Be Excellent To Each Other

Legendary is really nifty. Or, at least it is when you're fighting soldiers. When you're fighting soldiers, they go down when you shoot them. Unfortunately, there's about seven enemy soldiers in the demo and about twice as many bullet-proof werewolves. :(

A stingy demo.

Sonic... is just New Sonic. Don't know how you're supposed to know what you're supposed to be doing. I guess if you were Sonic, you'd have the reflexes to play it. Or maybe you're supposed to learn it. (UCK.)

A stingy demo, but I'd imagine the game is about twenty minutes long anyway.

Dead Space is fun! If a little strange! A stingy demo because there's only about seven enemies or something...?

Banjo's demo on the other hand goes on for bloody ages! Which is a shame because I hate every single thing about Banjo's world. Every location, every character, every bit of dialogue and every bit of music.

Building a car is cool though. Replace the entire game with stuff from Klonoa and I bet you it would be twice as cool. Hell, they could use the 'new Klonoa' that they decided to invent then not use. (The one without floppy ears.)

Also, the Dead Space demo is hell-bent on killing you in a way that isn't *quite* so true of the game -- I would hate to think that it was putting people off a neat-o release. Hear you on Banjo too.

I didn't find Dead Space to be that hard at all. I'd been told that the moment I hit whatever switch I was supposed to, I would be swarmed. I snuck up to an elevated corner of the room and used the gun assigned to 'up' to blow off legs and arms and the 'floaty sawblade' to deal with the swarming little tiny guys that explode out of some of the corpses.

It seemed as there were very few enemies at all. Maybe I should try it again; with how long the demo seemed to be, it's possible I'd missed entire rooms.

I've heard that the DS demo isn't indicative of the finished game. I might loan my copy of Resistance:FOM to DrG and swap it for DS.
Also, there's a lot of love for Banjo amidst some of the UGVM crowd who also say that the finished game is brilliant compared to the demo.

Which just goes to show - demos are hard to get right. In fact we could discuss the last time a demo was so good it made you buy a game or whether you were put off by it.

Crackdown is another example - the demo sucked, the game was one of the many highlights of 2007

Well, the Crackdown demo made me go out and buy Crackdown, so, er... What did you think was wrong with it?

I'd put Crackdown in the Best Demos Of All Time list.

Ace demo = Mirror's Edge. It successfully showcased the best part of the game, the running-across-rooftops-pursued-by-The-Man bits, and even made the combat seem quite fun.

Ha.

Terrible demo = Madden '09. I've quite liderally played every iteration of Madden since 94. But the demo puts you through ten minutes of shockingly tedious skill drills before you're dumped into a mind-bogglingly complicated play-selection interface and a stupidly brief period of actually playing the game, and totally failed to convince me that EA haven't actually fucked this version up.

Madden? Irritate, more like.

I've stopped downloading the demos for the 360 - I'll just trust the judgement of the Beteo Hive Mind or just pick up a game when it's cheap enough instead. The Test Drive Unlimited demo put me off getting the full game for a while but I'm glad I did now.

Good call, sir.

I may have stated this on record before but I was really keen on the idea of crackdown until I played the demo. WHICH bored me to tears and seemed like a badly modelled random mess. Shame.

I was quite excited about Mirror's Edge until I played the demo. Let's just say I still haven't bought it.

Probably a good call then, seeing as the demo's 435% better than the actual game.

Demos have also put me off Dead Space and Mercs 2. The last time I played a demo and it made me want to go out and buy the full game...?

I really can't remember.

Retro Evolved 2.

Maybe I should qualify that with 'games I didn't already know I wanted to buy'. I'm trying to think of something that's completely surprised me—something that I wasn't fussed about before.

I had assumed it would be good, but the demo really proved it.

Kept running out of ammo in the Dead Space demo -- probably because I'd just got my 360 and was too busy cooing at the graphics to shoot straight. I'm quite glad it took a few attempts as it ensured that... One demo that made me hunt out the full release was Stranglehold... the precision shooting power-up is too much fun.

I just had a look at the demos section of marketplace for the first time since before Chrimbo - I downloaded Dead Space to have a look at that and also spotted FEAR 2.

First impressions of FEAR 2, weapons feel nice, it still has the same preposterous 60s style scary trippy inserts but I was immediately impressed with the way the environment responds to weapon fire with lots of things getting damaged and the enemy AI is some of the best I've seen, with clever use of the environment to flank you, constant movement and was very impressed when I caught one pushing a table over to use as cover.

The first one was a very good shooter if you could overlook the fact that it felt like 99% took place in an office block, this feels like they've tweaked the NPC AI and made the environments more destructible. I will definitely be looking at reviews for this one closely.

I'm going to play the first one very soon. I've had it pretty much ever since it came out on PC, but I couldn't get it to run properly on my computer. Trousers has kindly lent me his 360 copy, so I'm going to give that a bash.

I went back to this after a break of ages a few days ago and finished it. It's ace.

We should have a go at the multiplayer one day.

Well spotted, my introductory Gold membership has just run out though and Microsoft seems to have the bizarre notion that I will pay to be advertised at (ha ha -- are they nuts or what? Why wouldn't they want as many people as possible to see every demo as soon as possible?) Anyway, I've read your description, closed my eyes and imagined what it must be like and I've got to say that the game has not impressed me much thus far.


I'll prolly Gold myself back up once I'm happy that everyone I know online isn't still playing FIFA.

If anybody else wants a try I have the first one I can loan to people. Gamerscore whores need not apply as I think FEAR is, without any doubt, the stingiest game in existence for handing out points.


http://www.achieve360points.com/print/fear

My thoughts on the Dead Space demo from the Dead Space thread. It's not really representative of the real game.

The Fear 2 demo is quite good...if you liked the original Fear. Otherwise you'll probably feel it's a bit too old school as a shooter after we've been spoiled by the likes of GOW2.

Legendary has been widely panned, beware.

Sonic... is shit. The game was only really fun when you were playing the bits where the camera makes it look like an oldschool 2D game. And even then, it's so bloody fast and there's so many speed boosters and jump pads you're essentially holding right and watching it play itself.

New Demo Out

halo wars ready to download.

Interesting.

I would investigate but Im downloading lost at the minute and Im sure my xbox hard drive needs a spring clean.

ONE POINT FOUR GIG.

I'll have a go at this, I'm not usually too much into RTS games, they tend make me feel all flustered and irritated but I've enjoyed a few of them.

Direct link to the Halo Wars demo.

I am waiting for Halo kart racing.

quick question in an active xbox thread. Can the NXE be downloaded non-xbox wise yet?

Here you go:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/syste ... pdates.htm

excellent. Cheers.

Is it my imagination, or has the NXE done away with the never-less-than-annoying "Can Only Have Four Items In Your Download Queue" feature of the FunSquare? I was downloading S2 of The Guild alongside some new Rock Band DLC last night and was mildly surprised that I was never shouted at by my Xbox.

Must have done. I've queued loads of stuff on mine, and it has never shouted. I bought my 'box a week before NXE, so I never ran into this.

I think they've put it up to 30 items, or something like that.

new new demos today, 3 infact.

The wheelman, Legends of Wrestlemania and wanted.

Also Riddicks Chronic was out yesterday if anyone never knew.

I'm going to give Ridiculous Chronical a go tonight.

Whats the recent influx of demos like?

I think I heard there was a section 8 demo out yesterday and noticed you can pre-order it for 18 smackers on zavvi. Im guessing that means its going to be balls.

Mini Ninjas is shite.

Dirt 2 is decent progress from the original in all areas, although they've chosen the worst possible car for the rally stage style half of the demo.

Is it as super "extreme" as the trailers made it out to be? That's really putting me off it.

Fucking

Codebastards' enthusiasm for having turned it from a proper rally title into something for hooting frat boys is rather worrying.

I wouldn't say it's any more "Extreme" than dirt 1 was. It's not like they're awarding stunt points here, it's just now an "Offroad forms of racing" game not a WRC game (which is good since WRC now has 8 regular entrants). Personally I think Dirt was made immeasureably better by the prescence of hill climb and Rallycross.

Is the handling still all squishy and horrible? Dirt and Grid were unplayable using a wheel.

Yes, but those who wanted just rallying still had to endure the other crappy events, and vice versa.

I was told this was going to have really strong ties and emphasis on the X-Games, is that not true?

Some more of those people (Dave Mirra, Ken block) have joined the crew but it's not especially obvious from the demo.



It's never been a sim, I wouldn't expect it to become one, the physics appear to be a developed version of Dirt's.

Darn, I was expecting a minigame where you rotate the right stick to roll your fist in the air while hammering the left trigger to hoot as loud as possible. Sustain this for five minutes to unlock the United States of Asshole achievement (30g).

Will give it a go when I get home later. Give it a go TO THE EXTREME! WOOOOOOOOOOOO!