Since walking down the the local Video Giant and renting a game is no longer an option, I've taken to the Playstation Network and Steam demo sections to help me try new games before I buy. For the time- and money-poor gamer, this is an excellent way to savor something you couldn't normally afford in a short amount of time, like finding half a gourmet sandwich in a dumpster. Here are a few of the ones I've tried over the last couple months, with a short synopsis of each.
Akimi Village
Yeah. This thing happened.
This game focuses on a young boy who blah blah blah. The story is barely meaty enough to fill one sentence. It's more of a premise than a story. The game itself plays out like a simplified version of the "Settlers" series, with you building houses, factories, and resource centers, then managing the inevitable supply-line fuck-ups that occur when you realize you should've built your sawmill next to your forest. Not only that, but you force these little blue Akimi people to do all the physical labor for you, so I guess with the economics and slavery combination it's good training for future capitalists.
Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7
Curiously, Voldemort's the only character in the game with nostrils.
As elucidated earlier, I am a fan of the LEGO game series, much as it pains me to turn in my "hardcore" gamer title. LHP follows the well-worn trope of taking something dark, violent, and awesome, and making it bright, slapstick, and awesome. The demo tosses you into a later level where you have all the spells available, and lets you play around with a giant mechanical rabbit, dancing dishes, and a LEGO minifig in drag. As an added bonus, the demo also gives you access to free play mode, instead of using your inability to use dark magic as a cudgel to make you buy the game. I've got it at home now thanks to Gamefly, so I'll probably send it back soon after filing it under "definite buy".
Beat Hazard Ultra
Tentacle Rape in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
This is everything a good demo should be. It's cheap. It's fun. You can use whatever music you have saved on your ps3 hard drive, and if you have your ps3 treating your pc like a media server (as I do), you can theoretically access every song you've ever bought, ripped, or downloaded. All the basic features are unlocked, but advanced modes and power-ups need to be purchased with a version of the full game. It's easy to pick up and play a level, or go on random for an hour. The game itself is a little derivative, but they run regular price drops on it, so I'll probably pay for the full version at some point just to say thank you for a very generous demo.
Sideway New York
"Derp"
Sideway New York starts out with your character being sucked into a mystical evil billboard by an evil tagger who is really into painting on the tops of buildings. I guess the whole "Swallowed alive by the city and left for dead" metaphor was too subtle for the storyboarders. Stupid story, but some impressive platforming. When you hit corners the perspective can change in some pretty incredible ways, giving the game a much-needed mind-bending twist. I liked it, but not enough to pay $15 for it. Bring it down to $5 and I'm in.
NBA Jam: On Fire Edition
I make the same face every time I jump 16 feet in the air
Oh, sweet memories of high school. I used to grab my Multi-tap and meet all my buddies over at my friend Andrew's house, where we would hang out in the basement and play this. Very little has changed about the mechanics of the game, other than the updated roster and graphics. They have nerfed the shooting a little bit, and being on fire needs to be the same person for three baskets in a row instead of just recognizing three baskets from the same team, but you can still use turbo to hit a 30-foot windmill dunk from the top of the key, and I'm ok with that. Waiting for a 50% off deal and it's a buy.
Rochard
Looks like someone already made all the dick jokes for me.
I have been dying for a good Metroidvania game for ages, especially after being stiffed by the last two Castlevania games (one a 3D action game, the other removed all the RPG elements and forced you to work with pre-teen dingbats whose parents never taught them basic manners or words that aren't "bitch" or "nigger"). I'm still sour about Shadow Complex's Xbox exclusivity, but in the meantime this will have to do. You are walking dick joke John Rochard, and you are a space miner. Apparently being a space miner in the 23rd century requires you to look and act like a miner in the 19th century. The game utilizes a really nice looking 2D sidescroller style, with exploration and backtracking making up a huge part of the game. The ability to severely weaken gravity with the push of a button adds some interesting twists to the level flow, but it can really interefere with what is already wonky and uncomfortable combat. Lives are infinite and checkpoints are plentiful, though, so the programmers' inability to adequately plan a level isn't as bad as it could be.
Burnout Crash
After this must come the Baklava of Fate.
Dear Sweet Jesus this game is like they took everything I ever wanted in a game and threw it in a pot with vodka and TNT and candy. The art style is cuter and brighter than any game about violent car crashes has a right to be. You play a guy in a car that is apparently covered in hand grenades because you explode and fly all over the damn place, causing chaos and mayhem and getting rewarded for it. The only way you lose the level is if five people make it through your cordon of flaming wreckage without being similarly mangled. The slightly askew top-down view can be disorienting, especially when you're trying to carefully aim where you send your burned-out shitbox death missile, but other than that it's a highly entertaining game. The demo gives you a couple different levels and modes to play with, but stops short at letting you fully unlock all the different features in those areas. Unfortunately I was therefore unable to experience the Pizza of Fortune.
Elevator Action Deluxe
I used to play a quasi-updated version of the original Elevator Action in Japanese arcades when I only had 50 yen coins left. It was a lot of fun, with crazy action, interesting weapons, simple controls, a mechanic that was simple to understand, and clearly outlined objectives. It was a very good game. This is none of those things. This reeks of the kind of project someone would make when they know they're about to be fired and want everyone else to hate their soon-to-be-ex-employer as much as they do. They pack each level with frustrating deaths, then berate you at completion for not doing better. Controller-snappingly infuriating. I hope Squeenix beats whoever is responsible for this trash with a rubber hose.
Bloodrayne: Betrayal
Maybe the programmers were hoping huge cartoon tits would salvage the game. Too bad.
This is another Metroidvania-esque game I had high hopes for. The frustratingly terrible combat, complete with gun-wielding enemies who can interrupt your uncontrollable combo bullshit from across the screen, makes this game feel unforgiving and cheap. The animation is fluid, but I can watch that on Youtube without paying 15 bucks. I would say that it's a great fit for masochists, but like Youtube, you can get the same experience for less money on the internet.
Limbo
Desolation and a homicidal spider are his only friends.
This game is tied with Stacking in my book for the most evocative atmosphere in a game this year. Done entirely in a hazy black and white, you guide a boy's silhouette through some physically and metaporically dark forest. The sparseness of the level designs and the setpieces really drive home how alone the protagonist is in a visceral way. The demo level starts with some basic tasks to teach you the games mechanics without giving you a tutorial or having messages pop up. This goes a long way to not breaking the atmosphere the game works so hard for. You eventually end up in combat with the aforementioned spider, and if you prevail you are subject to what basically amounts to ransom. In the next scene the boy walks into a spiderweb, and the villain from the previous battle picks the boy up, and JUST before he gets impaled on some kind of talon, the game asks you if you're REALLY going to just leave the boy to his fate. It's so ham-fisted I had to laugh when it happened, as I could only think of "Give me money or the kitten gets it." Good game, though. I picked it up during a recent sale, so I'm excited to see where the rest of the story goes.
Beyond Good and Evil HD
Shouldn't she be pointing the camera at that explosion in front of her?
I realize that demos are meant to be just that, a demonstration of the game's graphics, story, and mechanics, but the demo for this game gave me the impression that Beyond Good and Evil is trying to be
Pokemon Snap's gritty reboot. There was a short "boss" scene to let you know that there's some action in the game, but mostly the focus seemed to be on taking pictures of the world's fauna. As a somewhat non-traditional gamer I kind of liked this. It was a good excuse to have your character explore, using an admittedly unusual premise. In most games exploration comes from a need to collect money or locate a material reward, but in this game you're helping science catalogue the different species on a dying world. I've read that the rest of the game unfolds into a huge corporate mystery about space aliens, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to buy it when the price comes down.
Stacking
They're watching you masturbate.
The music, the pseudo-Victorian art style, the puzzles, the humor -- it's all top notch. This was the best downloadable game of the year. Double Fine Studios triumphs again.
