PlayStation Network/XBox Live Demo Roundups

[Nik Drou]

I'm not sure about XBox Live, but PSN tends to make at least a couple of new demos available on their Thursday updates, so I thought it'd be fun to do a brief rundown as they come out.

Vanquish - New sci-fi shooter from one of the people responsible for Devil May Cry.  Not bad, but I had to switch the auto guidance on to get any joy out of it.  It plays a little clunky, plus it loses points for gratuitous cigarette use.

Ruse - War strategy game.  Tedious.

Alien Breed: Impact -  Painfully generic.

[chand]

Xbox I believe gets more demos than PSN because Microsoft make it mandatory for all games, which Sony don't for some reason.

I like Vanquish a lot. Alien Breed is alright, I got it cos I was a bit nostalgic for the original. Amazing how many top-down shooters I've bought and not really got much use out of though. Still, the aliens made a nice change from zzzzzzzzzombies.

[mobias]

Xbox I believe gets more demos than PSN because Microsoft make it mandatory for all games

All games it produces? There are some companies like Rockstar that refuse to make demos available of any of its games prior to launch. I sometimes think  games companies shoot themselves in the foot releasing unfinished games demos early. Take Motorstorm 2 on the PS3 for example. The early demo was dreadful and so many people on various forums said they weren't going to buy the game. When the final game was released it was miles better and really polished yet i wonder how many people in the end were turned off by the crappy early demo?   

[Nik Drou]

Sorry I was so brief with this last night, wanted to get it out there before I went to bed.

Yeah, at least Alien Breed has a bit of a retro-style viewpoint that reminded me a bit of certain PS1 games whose names escape me, but I don't think I want to hang around a greyish space station shooting greyish Giger ripoffs ever again.

[mcbpete]

Yeah, at least Alien Breed has a bit of a retro-style viewpoint that reminded me a bit of certain PS1 games whose names escape me, but I don't think I want to hang around a greyish space station shooting greyish Giger ripoffs ever again.

Well it's a remake of this bad boy innit -

[Zero Gravitas]

It may not be new but Chime (xbla) is a very enjoyable twist on block stacking.



The mixture of music and the bonuses is simple yet it lends a very enjoyable flow to the game.

[chand]

All games it produces? There are some companies like Rockstar that refuse to make demos available of any of its games prior to launch.

Actually it may just be XBLA games that all get demos. I don't have a 360, it's just something the incredibly precious PS3 owners whine about ad nauseam every fucking week on the Sony EU blog, screaming "Where's this demo? They got a demo on the 360! The 360 gets everything, I'm throwing my PS3 in the canal tonight and giving all my money to Microsoft" in among their whines about how things cost about 5% more in the EU than they do on the US store and so on.

I agree to an extent about demos, even demos of finished games can be misleading; the Yakuza 3 demo was unrepresentatively full of tedious fighting, when in fact the full game ran the whole gamut of tedious fighting, boring dialogue, tiresome wandering around and interminable mini-games.

[Still Not George]

Actually it may just be XBLA games that all get demos. I don't have a 360, it's just something the incredibly precious PS3 owners whine about ad nauseam every fucking week on the Sony EU blog, screaming "Where's this demo? They got a demo on the 360! The 360 gets everything, I'm throwing my PS3 in the canal tonight and giving all my money to Microsoft" in among their whines about how things cost about 5% more in the EU than they do on the US store and so on.

XBLA requires demos for each and every release (Arcade releases, not full-price ones like Bioshock). Most XBLA demos are actually the whole game with a lockout in place, to avoid a second download phase.

PSN, on the other hand... well, unlike MS, Sony charge the publisher or developer for bandwidth used on the Network. It's a small charge, but it adds up quickly. Obviously if the bandwidth is being used to download your game that's not much of an issue - 5p from the 4-8 quid is not a big problem. But demos? Not cost-effective until the game has already made some sales. Most PSN demos are, for obvious reasons, actually tiny cut down versions of the full game.

(As for the EU thing, you should probably mention to those guys how massively MS rips off EU consumers on MS Points.)

[chand]

XBLA requires demos for each and every release (Arcade releases, not full-price ones like Bioshock). Most XBLA demos are actually the whole game with a lockout in place, to avoid a second download phase.

There's a lot of trial and unlock stuff on PSN but it's not mandatory so it's up to individual publishers. I sometimes wonder if demos are harmful for some of these smaller games, because there's often not much to the full release that you can't get from the trial.

The EU/US price differences don't bother me really, it's just economics. There was a £2 price difference on Fat Princess that nearly caused a fucking mutiny.

Sony has made it kind of difficult for itself because its US and EU arms work pretty independently. They started this premium Playstation Plus service and in Europe it was laid out very clearly what kind of content subscribers would get and how often. Then people found out that in the US they put content out weekly, not monthly, and more of it, so despite getting exactly what they were promised, there's been a pretty much all-out assault from disgruntled EU PS+ subscribers on the Sony blogs, hurling complaints at the poor fuckers who run the blogs and talking as if their human rights are being infringed.

Gamers seem to be generally objectionable bastards as far as I can tell. Today Plus announced that their subscribers would get the PES2011 demo a week early and the new God of War PSP demo three weeks early. The blog's comments, however, are full of ungrateful cunts demanding exclusive access to the LittleBigPlanet2 and Killzone 3 betas which hasn't been decided yet. They seem personally affronted when demos appear that they personally have no interest in too, it's quite funny.

Why there is no DLC for God Of War 3?

...a gamer demands of a Sony rep with no involvement in creating God Of War 3. And so on.

[Penfold]

I've been generally happy with Playstation Plus since I got it although i'm the only person on my friends list that has bothered with it so far.

What drew me in first was having a digital copy of LittleBigPlanet to play as the blu-ray died on my first PS3 but it carried on working for 9 months before getting the YLOD so I like as much stuff as possible on my HDD.

I enjoyed getting 5 episodes of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse for free this month but not so interested in buying Tomb Raider for £8 a week in advance.

The automatic downloads haven't been great so far, the trailer said it would download game updates for you overnight and I wanted to play PAIN but when I selected it I had to sit through 7 updates averaging about 300mb each, unless that was a new game mode. It also redownloads LBP for me every month or so.

[chand]

The automatic downloads haven't been great so far, the trailer said it would download game updates for you overnight and I wanted to play PAIN but when I selected it I had to sit through 7 updates averaging about 300mb each, unless that was a new game mode. It also redownloads LBP for me every month or so.

Ha, PAIN has been insane for updates, I reinstalled it recently after I got a YLOD and it was a bloody ballache for what's essentially a glorified Flash game.

[Zero Gravitas]

XBLA requires demos for each and every release (Arcade releases, not full-price ones like Bioshock). Most XBLA demos are actually the whole game with a lockout in place, to avoid a second download phase.

It's weird to read about the rigours and bureaucracy of the submission and evaluation process for xbla games and yet at the same time see two vibrator massage games on there.

Katie Stone Perez is obviously some kind of pervert.

[Still Not George]

It's weird to read about the rigours and bureaucracy of the submission and evaluation process for xbla games and yet at the same time see two vibrator massage games on there.

The vibe massage games are XBLIG, not XBLA. XBLIG has no quality barrier, no concept approval, no gatekeepers, and very few rules. And the financial return on XBLIG games tends to be in the "beer money" region.

It's a source of no small annoyance to me that MS have tried so hard to devalue the XBLA market by making it indistinguishable on the dashboard from the heaps of unbridled shit available on XBLIG.

[Zero Gravitas]

And giving it a cooler name.

Ah, I was aware of the distinction but you're quite right in them being muddled together.

[mobias]

nged.

are full of ungrateful cunts demanding exclusive access to the LittleBigPlanet2 and Killzone 3 betas which hasn't been decided yet

To be fair though EU PS3 users do seem to get shafted an awful lot when it comes betas of the 'big' titles out there going to US PS3 owners only. I suppose some of the decision making has to do with the language thing. Betas are made to test out games so feedback is given from players prior to release. I guess games developers just assume they'll get clearer feedback given from people who speak English as a first language. Its one reason anyway.

[Penfold]

Gamers seem to be generally objectionable bastards as far as I can tell. Today Plus announced that their subscribers would get the PES2011 demo a week early and the new God of War PSP demo three weeks early.

I have a code for the new God of War PSP demo if anyone is interested.

My PSP may be broken, I haven't turned it on since I accidentally soaked it somehow.

[Nik Drou]

Worms 2 - Ah, good old Worms.  The AI was a bit sporadic, taking turns to go from being infeasibly bang-on to pointlessly suicidal, but still fun as ever.

Quantum Theory - Another week, another sci-fi shooter with a Q in the title.  Sluggish movement, appalling art design and bland layouts.  Just awful.

[chand]

Quantum Theory - Another week, another sci-fi shooter with a Q in the title.  Sluggish movement, appalling art design and bland layouts.  Just awful.

Early previews of this were quite positive, magazines have almost stopped mentioning it since they started getting hands-on though. Having played the demo I can see why. Bland graphics, painfully slow aiming, shit guns, just generally unsatisfying. I thought it was going to be a fairly competent Gears clone, but it's baaaad. And I speak as someone who'll happily play all kinds of mediocre first/third-person shooters.

Played the PES 2011 demo, which came out this week if you have Plus, next week proper. I really, really like it. The passing system feels better. It plays a bit more like FIFA than last year's, really good though. Takes a few games to get used to.

[Penfold]

which came out this week if you have Plus

ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF plUS!

[Nik Drou]

Only got one demo this week, as it was mostly all Move-related stuff and I don't really care for football games.

Enslaved: Looks like it's had a bit of time thrown at it, but Uncharted it ain't.  The controls are sluggish, the characters are unpleasant, the designs are tacky and the plot already doesn't make sense

Spoiler alert

(he survived by clinging onto the outside of the escape pod?  After being smacked into a brick wall?  Why didn't he just jump off the ship if he's that resilient?)

[close]

.

[Zero Gravitas]

It may be an indie game but Flotilla:



Is really quite wonderful for drunken local matches, it's a turn based 3D space battle kind of a thing, with very simple (forms of movement being standard attack move, a slower movement mode with higher rate of fire and a non-firing fast movement) rules but that's it's charm, the few simple tactics are easily understandable the main being to get behind or below the enemy to target their weaker armour there or get close enough to employ beam weapons, the obviousness of it is fun with clear counters "Trying to race to below the keel of my battleship are you?!" the slow arcing of ships and projectiles across the screen towards your fleet is surprisingly tense.

There's also a randomly generated story/survival mode, possible recombinations featuring merchant space pigs and piratical cosmic goldfish.