The Demo Dilemma

Recently I downloaded the XBox 360 demo of Codemaster’s Overlord. And I was hooked from the very first line. After all, I think that we can agree that “Rub some acid in his eyes: That’ll freshen him up!” is an awesome opening line. The rest of the demo followed the same style: well-scripted, with tongue in cheek minions encouraging you to be evil, and damn good fun.

After purchasing the game I thought I was onto something. After all, if I’d have played a demo of Dead Rising I’d have known before purchase that the mission-critical text was impossible to read on my Standard Definition screen. So I decided to download more game demos to evaluate. Please note that the following are not meant to be in-depth reviews of the game, they are deliberately very short and non-exhaustive reviews of the game demos.

Lego Star Wars II: Lego and Star Wars based adventure game. Another comedy game: characters falling over and getting hit by vehicles has never been this funny. The puzzles are interesting and satisfying to solve. I’m holding back from purchasing this one because I don’t think that it will hold any real lasting appeal for me; it’d be good for dropping in and out of, similar to Spiderman 3. But I still haven’t completed that yet so…

Quake IV: Classic Alien Shooter. Good graphics, good dialogue, good weapons, interesting story and monsters, but there’s nothing new here. Making a shining pinnacle of a classic genre is always a worthwhile thing to do, but there’s nothing in terms of concept or gameplay that really make this stick out. When I have completed F.E.A.R and want another FPS I will probably make this investment.

Ninety Nine Nights: Fantasy hack ‘n’ slash. N3 is a very impressive game which has vast numbers of beautifully rendered ally and enemy soldiers battling it out on screen while you hack and slash with an effortlessly graceful style in the middle of them. N3 seems to suffer from the same problems that most hack and slash games do which is that rather than learn all the complex controls for combos it’s easier for the player to just repeat the same ones over and over again, which undermines the variety of moves and makes gameplay repetitive.

Shadowrun: Shoot ‘em up with magic. Shadowrun was a really fun demo to play. The magic element really sets this game apart – your character can teleport through walls away from people while firing at them. You can run, leap, glide, teleport, throw up destructible but hindering walls… there’s tremendous variety. Even among all this chaos the game appears to be well thought out and balanced: no one magic spell seems to be dramatically more useful than any other. The tutorial is well-made and not boring as most demos are. Best of all the demo sets up an intriguing background story that I would really like to explore and progress through. What’s that? There’s no single player campaign? Only single player skirmishes? Ah forget it. Single player story driven FPS are my favourite. I’m partial to multiplayer as much as anyone else, but the campaign really drives the game forward and gives you something to progress through, and it’s a huge lost opportunity that it’s not present here.

The Outfit: WW2 squad based shooter. The game comes with a single player campaign mode. Sadly this demo didn’t. This is the XBox 360′s answer to the Battlefield series (while it looks different it has in common most aspects of gameplay), and it makes a fine job of it: within minutes of playing a Nazi approached me from behind, stamped on the back of my knee, and attacked my throat with a knife. You can call for a variety of vehicles to be dropped from the sky (literally dropped, I got crushed by one), but whatever you do don’t try to run towards them if there’s a river in the way. Your “Outfit” has been given all the training and equipment necessary to conduct vital attacks behind enemy lines, but they haven’t been taught how to swim, and are dead from the moment their toes cut the water. At £22 from Amazon this is a game that I will make an investment in. There’s one “small” problem: the text is tiny on my Standard Definition TV. There’s no good reason why this isn’t a PC game and frankly it should be: mouse and keyboard are far better for this genre.

Project Sylpheed: Space Combat Flight Simulator. Perhaps because I haven’t played a flying game in a while, or perhaps because the background is mostly black with stars it’s very difficult to know just which way up is. It’s also hard to guage your speed and distance from the spacecraft that you’re attacking. The Microsoft Combat Flight simulator had an option of writing the distance away from the other planes above the aircraft, and that would have been useful here. I think if you’re a fan of the genre then this is probably a good one, as the spacecraft control well and there seems to be a variety of weapons, but this just isn’t the one for me. Another problem is that I was getting eyestrain from the text on the briefing screen, probably due to the light blue on blue text in Standard Definition. The names of the planets on this screen were illegible because the font was too small.

Having had that marathon session I’ve reached the following conclusions: that I will buy The Outfit.

And a High Definition TV.

- John

Play nice