Are you a demo whore?

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Demos that stole my heart: top - Beyond Good & Evil; Hitman 2; Half-Life.

Bottom - Gabriel Knight 3; Quake III.

I usually download demos when I need a break from the full games I currently play and want to switch to another 'world' for a bit without installing a new game I haven't played yet. I actually own very few games, and even then I still have some titles I haven't yet played (like Messiah, Thief II, and Sacrifice).

But I'm pretty instinctive about a game I know I'm going to love, so I play the demo not to see if I'll like it, but to confirm my decision and whet my appetite until I actually purchase the full game.

So, do you guys download demos all over the place? Which demos did you fall in love with and made you buy the full game?

[hermes]

Actually I have never been much into demos.

In the last 10 years or so - where demos has been big - it wasn't interesting because of my dial-up... The last year or so - I have had broadband - so it should be a whole new world opening up for me.... It's interesting that really havent swallowed them like - well yeah - ,,, but I think it's that about time that I discover demoes.. The last demo I played was Heart of Darkness demo - ironically a couple of weeks ago - but I liked it. And have just got the game.

I'm going to be a demo-whore when I grow up....

[Intrepid Homoludens]

When I had dial-up I used to click on a demo, go to bed, and play it in the morning or after coming home from work the next day. Wasn't always reliable, though. Sometimes the connection broke, and either I gave up or, if I really wanted it, try try again.

BTW, has anyone else here played the original Half-Life demo? For those who haven't, the setting has nothing to do with any of the levels in the full game. I remember playing it for the first time and thinking, Wow! This is what good gaming is about? I have to get this game now! I was impressed that they kept the demo's gameworld separate from the full game, so that you got a good impression of it but weren't spoiled, either.

[RLacey]

I rarely download demos. Unless they're for a game that I have been wanting to play ever since it was announced, and the game itself hasn't yet been released.

[manny_c44]

BTW, has anyone else here played the original Half-Life demo? For those who haven't, the setting has nothing to do with any of the levels in the full game. I remember playing it for the first time and thinking, Wow! This is what good gaming is about? I have to get this game now! I was impressed that they kept the demo's gameworld separate from the full game, so that you got a good impression of it but weren't spoiled, either.

Wow, I've never heard of this demo, I'm going to have to download it...

[Marek]

Haven't played a demo in like 8 years.

That statement is probably false but who cares. :noskatebo What I mean is... I haven't really thought of demos much at all in modern times. Though maybe that's also slightly affected by seeing games a lot at press events/shows, on friends' consoles, or at college where there's lots of gaming fiends. I can usually peek at screens and get a general impression that way.

[Salka]

Ah, Demos.

If I had broadband, which according to Eircom I shall, in 2007... I would download the demo of every single game under the sun. And I would probably end up buying a lot more games, too.

As it is, that's impossible with Dial Up.

I could get a lot of demos from Game Magazines, but I don't value their opinion so I would only be getting the magazine for a particular demo that might be on it. And most of the game magazines in Ireland are in the price range of E12 - E15 a shot. Not joking.

So I have lived without demos for a very, very long time.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Wow, I've never heard of this demo, I'm going to have to download it...

It's an excellent demo. It pits you against the Marine units sent in to 'clean up' the place, it is its own level, not one that was snatched from the full game. Gives a very good impression of how the full game felt.

[Huz]

I thought I'd download a lot more demos when I got broadband, but that hasn't really been the case. I used to do the same as Intrepid, downloading big demos overnight, but even then I'd leave the file lying around for a few days before I played it. And I still do, so I probably only play about one demo a month. The last one I played was Painkiller.

Demos that made me buy the full game recently: UT2004, just the one Onslaught level (I never even touched the other game modes); hmm, actually that's about it from the past few years. Before that: Hardwar, X - Beyond the Frontier (these two did a good job of showing the potential of the game world), Grim Fandango (wasn't convinced until I saw That Trailer included as part of the full demo), Half-Life (agreed, the 'unique' demo was good!), and Sam and Max Hit the Road (I think the humour is at its peak in the opening scenes, which conveniently the demo covers).

Games I bought despite being underwhelmed by the demo - Broken Sword 3. I still haven't actually installed it yet though, so "go figure" as they say.

Also Yufster - Getright + auto-reconnect feature + leaving your computer on all night = demos in your hot little hands, eventually. Although in my case with BT Internet, it also equalled "kicked off for 'excessive usage'" so you might want to be careful with that.

[Marek]

Erm Dogman (Huz?) in case you're from the US let me say that in Europe traditional phone-based internet access is charged by the minute, which is not good for downloading larges file over a crappy modem.

[Salka]

What Marek Said.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Some recent demos I've played:

Spider-Man 2 - Lame. Obviously for kiddies and clumsy casual gamers. Most of the work's cut out for you if you're used to difficult action romps. Gameworld is lifeless and lacks interactivity.

Yager - I definitely needed a gamepad with this, but was too lazy to hook up my Thrustmaster. It looks really good, and challenging enough if you like sci-fi air combat.

Splinter Cell: PD single player - Very nice, but feels the same as the first title. 'Lead-you-by-hand' linearity.

Splinter Cell: PD multiplayer - I chickened out of joining any sessions. Screwtape would vouch, I was scared some horny 13-year-old pervert might grab me from behind in a headlock in the dark and actually get off on it.

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, 'Invitation To A Party' level - Madly in love with this, I'm currently playing it to death, discovering the nuances of different ways of accomplishing the mission. I am getting this one.

Hitman 3: Contracts - Ditto above. I am getting this one (when it goes for cheap), skipping the first Hitman title (which I own but haven't played), because Contracts recreates some of the first game's levels.

Beyond Good & Evil - the rest is history, natch.

[JBRAA]

This is a good place to download demos. Click more for screenshots, info of your selected game.

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_demos.html

[Jayel]

damn internet connection... got disconnected before message submited...

what did I write?

Oh yes, I play as many demos as possible, but not for the games I'm going to buy.

[Erwin_Br]

Erm Dogman (Huz?) in case you're from the US let me say that in Europe traditional phone-based internet access is charged by the minute, which is not good for downloading larges file over a crappy modem.

I believe there are one or two 'flat-rate' dial-up services. Don't know which ISP's, though...

--Erwin

[Nick]

I usually prefere to watch big phat trailers, especially with lots of gameplay in.

Demos always seem to bore or annoy me by not having enough content or ending at a crucial moment.

I know this is what they're supposed to do but it really fucks me off sometimes and I'd rather watch a trailer and go "OOOOEEEEOOOOO!!!!!" until release.

[schepton]

Yes, yes i am a demo whore.

[Marek]

I usually prefere to watch big phat trailers, especially with lots of gameplay in.

Indeed, there's nothing like a great trailer to get you excited. Though most trailers are in fact lamentable, with words like "CONSPIRACY" fading in on a black background, then showing some gameplay that has nothing to do with conspiracies of any kind (but everything with some kind of random, unexciting encounter with an enemy). Some trailers try just a little harder, but still end up blarting stuff like "Discover A Land Enraged" onto the screen. What the fuck is a land enraged? Do I want to discover that? Tell me something about the game!

Conclusion: most trailers are sad. If game developers can't do them properly they should either demand more time from their publishers or outsource it. Sorry to be so negative. :noskatebo I do like games actually. I play them a lot.

[Huz]

Erm Dogman (Huz?) in case you're from the US let me say that in Europe traditional phone-based internet access is charged by the minute, which is not good for downloading larges file over a crappy modem.

Oh. OK. I was under the impression that countries other than the UK had a FRIACO (hilariously dubbed Friasco because it's secretly rubbish) system, where you can pay a flat fee per month for unmetered dialup Internet access. In fact, I believe Eircom (or whoever runs esatclear.ie[1]) had such a system in 1999 or so, but apparently they got rid of it because it turned out to be unprofitable - I thought it would have made a resurgence by now!

Anyway, yes, you dialup people have my sympathies. Have faith! I thought I would never get ADSL, but less than a year ago I got the fateful "we have finally got off our arses and flipped the switch" email from BT (British Telecom). And believe me, those guys don't get off their arses very often! Anyway, yes, end of rambling.

Edit: [1] Haha! I see it's now "Esat BT"! Unlucky!

[Intrepid Homoludens]

How many shades of grey and brown can you spot?

Has anyone else sampled LOTR: The Return Of The King? I d/l last night. Got to play as Gandalf, and half the time I had no freaking idea how to do it, I was simply clicking away like crazy. All that action seems pretty conventional, though. But the game actually looks uncommonly good, there were literally dozens and dozens and dozens of characters on the screen at once and it got a mite frustrating because Gandalf kept getting lost in the huge crowd of orcs and maidens (whom you were supposed to protect as they fled into the inner part of the castle under siege). I was surprised each and every character 'cast' their own shadows, the atmosphere was really believable. From what I read, all the actors from the movie recorded the voices in the game, and the characters look just like them too.

I'm not usually one for hack-n-slash, but this title might be some bit of fun if I find it dirt cheap in the bargain bin later.

[Ryam BaCo]

i'm having sex with demos all day long. but i never downloaded demos from the internet. i get them all from game magazines.

for me the best demo of all time was the grim fandango demo. not only because of the part of the game you play there but mostly of this goddamned trailer they played afterwards.

here is the detailled grim fandango story: after i finished curse of monkey island and monkey island 1 i was sure that lucasarts-adventures are the best (that was in the year 1998, btw). soooo i read a preview of grim fandango and thought: "hahahaha! skeletons??? that's weird. this game can't be fun." and then i played the demo and it was soooo awesome and blablabla (put in other words for great games i'm too lazy to think about some complex english words at this late time) and when i finished the demo i saw the trailer! and the grim fandango trailer is the most awesome game trailer i ever saw...and then i thought: "wtf??? i must go and buy this game!" but unfortunately i had not enough money. but fortunately christmas was in about a month. so i got christmas-money from my parents to buy grim fandango, but right afterwards they stole the game from me and hid it somewhere. bastards! so i had to wait for around a month till i was able to play grim fandango. and this one month was a hard time for me. but when i finally played grim it again exceeded all my expections! this game was so awesome and blablabla (--> look above! ) and when i finally finished it around 4 weeks later, the feeling of finishing a game without any walkthroughs and other cheating stuff was more satisfying than sex!!! owwww...now i sound weird.

another demo gabriel knight 3, which i played on a 200 mhz computer without a 3d graphics card. and so it...well...i was able to play it. but don't ask how it worked. but it worked. slow. whatever...this demo was awesome (especially on a lame computer)! you enter a house, hear baby-crying in the background and everything seemed to be in a little horrific scene. the story was also promissing. but i didn't buy the game afterwards because of my lame computer. and when i bought it around one year later for cheap 10 € i was quite disapointed of the game, because the puzzles in the beginning where crap and so i didn't continue playing it.

[Jayel]

Oh yeah, I loved GK3 demo as well. The vibe it gave off was positively creepy.

You should definitely finish the game. Survey shows that 82.6432% of GK fans find the ending awesome.

[Marek]

I thought it was kind of a wacky game that was more of an experiment and not very long or big or good. Then I saw the trailer. Then I got goosebumps. Then I saw the trailer 67 more times. Then I collapsed. Then I woke up and saw the trailer again and again and again. It's clearly one of the best game trailers ever made. Just think of how well it sold the game. You were immediately like "OH NO THIS GAME WILL OWN ME SO HARD". It really wanted to make you go out and buy the game. Genius.

By the way, here's a bit of a mystery and maybe someone here had the answer. About 30 seconds into the trailer there's a soundbite of Manny saying "...blablahblah ... Laaaand of the Dead" and then you see the stand where you get the bread and the balloon animals. But there's people walking around and it looks like a cutscene that never made it into the game. There was also a screenshot of this released as part of the very first batch, when the game was announced.

Is this a hint at some kind of intro sequence that was never used? The weird thing is... you can see the communist guys in there who are supposed to be in Rubacava, not in El Marrow.