Quit Demo. (and never consider buying this game).


Basically, two AAA budget, name titles with shitty shitty SHIT control schemes and confusing demos that were not easy to just pick up and play. You can do the fanboi thing and talk about how I'm just a gimp shit gamer, but regardless of whether that's true or not, the purpose of a demo is to make me have so much fun I just want to run out and buy the full game, isn't it? Doesn't that mean something more like pick up and play/pick up and kick arse?

[murdoc]

The demo for 'Pure' was good enough for me to put that game on my Xmas list, but I'm a bit of a sucker for those types of games.

I never played the Tomb Raider demo, but I had pretty much the exact same experience with the Mercenaries demo.

[Azazel]

Downloaded and played the demo for PURE after the previous post. For what it was, it seemed okay, and quite well polished. I don't get into the whole thing of spamming stunts and shifting your weight up and down while trying to race, but I could appreciate it as well put together for what it was. I read a review and the emphasis on stunts it mentioned made me suspect I wouldn't much like it, and I was correct.

I was kinda hoping on the outside that it'd be a bit/lot more like MotorStorm on the PS3, but there's nothing at this stage.



Also played the Demo of Kung Fu Panda, after seeing it both on Sale and on someone else from f13's game list. Pretty much a bog-standard beatemup platformer. I don't mind those games too much, but I prefer them in 2-player co-op mode. The best part for me was listening to Jack Black's quips...

[Azazel]

Inspired by the Nedrage thread, I decided to download and try out the demo of Chromehounds. Verdict: It's pretty enough. Well, like a good-looking HD-ish PS2/XBox game, anyway. PLays like boredom, however.

So as Schild recommnded, I shan't be purchasing it.

[Big Gulp]

Inspired by the Nedrage thread, I decided to download and try out the demo of Chromehounds. Verdict: It's pretty enough. Well, like a good-looking HD-ish PS2/XBox game, anyway. PLays like boredom, however.

So as Schild recommnded, I shan't be purchasing it.

It was quite good when you were in a decent clan.  The problem is the game's age; good luck even finding other players.  The other problem the game had was all the instancing.  You never really felt like you were in a real world.

All in all, though, I'm glad I bought it.  It's just that my experience with the game will now be impossible to replicate.

[sidereal]

Now you see why developers don't like to make demos.  If no demo existed, you might have bought one or two of those 4 games based on marketing hype.

[Segoris]

tl;dr version: demos are good if the product is good

Now you see why developers don't like to make demos.  If no demo existed, you might have bought one or two of those 4 games based on marketing hype.

Just some personal observations regarding that;

There is a flipside to that coin, the people/customers that don't think about buying a game but do end up buying it because of a demo they played. I have 2 personal examples I can think of off the top of my head. The first and most recent example: World of Goo. Just hearing the name and not knowing what it's about made that game seem like to me and not the first thing I would have gone searching to try. Having downloaded and played the demo last nite has made me decide to buy that game today. God damn that game is fucking addicting, damn you OCD goals! The second example: Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Back in '99, or close to that year, was when this game had 1 stage available (Chicago stage) with Primus' Jerry Was A Racecar Driver playing in the background on a demo disc for the PS1, and it was the greatest god damn thing ever. I remember that demo was being sold for $2 at a local game shop (Gamestop either bought it out or they moved in the exact shop after it went out of business, either way I have long forgotten the name) but I remember that thing selling out....a fucking demo disc selling out....wtf. That demo disc created a lot of word of mouth marketing and hype. Now look at Tony Hawk's video game line, how many sequels have been produced since the first one released? 4? 5?

Now, that's not a lot of examples from me, but I blame MMO's and being in top notch raid guilds for the last 10 years taking my attention away from other games that had demos. But my boredom recently made me download FarCry, Crisis, Dawn of War, and a few other demos which I'm now going to go buy. Well, FarCry 2 because of FarCry 1's demo, but still proving that FarCry's developer will now have another sale due to a mix of them putting out a demo and my nee to cure boredom on night's that the girlfriend is out of town.

I do agree though that the developers with lots of money to throw at marketing are, of course, going to hate demos because they wasted their money on marketing and the demo killed that when people saw how crappy their game played. But who's fault is that? The company that spent money into making a mediocre game with lots of marketing instead of making a great game with little to medium marketing, or the people who want their money to be well spent on good quality entertainment? I do find it funny though when a big company does spend more into marketing then the actual game while bitching about demos ruining sales when how many of the big name companies have released demos for products before they themselves became larger companies with large marketing divisions?

Sorry, long winded when I have 15 mins left at work and bored

[Margalis]

Shorter: The value of a demo is inversely proportional to mindshare.

[Tale]

I would have ignored BF2 if it had no demo. Bought the full game on the strength of the demo and became a loyal expansion-buying customer.

This used to be my normal pattern of behaviour in the 1990s and early this decade, when avault.com tracked demos and people could rate them. I've been buying fewer games since the flow of quality demos dried up.

[stray]

I used to look forward to PC Gamer way back in the day, sifting through all of the little goodies on the CD. My how times have changed.

[Sky]

Tale, the BF1942 Wake Island demo is legendary. Possibly the best demo ever.

I also used to play a lot of demos. I still try out a game now and again, but the demo quality is getting hard to figure out. A lot of times they don't play like the release game, so I try to preview even demos here :) The demo for the most recent Anno game did remind me I don't have time to sink into something like that. And the demo for Overlord made me want to buy it, even though I haven't yet.

[Azazel]

I bought BF2 on the strength of the Desert Combat mod, but yeah the Wake Island BF1942 Demo was amazing. It was what got both myself and at least 3 others of my little group at the time into online FPS wholesale.

[Triforcer]

Wake demo sucked me into my very first FPS.  God I loved vanilla BF1942...it had me for at least 18 months. 

[stray]

Speaking of BF1942, I love Capcom's DLC remake of 1942.  Same deal as the classic little shootemup, just prettier. I've got other things to play through, but I've been meaning to purchase it.

[Bunk]

Bioshock demo was the only reason I bought the game. Too bad the demo was far better than the game turned out to be.

[Rasix]

Bioshock demo was the only reason I bought the game. Too bad the demo was far better than the game turned out to be.

Heh, true.  Demo had a great vibe to it.

Speaking of demos: skate 2 demo is supposed to be out on XBL today.  Next week it'll hit the PSN.  The demo for skate was the main reason I bought the game after being burnt out on skating games.  You could easily tell you were getting something that resembled skating better than Tony Hawk did.  Plus, the nature of the game meant you could do any trick in the demo that was available in the full game.

[stray]

I like both.. It's definitely a more realistic representative of skating, but I kinda miss button combos and railslides across an entire map too.

That said, I pretty much suck at both. And I have a fake grill for sucking at the real thing too.

[Rasix]

Still bugs me that there was one challenge in skate that I was unable to complete.  The XBL monkies were disgustingly good at that game.   "Hi, I can manual-360 flip-manual until I run out of momentum"

One demo I got burned on: Eternal Sonata.  Demo showed off an interesting combat system and great visuals.  Demo didn't show off the game killing plot and voice acting.

Mirror's Edge demo turn me off almost instantly.

[stray]

Yeah, I sucked at manuals too.. Took me forever to even pull off some very basic manual challenge in a beginner's area.

[Azazel]

Necrobumpage!

Star Wars: Clone Wars
It felt pretty much like an XBLA title. Slightly loose controls (particularly as a Jedi). That's pretty much it. It really does look like a good-quality XBLA title. Tiny ingame models, a fair few fancy lighting effects, low-quality cutscenes with dire voice acting (I've not watched the new Animated film or series, so I don't know if it's on a par or below that stuff).

I'll probably buy it when it's very very cheap, at which point it'll sit unplayed for a year or more in my pile'o games.


Wet
Loose controls again, but more fun than SW:CW. Not bad, but very much style over substance from the amount I played. Deperately wants to be a Tarantino/Rodriguez flick. QTEs in some sections, but actually not too abrasive.

Will probably buy it when it hits the discount bin and play it as a followup to something else.


Section 8
Ok, I played it on the 360 rather than the PC, which is where these things should be played, but I did it for the sake of keeping it simple.. Totally forgettable, generic teambased sci-fi-ish shooter. And it's a pretty safe bet I'll never pick this up since I've walked right past Quake Wars, Frontlines and a bunch of other super-discounted failed Battlefield clones about a million times.


Arkham Asylum
Thought I'd throw this in there.  If I wasn't geting a PS3 in a couple of months (when I go on Christmas/summer break) I'd have already bought this on 360. Before the local release even. Win.

[Yegolev]

The Arkham Asylum demo made my pants tight, but I'll be waiting a bit before picking it up.  PS3 version.