Demo Frenzy

I previously posted about my weeklong preoccupation with Xbox Live Arcade game demos, but I haven't yet told you about my similar (though much more involved) obsession with doing the same for featured titles (games that you buy in the store) last week. Within roughly a single week's time, I play-tested 43 different demos, leaving me much more aware of the wide variety of games out on the market today, and giving me a generally positive outlook on trying games out via demo versions BEFORE buying them.

See, prior to all this play-testing, I thought this might ruin a game for me, taking away some of the excitement of discovering it for myself in a full-fledged version of the title. I've since come to realize that there is a wide range of quality from one demo version to another (mainly in terms of how well they sell you the game via tutorials and storyline material), and this can make or break the game experience for you. As you might expect, some games I expected to be great turned out to be duds in demo format, and on the flipside, there were a few games that truly impressed me.

Four games that really stuck out for me, despite all belonging to genres I previously had little interest in, are as follows:

- Ninja Gaiden II: Although I wasn't sure I would be all that into gory hack-and-slash games and was further deterred by most critics claiming this game was hard-as-balls, I found the gameplay to be quite incredible, varied, and within reasonable difficulty.

- Dead Rising: I'm not really much a fan of either horror games or the zombie genre in general, but after getting to run around a mall killing a virtual army of zombies with weapons as varied as guns, garden tools, AND CDs, I knew this one was for me.

- Burnout Paradise: Once again, I'm not too much a fan of driving games, but putting a gritty driving game inside a really well-designed sandbox environment convinced me to have a second look at this title.

- Call of Duty 2: Although I said I wasn't into lifelike war simulation games, the demo version for this one got me so excited about the game that I literally rushed out and bought it for $20 within 24 hours! More on this in an upcoming post.