PC demos of the week

[solipsistnation]

Downloaded a couple of shooter demos last night, and played them long enough to get annoyed.

Breed is a huge festering pile of crap. Think Halo-wannabe. Not worth the download or the disk space. The voice acting makes it sound like everyone has their jaws wired shut. Come to think of it, the (lack of) character animation makes it _look_ like everyone has their jaws wired shut. Hm, perhaps it's a subplot or background or something. "In the year 2385, everyone had their jaws wired shut. Then aliens invaded." Irritating non-skippable cutscenes. Aliens all walk in perfect unison. In fact, everything happens in perfect unison. Three turrets? They all rotate (constantly) in unison, perfectly synchronized. Row of alien fighters? They all fly in perfect formation. Cheap lazy programming. Might have been cool a few years ago, but now it's just another would-be Halo rip-off. The character and vehicle designs, incidentally, are as close to those from Halo as they could get without being sued.

Chrome is okay, but just okay. It still looks dated, although the trees and grass and stuff are nice. I didn't find it compelling enough to really get into it. It had a slightly neat inventory system, but the tutorial was broken. Didn't engage me enough to make me want to play on beyond the point where my character got shot the first time, though. The cutscenes were skippable, thankfully. The female character looks freakish and deformed. She makes the female character in Unreal 2 look positively realistic. Somebody needs to look at some real women at some point.

Anyway, that was how I spent probably half an hour last night. Demos that get annoying (or stupid) in less time than it takes to download them usually bode poorly for the actual game. In these days, when demos are 180MB and up, that means it'd REALLY better be a pretty damn good demo.

Comments

[pir.livejournal.com]

Have you played Jedi Academy yet ? I finished that and Halo while I was too sick to be going out much but well enough to not have to be stuck in bed. I enjoyed JA much more than Halo, in general.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet, nope. I've been playing Deus Ex: Invisible War and Neverwinter Nights...

I'm going to try the JK:JA demo again, though. It looks pretty decent, although I'm not sure how much Star Wars stuff I can really take. 8)

[pir.livejournal.com]

It's all about slicing people up with dual lightsabers and going to the dark side ;)

Dues Ex 2 is on my list.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I probably ought to write up my experience with DX2... Everything that bugged me, though, looks like it's been fixed by the first patch. I've been planning to run through it again (and try different things along the way), too... It's flexible enough that I think you really can do it that way.

dariusk is planning on playing it though and killing everything and everybody killable. That should be interesting.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

When considering Jedi Outcast and its successor, the question is not so much "How much Star Wars can I really take?" so much as "How much craptastic Ravensoft level design can I really take?" or "How many jumping puzzles can I really be arsed to bother with?"

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. Ravensoft.

"Let's just put some more troopers in here. Yeah."

Maybe I'll wait a bit on that one.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Heh. Mind you, I quite enjoyed JA (and they do seem to have toned down the "well, let's just add some more enemies here, that'll make it harder" problem some). I just had to make a hotkey for invoking /noclip, is all, to make some of the levels endurable.

Those of you (assuming there are any) who enjoy having the outcome of a level hinge on pixel-precise control of your character's position when you can't even see his freaking feet may have the time of your lives. :)

Aside from that it has only the usual problems that a game with its billing received. You know - character customization doesn't have any actual in-game effect, and the vaunted branching storyline doesn't really branch all that much. Nothing we haven't seen a hundred other games before fail to be revolutionary about. It's a solid follow-on to Jedi Outcast and some of the new character animations are very nifty.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

My boy loves JK:JA, though he seems to get his primary amusement from schooling n00bs on the servers. Said servers are, of course, infested with 13 year-olds. ("omg wtf y did u kill me u sukc1!!!!!111") The game itself seems solid though, and totally about the dual lightsaber action. He did mention that the combat mechanics are simple enough to be a lot of fun.

(It took me three tries to type "suck" wrong.)

[mpgalvin.livejournal.com]

aw damn, i totally interpreted "PC Demos" wrong and was ready to go all "Demoo or die!" but it's game demos. feh. call me when the games are old-n-cheap and sufficiently patched. :P

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

Somebody needs to look at some real women at some point.

D00d, I tried that this evening. Then they started reeling off Hugh Grant movie reviews and I lost interest.

(Not only does University House have a better class of drunk than almost everywhere else around here, it has a better class of drunk woman, too. Even the barmaids have degrees.)

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Then they started reeling off Hugh Grant movie reviews and I lost interest.

Eew. I don't blame you.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

To be fair, they did only give it 3.5/5. Possibly a bit much -- haven't seen the thing, so can't really say -- but not outrageous. It's not like they were claiming that Bridget Jones' Diary was the best movie ever.

And to be completely honest, I was probably more interested in sinking back in the comfy chair and sipping some more Drambuie. Looking was fine, but I knew that I was too drunk for any interaction more complicated than falling over and maybe drooling on a shoe, so keeping the mouth shut was the Right Move.

A pretty good afternoon/night, though. Nice to work with people I can bear drinking with too.