Your Demo Sucks

[Spyre2000]

I would have to say "None". It's been so long since I played a good demo that I don't recall one that made me wanna run out and buy the game. Most of the demos I've played for games I did end up buying I was already very interested in and would of probably bought anyway.

And while this might be slightly off topic I think the increase in no demos and bad demos for games has in part lead to an increase in the amount of piracy. With stores no longer giving full refunds on games that can be returned in the next couple of days (in some cases even unopened!!). Combined with more games being so short you can easily finish them in a couple nights play (Gears of Wars comes to mind as I rented it and co-op with a friend and was surprised when we finished it in a few hours.)

All of this stuff snowballs to where players don't want to risk forking over their 50-70 dollars which is usually non-refundable for a game they have no clue on if they will like. And the demo doesn't do enough to even really show much either. So people pirate games rather then risk wasting their money on something they don't like. And for consoles people also do what me and my friends do which is simply rent the games for a few days. This helps rental places but not so much the developers as sales decrease.

 

[Credge]

Zen Pinball, although I haven't bought it yet. Maybe Age of Booty. Either of those did a good job at making me want more.

But, besides that, nothing much. Playing a demo usually makes me want to stay away from the game as they're always done very, very, very poorly.

 

[Chadling]

Here's another question: when was the last time I played a demo?

 

[Ghostkai]

inFamous and Mirror's Edge were fantastic demo's.

 

[skcseth]

best demo i've played lately is the ufc 2009 demo. you get to play a full match as one of 2 fighters and you get to play the entire training session (which took me about an hour and some change)

 

[Tantalus3D]

Most of the time I know if I want a to buy a game long before the demo is out (demos tend to come late here in germany), but often strengthen my decision to buy or not to buy a game. That happend with demos like Mirrors Edge, which convinced me not to buy the game at the full price (which would be 70 ?, equals 100 $, so I bought it in UK for about 20 ?), Valkyria Chronicles (which I still din't buy, but I totally want to) and others.

But there was one demo that convinced me to buy the game although I wasn't interested in the title at first hand: Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. The demo would'nt have gotten me is they left the splitsceen mode out, but I spend several hours with a friend playing this demo and is was so much fun that I decided to buy it. Haven't regret it!

 

[EvilMaggot]

same... Crysis here... and that is.. 2 years ago :O

i mostly download games (yes illegal) just to check if i wanna buy... i paly for around 4-5 hours to check if the gameplay is allright and gonna be long lasting... and then just to get multiplayer did it with GTA4 even got a DVD version and Steam version of it.

 

[Super Jamz]

I'd say devs are more focused on showing us the actual gameplay and mechanics rather than the bloody game itself. Hence demos like Dead Space and Resident Evil = dumping you in the middle of the story and have you shoot/dismember enemy NPCs the way they want you to and hope you like it enough to spend money on this.
Demo's are considerably deceptive nowadays,they're not really focused on the whole product, just one part they think you'll like more.

But yeah, the only demo I've actually liked enough to get the game is Bioshock. I didn't like waiting for the bloody cinematics and scripted scenes to be done before i got down to it, but i found it helped build up the whole game well enough to make it much better.

 

[Squarez]

Castle Crashers, because as many people have suggested they just used the first level to draw you in and then just before you beat the boss you (and possibly your friends) had been working hard to defeat, it asked you to fork out 1200MP, I have never wanted a game more than I did in those few minutes from seeing that message to downloading it a few minutes later.

 

[BillBarilko]

I've been on an RTS demo binge. Just bought C&C3 Tiberium Wars based on the demo, may do the same for C&C Red Alert 3 (I love how both those titles give you so much of their cheesy cutscene goodness).

Am also fiddling around with World in Conflict (I think the multiplayer is part of the demo, which seems odd as I keep reading that the MP is the only reason to buy the game), Starcraft (I suppose I missed the boat on this - it's too old-school for my tastes), Warcraft 3 (this ex-WoW junkie will probably never invest in it for the sake of keeping my marriage together), Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War I and II (I'll probably buy I and its expansions, not sure how I feel about II - it looks good, but I'm getting a bit bored because there aren't any facilities to manage, which I find surprising as I'm pretty much a total noob to the genre), Age of Mythology (same problem as Starcraft - looks fun, but graphics are a bit dated), and Age of Empires III (will probably buy it).

In general, I haven't felt like any of these demos have been wasting my time - all of them have given me a good taste of what I can expect in the full versions. Maybe the problem is genre-specific, I don't know. I've only ever downloaded one FPS demo - Half-Life, but I'd made up my mind to buy that before trying it anyway. And until now I've always used torrents to try before I buy. I pretty much stopped doing that because I got tired of waiting for days, or even weeks, to try out new releases, only to find, in some cases, that installing the game was more trouble than it was worth.

Oh, and excellent article, as always.

 

[Jumplion]

Answer: inFamous, it showed the comic cutscenes which were intriging but I mostly just noticed the ace lightning powers and jumping around the city.

YES! I was just about to say the InFamous demo! It gave off a good amount of what was going on from the begining cutscene with something major happening, it showed off the climbing mechanics, the combat, the elctricity, and the different karma levels. It also let you explore a little bit more of the city until it tossed you to a mission if you were taking to long to get to it.

Yah, I miss the good old days of the demo. You'd think they'd at least make the level the first level because that'll be the one that trains you how to work everything, but no. Nowadays, demos are just the most attractive sections of the game.

What "good old days" of demos? Seriously, there seems to be a "good old days" for everything nowadays.

Are really, isn't that what demos have always been? You're trying to go back to these mythical "days of old" and say "they did things different!" but they did the exact same thing as today.

 

[Kloffy]

Assault on Dark Athena. I had spent almost an hour systematically murdering every last guard within ulak space. Then I ran down the next corridor, hearing a tannoy mesaage requesting backup on the cell floors, ready to rip anyone who made the mistake of pointing so much as a finger at me into small chunks of flesh, when I was suddenly taken back to the main menu.
"Wait a minute," I thought, "this was a demo, wasn't it?"

 

[reggiejames]

i had no intention of buying the halo wars but i played the demo and bought the game shortly after

 

[TundraWolf]

For me, demos seem to have been a series of hit-and-miss attempts to capture my interest. On the whole, I always appreciate a demo, but I dare-say I appreciate a bad demo more than a good one, though. That way, I know what games I have to stay away from.

For the record: I, for one, actually loved the Resident Evil 5 demo. Before that, I had had very little experience with the Resident Evil franchise (I'd seen the movies, knew the basic storline, had watched my cousin play through RE2, and heard good things about RE4, but no actual gameplay myself), but the RE5 demo made me immediately want to go out and get the game. The combat system was showcased beautifully, and even though it didn't give any inkling to what the overarching storyline was going to be for the game, I felt as though it showed enough of a twist on the regular plot to pique my interest. But maybe that's just me.

As for good demos, I've played a few. The Left 4 Dead removed any doubt about the game from my mind. I loved the F.E.A.R. demo so much I ran out and got it immediately. The second one was just about the same, too. I also enjoyed the Prey demo enough to get the full game.

Out of all the recently released/soon-to-be-released games I think the best one has been for inFamous. It's been mentioned already, but the inFamous demo has been incredibly entertaining the four times I've played through it (yeah, I like it that much). It shows the perfect balance of story, action and gameplay mechanics to get people interested in it, methinks.

 

[kastanok]

The demos that come to mind are Half-Life: Uplink and (a little more recently) FEAR. The former was a specially written extra-chapter, set concurrently with but outside the game's story. The latter was a the intro-sequence and set-up with a re-structured version of the full game's first level.

In both cases the developers clearly recognised that you cannot present the player with, for example, two missions and a little character development shown out of context and expect that to excite them. They carefully crafted a representative piece in the style of their respective games, which both meant that players would understand what they could expect and their experience wouldn't be spoiled by effectively playing the first twenty-minutes twice.

Beyond that, demos hardly ever have worked for me. I do see how the Crysis demo was a good example but I couldn't get the graphics to work at all so can't compare it realistically.

 

[kato128]

COD4 was the last decent demo I've played. Oh and penny arcade adventures had a pretty good demo too.

 

[SlaughterRot]

The last demo I played that got me to purchase the game was WipEout HD on the Playstation Network. Admittedly, the game has no storyline to show off, but it did a good job showing off the gameplay with the first track (Vineta K) and first ship (Feisar). However, I don't think that this so much qualifies as ingenious advertising on the part of Sony Liverpool as it does a piss-easy game to create a demo for, much like any racing game.

 

[KeyMaster45]

You guys are going to laugh at me for this, but the Wallace and Grommit adventures demo.

I'll wait while you chuckle and laugh..............Ok now that's out your system.

Anyone with Steam and who's a wallace and grommit fan I advise to try the demo, I for one felt like buying the first episode after playing it, but then I looked at my credit card statement and decided against it.

 

[McMo0^]

Left 4 Dead. Before that i think crysis. Stupid part is that crysis actually got worse after completing the demo level. For me killing tactically disorgansied koreans in an area full of physic joy was exceptional. After that opening level though its like they pulled out the uber troopers. I mean the next level the guys on those machine guns would see you a freaking mile off prone in a bush behind a tree. So you pull out the sniper and shoot him, only to watch as #52341 jumps on to replace him.

Left 4 Dead was just a taste of what was to come and changed my mind as to how it was going to be, seeing as all zombie games i've played before it were just awful

 

[Daymo]

Both Plants vs Zombies and Red Faction gurrila demos have made me take notice of the games. I'll probably wait untill they go down in price though before I buy them.