Progressive Boink

[webber]

Since most people seem to have a 360, I'm sure heaps of you dudes are regularly downloading and playing demos, but I know the time I spend playing demos isn't substantial enough to post it in the what are you playing thread, so I thought we could post our thoughts on the demos we play here. You don't have to play the demo for any significant length of time, initial thoughts is fine. I'll start

Stranglehold
I downloaded this on a whim, since I usually don't like FPS games on consoles (I thought The Darkness was frustrating and terrible), but I thought it was really fun. I enjoyed the fact that no matter how liberal I was with my shooting my ammo never seemed to go below 100 (this is good because my aiming is really bad, so I can just unleash a hail of bullets in the enemy's general direction for a guaranteed hit). I skipped all the cutscenes and junk, but I loved diving around everywhere and pwning azn nubs. I am undecided on whether I should buy this game, but it comes with a Bluray of Hard Boiled, so I'm thinkin about it.

NCAA 2008
I had no idea what I was doing in this game, but I managed to beat my girlfriend's bro who loves American football, so that was weird. Our game went for bloody ages (like 10-20 minutes), which makes me wonder why many people would bother buying the full game. Online, I guess. Anyway it seemed really hard to defend, but offense was pretty fun once I sort of figured out what was going on.

FIFA 2008
Despite buying Pro Evo 5 or 6, the last soccer game I played properly was This Is Soccer for the PS1, so I am a bit lost with all of these new fangled tactics and the realism making it impossible to score a goal. I have been meaning to get a recent soccer game and really get into it, but I don't think that game will be FIFA 08 (MAYBE I SHOULD JUST PLAY THE GAME I HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT). In the intro and loading screens you get to pilot Ronaldinho running around a field that has a goal and a keeper, which I thought was a really great touch. I spent more time doing this than actually playing the game proper.

[webber]

f u all

[Casey]

sorry I didn't play any demos during the time I was asleep or at work webber OH WAIT MY XBOX 360 IS BROKEN

[James]

Ace Combat 6
Could you please try it so that we can eventually all do multiplayer together when I get a 360 again

[webber]

Sega Rally
This is what Colin McRae would be if it was really Crus'n USA. Power slides are cool and all and that is really what rally games are about, but it is also good if the cars feel like they weigh something. I'm not really down with rally games that put other cars on the track either. The game apparently has some dynamic track deterioration thingo where all the cars' wheels put grooves in the road in real time, so no two laps will ever be the same. This sounds pretty cool, but since all the tracks feature invisible walls immediately to either side of the track and you don't actually slow down much when you hit them, you can just go around most corners that way, which means you don't get a change to go through other people's track marks. Also I don't want to be too much of a graphics whore but it kind of looks like a PS2 game.

Cocoreccho
Just bought dis. In case anyone gets a PS3, it is like $3 cheaper on the Australian store than anywhere else, so download it there. I never played Loco Roco on the PSP, but I really like the aesthetic. It is pretty fun so far, but even though it is basically a screen saver and doesn't go for too long, I would have liked the ability to quit and then pick up where you left off. Amusing and pretty and fun, I think it is totally worth five bux.

[First-Tiger]

Ace Combat 6
Could you please try it so that we can eventually all do multiplayer together when I get a 360 again

I tried this one out. It's not one of those "Press A to shoot. Okay, you shot! Good!" demos, it just puts you over a city with enemy planes and parachuting tanks. It took me a couple of terrible failures before I started to get the hang of it, probably because I haven't played a flight game since Star Fox. It looks pretty awesome once you get past the learning curve, anyhow. The graphics are excellent, and it's definitely got a great war atmosphere going, with music of gravitas and frantic radio reports and such. It seems like it was made for online play.

Also, Overlord
This looks fun. From what I saw, you have a small goblinish army that you can control with the right analog stick to cause mayhem and also to achieve quests. You can also hit things with a sword or magic. You play as an evil armored dude and the game seems to revolve around gaining power, but I'd imagine there'll probably be some story and moral conflict. Lots of jokes and goofy stuff mixed in, somewhere between Black and White and Disgaea at a glance. I'll probably buy this one in a while when the price goes down to $30 or so.

[James]

yeah the ace combat 6 demo is actually just the first mission

there will be a tutorial in the full version tho

[Wat, But A Girl]

overlord is basically like pikmin only instead of simplicity and beauty there is a three-hundred pound hobbit that tries to eat you

also there is no moral conflict beyond "be evil for the sake of evil" v. "pretend to be good to gain power to be used for more evil" and there isn't really much story to speak of


(It's not actually a terrible game, but they try way too hard to make everything dark and edgy which I do not care for)

[James]

it wants to be dungeon keeper but it just can't

[webber]

The Simpsons Game
This was obviously going to be a shit game, but it was a lot better than I thought it would be. There is a lot of free-roaming gameplay, and it might be fun to try to find all the secrets if the controls weren't so shit. The graphics are also a lot less phoned in than I thought they would be. I guess The Simpsons have the advantage that you can just make all buildings boxes with simple cell shading and be true to the source, but it has some nice effects that probably couldn't be done with a PS2. Plus it appears to have proper voice acting (did the PS2 Simpsons game[s] have this?), and while the writing isn't stellar, it is chuckle-worthy. Not as good as that arcade game where Marge attacks people with a vacuum cleaner, but this looks like a pretty fun game for kids (especially if it were multiplayer - is it?).

Bladestorm
I had no idea what this game was going to be before I downloaded it, but once I saw it was made by Koei I figured it would be a lot of button-mashing. It's not, really. It seems like a pretty fun strategy game where you are a mercenary helping either the French or the British (or both) invade each other. I haven't played the Myth games which I guess this game is closest too, so I don't know how well this stacks up to that, but I enjoyed playing this. My only problem is when there are heaps of dudes fighting away on screen, it can sometimes be hard to tell your dudes and their dudes apart. I think James would probably love this, unless this game is secretly not strategic enough or something. The other thing I liked is that usually medieval games have some woman with huge tits and stilted movements as the barmaid, whereas this one just has some fruity Spanish guy with stilted movements. Also if you are a woman character you get to pick from various Italian or Russian accents that all sound very demonic! Exciting!

[Rusty Cooledge v2]

Not as good as that arcade game where Marge attacks people with a vacuum cleaner

And really, what is?

I don't know what it is with Simpson's game all being so awful. The arcade game being the only one I've played with decent controls.

By the way, Virtual Bart can rot in hell.

[Alan]

Plus it appears to have proper voice acting (did the PS2 Simpsons game[s] have this?)

Yep! The cast are generally in most stuff simpsons related, I don't know of too many sound alikes for officially licensed stuff. Probably in their contract.

I didn't mind Hit and Run, but Road Rage was dumb. I think this one will be fun, but I'll check out the demo some time I think!

[Sami]

I played The Simpsons Game demo and thought it looked awesome and was a lot of fun. I'll probably rent it, at least.

[webber]

Didn't the controls and camera annoy you? Something that should have taken me five minutes took like 40 because I couldn't see where I was going half the time, and when I could I just couldn't seem to get there.

[Terry Cheesecake]

Get the Pro Evo demo webber. It's not as pretty looking as FIFA but it's a much better footy game.

[webber]

Not on the PSN yet, but rest assured I will! I downloaded Ratchet and Clank and Conan last night, so we'll see how those go in the meantime.

[webber]

Conan
Awesome things that happened while I played this demo:
-I beheaded a dude, and his head flew off and hit the camera
-Cut a dude in half
-I picked up an infeasibly large barrel and threw it at a dude, who flew backwards and got impaled on a wooden stake on the side of the wall
-I rolled underneath some guy's attack, and then hit him and broke his weapon. Then I cut his head off.
-The game told me how many of other people's limbs I removed (19 FYI)
This was totally awesome. The only crappy thing I came across was how hilariously bad the lipsyncing is. Also the cut scenes kind of look worse than the regular game.

Ratchet and Clank
Hooray, finally a good PS3 game! This game is real real pretty, and real real fun to play. It is very easy to control, and shooting stuff is pretty cool. I was struggling a bit to get used to the strafing system though. If you hold L2 it fixes your direction and you can strafe around, and then you move the camera with the R stick (like an FPS I guess). But in some sections the camera is fixed, so you can only strafe in one direction. This means that I ended up running around wildly until the enemies were dead. The other problem I had was that it was pretty easy, but I can excuse this since a) it is obviously meant to appeal to kids; and b) it is a demo. But yeah it was great fun and I look forward to buying this at some stage.

[Casey]

the cut scenes kind of look worse than the regular game

This happened with half of the cutscenes in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. It was a cross-platform game and the cutscenes in the first half of the game look like they were rendered using the PS2 port's game engine. Then, inexplicably, the last few cutscenes are in like full CG with fancy graphics that even the 360 wouldn't be capable of doing in realtime. So weird.

[Sami]

Didn't the controls and camera annoy you? Something that should have taken me five minutes took like 40 because I couldn't see where I was going half the time, and when I could I just couldn't seem to get there.

uh yeah i'm late sorry

The camera was annoying, since it tried to go into the middle of people and buildings and stuff. I was just excited that it looked like the show. Like I said, rental.

Also, the GHIII demo got me pumped. Rock You Like a Hurricane was so much fun that I can't hardly wait for Sunday.

[webber]

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
I decided not to read about games on most of the internet anymore after I read some comments about how this game is ugly. I think it's the prettiest game I have played. The demo gives you one big track (takes you around 2 minutes for a lap) and the choice of about 5 cars. It is the same old Gran Turismo. I don't have an Xbox so I never got the chance to play games like Forza or Project Gotham Racing, and maybe those have improved on something in the genre while GT stays much the same, but right now I'm having enough fun with this. I probably won't buy GT5 Prologue when it comes out because selling a preview for a game as a standalone title seems dumb to me, but I am excited about what GT5 will eventually be. With some good online features I could see myself playing this for a while. It seems to me that the genre that will most benefit from innovations due to online gaming in this generation will be driving games, which is real exciting because they are one of my favourite kinds of game. A+ will play again very shortly!