Gaming Weekend: Hot Demos Edition
I spent some time this weekend catching up on a few Marketplace Demos, plus I finally finished off Prey, picked up an old favorite again and found a new XBLA addiction. Get all the scoop after the jump.
Demo(lition)
- Shadowrun
As promised, I downloaded the Shadowrun demo and gave it a solid four-hour shake, including working through all four available tutorial missions (only half of the ones available in the retail game) plus their accompanying bot matches and I played both game types online against other demo testers for about two hours which amounted to roughly ten matches. The game itself plays a lot like Counter-Strike with the pre-round buy menus and money awarded for in-game performance. The default controls map your tech and magic to one of three slots governed by the left and right bumpers and the left trigger (right trigger fires your gun). This is a sort of strange decision but it ends up working decently well since it doesn’t require releasing the control sticks to perform the most necessary actions. The unfortunate part is that the on-screen display which reminds you which abilities you’ve mapped to which button uses icons that require memorization—there is no other way to tell what skill you have mapped where unless you know that the hand represents Resurrection and so on. Also, the wheel-like ability select menu is a bit clunkier to use than one might like. I’m sure it can be easy to use once you get used to it, but I found myself often trying to quickly change my abilities (usually to select Resurrection or Tree of Life which are mostly pointless in favor of other available abilities 80% of the time, but when you need ‘em, you need ‘em now) only to wind up on the wrong side of the menu (it’s divided into two sections: Magic and Tech). The result is usually either death or an undesired effect. It’s hard to fully appreciate the scope of Shadowrun’s balance based on the demo because so many options are left out: There are a slew of tech and magic upgrades that aren’t enabled and there are only two races (Human and Elf) which makes the game feel watered-down—even more so than most demos. If you engage in a sort of mental extrapolation of multiplying what exists in the demo with what might exist in the full retail product it’s not to difficult to see that the game has a load of potential as a team-based shooter. As with all games of that ilk, getting onto the right team will be a huge part of the enjoyment of the game. I played CS for a long time and I know that often non-clan players had to endure stretches of days or longer sometimes where every game was a chore dealing with Rambo-wannabes and griefers until that one match came along where people worked together and fought to achieve the goal instead of fulfill some individual desire. It was the rare moment that made the rest of the game’s flaws insignificant.
The problem, of course, is that Counter-Strike was free so long as you had the ubiquitous Half-Life game. Shadowrun costs $60 ($50 if you’re a PC gamer). And of course there is still the bitter sting every time something happens that actually reminds you this is ostensibly a Shadowrun game (which honestly isn’t very often), albeit one that completely disregards the license most of the time. As a full-retail priced game, I can’t say the demo has inspired me to purchase anything. I can’t say I don’t have an interest in playing more, especially seeing some of the other races and abilities, but not at this price. I think my cap is around $30 with $25 being basically the sweet spot. We’ll see how sales and the used market goes to determine if I ever end up with a copy of the game. On the other side, it may be the perfect GameFly-style rental game, especially if the online community around it either fades quickly or develops into this tight, uber-hardcore dynamic that presents a woefully large barrier to entry. I could probably put a couple of weeks into this game and feel content with that. - Tenchu Z
I never managed to play any of the previous Tenchu games. I heard about them often enough, but like so many stealth-based games I found myself wondering: “Is it possible for this game to be anywhere close to as good as MGS?” The answer usually came up negative so I ignored the series. Based on the demo for the 360′s entry, “Z,” I made the right call.The Demo includes at least part of the character editor but either due to demo-based omission or a general lacking in the whole feature there are very few interesting configurations. Once you get to the game itself, the graphics are pretty bland and the story (which I presume the demo is supposed to act sort of like a teaser for) isn’t remotely compelling. The controls are both obtuse and dense yet bafflingly imprecise: The difference between a run and a walk is a hair on the analog stick; movement and cameras are frustrating and the gameplay itself which mostly has you trying to sneak up on pattern-based enemies to kill them with no resistance (even though identical animations executed when you’ve been noticed don’t cause death and in fact seem to be no more damaging than a firm hug). It’s simultaneously frustrating and boring. The combat aside from the sneaking insta-kills is so bad in fact that it involves using the same three or four moves and when you get to the boss of the demo level (where you’re required to engage head-on) it had me nearly begging the guy to die not because he presented a challenge but just so I could stop watching the same lame animation over and over again. - Overlord
Let’s just say up front that the idea behind this game, which casts you in the role of one of the types of upstart baddies you might eventually fight a climactic battle with in a game like Oblivion or Diablo, is brilliant. The mechanics of the game are kind of quirky/clever as a blend of RTS and third-person brawler. You command a horde of minions (little AI beasties who do your bidding) to pillage and plunder a countryside. There are a lot of sort of gamey abstractions here, things like life power and portals that require recharging and so forth. But for the most part they work pretty well. The game has a nicely bleak sense of graphical style and there are a lot of cruelly fun little touches all throughout the demo. The biggest beef I had was that the controls for the minions are simplified to the point that they become a bit of a liability: There is supposed to be a “sweeping” mechanic where you can hold the command button and use the right stick to sweep a pathfinding direction to your minions. Getting it to work either takes more getting used to than the demo can provide or is wonky enough to potentially be a persistent issue in the full game. Likewise the lack of a fully adjustable camera is an annoying limitation I thought we’d done away with a couple of generations ago. Here it irked me on several occasions where I found myself wrenching on the right stick trying impotently to adjust my view. But the good news is that the base gameplay is nearly as fun as the premise of the game. The minions are appropriately impish and the game has a twisted sense of humor that is very welcome: Other antihero games like GTA seem to have lost some of their humor as they try to take their over-the-top antics far too seriously. I can’t say for sure if the game will be worth full retail price, a lot will depend on how much content is here. But I will be playing this game, and if you’re on the fence I think the demo does a good job of letting you know if the mostly unique mechanics are up your alley or not.
Full and Complete
I didn’t just play demos this weekend; here are the complete games I played during my downtime:
- Prey: I finally finished this odd FPS. Finishing it isn’t really an accomplishment since you can’t die in the game (although I did have several bugs require me to backtrack over previously passed areas), it’s more of an inevitability of time invested. It’s hard to say whether the length of the game is appropriate or not because the lack of real impediment makes it seem fairly short, however if you had to work a bit harder to get through some of the tougher sections it may stretch the game into twice its length. In either case somewhere around the 18th of 22 levels I started to grow restless with the game’s conventions and was only really interested in getting to the end.The story in Prey isn’t bad but it isn’t terribly well executed, either. The final sequence is stupidly contrived and corny which leads to a disappointing climax and a truly groan-worthy epilogue. There will be a full review later but let’s just say that the game has a few interesting ideas but it’s decision to eliminate any semblance of challenge really works to the game’s detriment.
- Pac-Man Championship Edition: The new Pac Man game is not the first attempt at a Pac-Man sequel by far. But others have either been vast departures like Pac-Man Vs. or mostly a rehash of the original. The games that branched out beyond the scope of the maze-gobbler that started it all were really just cash-ins. Pac-Man CE, on the other hand, is like the Pac-Man 2 that never was. This is Pac-Man designed for modern times and it works brilliantly.Basically the old vertical maze has been replaced by a more TV-friendly horizontal one and instead of persistent pellets, only one side at a time is dealt with; clearing that side reveals a fruit that can be gobbled to unlock the next set of pellets. The whole game is based around a time restriction that has you trying to earn as many points as possible in each alloted time. There are several variations on the formula which alter the basic maze structure or the time limits or other smaller factors like power pellet availability. But regardless of the mode specifics, the game does right by the classic by doing two things other sequel-pretenders have failed to do: It remains true and faithful to the spirit of the original and it actually improves the gameplay into something that is more compelling. The result is a kind of fresh-retro vibe that, again, elicits comparisons to Geometry Wars… and that’s a good thing.The game is 800 Microsoft Points ($10), which is a bit pricey (some have said that since the XBLA Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man games are $5/400 Points, so should this be, but I think there is sufficient value to warrant a bump in price, just maybe not double). Still, there is a lot of value here and the game is easily as addicting as GW plus it has those fun alternate modes which GW’s sort of one-dimensional offerings lack. I can’t say if it will be worth the $10 for everyone, but the trial game is certainly enough to let you know if you find it sufficiently compelling. I would recommend anyone download it and at least give it a shot.
So that’s my weekend. Coming up this week is more Dead Rising, Star Trek Legacy and one last chance for LOTR: Battle For Middle-Earth II which I’ve found so far to be pretty dull but I want to give a fair shake to before I send it back to GameFly. I also have a couple more demos to try out (Armored Core 4 and Monster Madness) and a new solitaire board game I downloaded free so I’ll let you know next week how it all goes.