You scored a bonus! (Some demo reviews)
Let's double up on these entries! I do thin mostly because I hate having two completely different topics in the same entry.... especially as much as I type.
So with the purchase of the 360 comes access to my second biggest reason I wanted the damned thing: Access to the new Xbox Live! (Motherfucking GEOMETRY WARS would be the FIRST reason.) With access comes a feature you think a lot of people could cash in on... the release of free demos for upcoming games. For the sake of sanity, I'll leave out the "arcade" (i.e. Catan, Metal Slug 3) games and stick to retail game demos. So without further ado, let me rant about games you've probably played years ago, like it's something new!
My demos. Let me show you them.
Devil May Cry 4:
The original DMC demo was the best part about buying the game it came with. I think we played it way more than... fuck what game was that?! See? I can't even remember what game it came with, cause the first DMC rocked so hard. After that, DMC took a nosedive with DMC2, and earned a new reputation as a painfully difficult action game with DMC3 (which I have... and still have yet to play!)
So when I saw the chance to try out the new one, I went ahead...
First impression... I didn't even notice I wasn't playing as Dante until a loading screen came up telling me how to control "Nero." The demo gives you no story, so we'll just have to accept this for now. Nero still comes from the Dante School of Sword, Gun and Trenchcoat combat, with the addition of a weird glowing arm called the "Devil Bringer." This seems to be the core of fighting and platforming in the game, as swatting at Ice demons with a giant sword wasn't nearly as effective as grabbing onto them with my glowy arm, and flinging them around like rag-dolls. Fun, to say the least.
The demo has a combat mission, and a platform mission. The Combat mission has you fight off a wave of the aforementioned ice demons, before fighting a giant flaming centaur-looking demon. I still have yet to kill the guy, but this is mostly because I'm an idiot. I'm sure I can pull it off, but the sheer badassery of flinging this gargantuan demon across the town like a shot put is enough to give a thumbs up to our surprise new main character. You're not off the hook, Raiden.
The platforming stage is a little less bad-ass, as there's less ass-kicking, and more asskick-avoiding. Of course, if you want to hear Johnny Yong Bosch monologue for a bit, than this is the mode for you. In here you use the Devil Bringer to fling yourself places while grappling onto glowing blue spots in the air. I was getting severe Super Mario Galaxy flashbacks. Reach the end in 10 minutes... and I assume something happens... I didn't actually complete it yet.
Issues I had with the game were the strangely slow movement of Nero, as well as not being able to dish out quite as much awesome as Dante if I wasn't using the Devil Bringer arm. It also suffers from the classic sudden camera angle jerking from DMC/Resident Evil, which can make control, especially during the platforming, a pain in the ass.
I might pick this up.
Eternal Sonata:
About the only Happy Shiny JRPG I know of on the 360.... a system with a penchant for seeing how much blood they can render on screen at one time. It's like a 12 year old's fantasy come true.
The shiny happy in this game is downright nauseating, and it looks painfully familiar... like I've played a game, or seen one, just like it.
The demo is fairly straight forward... tossing you into the game, and letting you know, straight away, what to do... giving you pointers along the way, but never really TELLING you how to do it.
My party started out with three musically named characters, a pretty boy swordsman named Allegretto, a parasol wielding girl (big shock approaching) healer named Polka, and a chubby misshapen dude with a thin hammer who was skilled at..... wait for it... magic, named Beat.
Carbon copy characters and lively pretty colorful settings are part and parcel in JRPGs, so it's coming down to the gameplay... or specifically, the combat system to pull some sort of originality. Luckily, this game has a rather fun one. It's an odd hybrid of action and turn based combat. Basically, once your turn comes up, you can choose to move your character, start whacking at an enemy on the field, or even
cast an ability, all while a timer counts down. One the timer stops, you're frozen where you stand until your turn cames back up. The enemies also have the system, and when they start to wail on you, you can use action commands, similar to Super Mario RPG, to defend yourself from the blows, and lessen the damage.
Another interesting combat feature is the use of light and shadow on the field. If your character uses an ability while standing in the light, this attack will be different if they are standing in the dark. For example, if Polka casts her ability in the sunny open field, she'll heal herself... but if she casts it while in the shade of a tree, she'll swipe forward with a wave of shadow energy. Enemies are also affected by this, as the wimpy pumpkin enemies transform into much more formidable foes if they are standing in the shade. It's clever and I'd like to play a bit more with it.
I'll amend this review once I finish the demo properly. I didn't have time the first time I played this though. Will I buy it though? It's unlikely, unless finishing it really wows me. I have enough unplayed and unfinished RPGs lying around here as it is... My apologies to Persona 3, Tales of the Abyss, Dragon Quest VII, Steambot Chronicles, Valkyrie Profile, Wild Arms 4, Final Fantasy XII, Xenosa...
(E.T.A.: I completed the demo.... you fight a giant boar, who really wasn't all that tough, and after the boar falls, you get a screenshot of the game's box, with a "coming soon" paragraph. I think a white piece of notebook paper with the words, "It's over!" scrawled upon them would have been more informative. There's no danger of me being intrigued further.)
Dead Rising:
While I could definitely see playing this game, the demo was jerky at best.
After the laughable classic Capcom style intro scene, including a jiggly breasted girl in a low cut office suit, and dialog such as "Why did it have to be zombies?" and "Do you know how to use this [gun]? Well, I've covered enough wars. I think I have an idea." I appeared in the mall, with zombies all the fuck everywhere.
Since I don't like to combat legions of ANYTHING unless I'm prepared, I decided to play more of a game of avoidance, and search every nook and cranny of the mall for neat weapons. Unfortunately, doing this caused me to trigger a cutscene where these dorky looking rednecks wielding Sniper rifles, were gazing upon me through their sights, ranting about survival and the second amendment. Subtle, Capcom. As soon as they starting goading the dorkiest of the trio into shooting me, the demo ended. ... well that was weak.
Giving it another run, I decided to run TOWARD the zombie hordes, and of course, this is where the fun comes in. You start out with a sledge, which you can use to either crush a zombie with a vertical smash, or topple over a surrounding mob with a wide horizontal swing. What I wasn't expecting was for my sledge to somehow fall out of my hands and become UNUSABLE. It's not like a hammer has ammo, and I KNOW it didn't break. What gives? I'm certain this is to give the game a sense of balance so I cant just spin around mowing down every thing in my path with a 25 pound chuck of metal on a stick, but that doesn't make it logical.
So now, it is no longer hammer time, and I have to find something else to defend myself with. This is where the game gets wacky... you can use ANYTHING to fight zombies. Some useful, most useless and serving as a zombie hindrance to help you escape, or find something better. The weapons available and how you use them, are downright goofy, as you can actually chuck CD's like ninja stars, and toss handfuls of jewelry with the force of a shotgun.
If you wanted to play a game where you can beat down zombies with a teddy bear, you've fucking found it.
If I find this at a decent price, I might pick it up.
Prey:
I must be out of the loop. Was this the fault of GTA: San Andreas? Maybe the 360 tendency to merge the PC market with the console market... but why are so many games using the word "fuck" like it's just another thing to say? It shocked me the first time I heard it in F.E.A.R. on the PC, but I got used to it. Now I get that shock revisited when playing Prey on the 360. "Fucked up", "Shit" and the like are peppered throughout with lines from your character, and others.
Prey is a First Person Shooter by 3D Realms... so it's possible that this game was to be Duke Nukem Forever until the board meeting got out of hand. (Alright, what if Duke had to do gravity puzzles! No, what if he had a girlfriend to rescue! No, what if he was Cherokee?! ... ...new game?) It features a dark storyline, creepy enemies, and disgusting fleshy environments. You play as a Native American man named Tommy, who's not exactly keen on the ways of his people, and is looking to live a new life...
The game starts as you look at yourself in a bathroom mirror, talking to yourself. Already I'm sympathizing with the guy. If I was even bothering to listen to him, I think he was ranting something about wanting to move out of the reservation he was on, and take his girlfriend, with him. His girlfriend, is the bartender. Instead of giving us a cutscene, we're treated to a more "Half-Life-esque" style of storytelling, where people chat with us while were controlling the character in real time. In my fascination with the arcade games lining the wall, I spend more time playing rip-off Pac-Man, and Video Blackjack than trying to chat up my curvy girlfriend to advance the story along. A few events later and the game gets rolling. I'm given my melee-weapon du jour, a wrench, and use it to beat up a couple of overly racist rednecks who call my girlfriend "Pocahontas" and use other lulzy stereotypes... making me wonder how the fuck they got on the reservation in the first place. As I'm whacking away at their lifeless bodies while Tommy says lines that don't exactly match what I'm DOING, a thunderous shake engulfs the room and lights flicker outside. Things go from bad to worse, and the lights tear apart the bar, and beam up Tommy's grandfather, Tommy's girlfriend, and or course, Tommy.
Black out and wake up, and you get shown a horrifying... but LOOOOOONG sequence that also seems really similar to Half Life 2. You're led around on a rail tour of an alien spaceship, cuffed to this weird pod, watching aliens roam around, listening to people scream. While really freaky, the whole thing goes on for way too long. Once the ride is over, you somehow get free, and begin to go about trying to free your girlfriend.
After wandering aimlessly, gazing at the pulsating, filth-spewing sphincters on the wall, beating aliens with a wrench, and acquiring some weird ass alien gun, I'm led into a trap, and fall to my death...
...only to awaken in the American southwest. Keeping any kind of spoiler aside, you go through a series of training exercises, and learn how to "spirit walk". This becomes the main puzzle element in the game... where you will use this ability to explore areas that are normally impassable. Other puzzle elements involve shifting gravity, and walking through portals to advance your way forward. It's jarring, but easy to get used to, especially if you've played Super Mario Galaxy, and/or Portal.
I can say that I got lost a few times, but it really never got to the point I felt "stuck" The game is pretty generous with giving you hints on where to go, thankfully, and even though not all of them are obvious right away, a bit of trial and error can solve the worst of them.
You can't "die" in this game. If your health is ever depleted, you find yourself in this strange ghost world, where red and blue creatures circle around, and you can see your body in the distance being let down by a beam of light. Once your body reaches the bottom, you return to where you died, with a percentage of health back. (I think shooting down the spirits flying around affect how much health you get back.) It helps move things along, and doesn't leave me disoriented when I have to load a save game, and figure out where I left off.
This game is gory, fleshy, cussy and puzzly. I'm definitely interested in getting the full game, and even though I'd rather play it on a PC, I think this is a decent compromise.
The Darkness:
Those who know of Zero Punctuation, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, and recognize my icon, might have heard his review on The Darkness for PS3... it was fairly spot on, but I didn't have as much trouble as he did.
As he's covered, you start out riding along in a car with a pair of mafia members, who drive like insane bastards, causing death and destruction and shooting blindly at the cars behind you. After the weird beginning, the demo tosses you into Chapter 3, with a small blurb telling you you've been betrayed by your uncle, and have hitmen after you while you hide out in a graveyard. They don't waste time lighting you up, however, and it seems it's best to flee to the nearest area, rather than try to take them all on. The only place I was able to go was some underground restroom, where I meet a homeless man, and have a pointless conversation, where the main character complements the bum on his lodging, and is subsequently berated for it. The game feels the bum is important enough to display his full name EVERY TIME I walk near him. I assume he's featured in the comic, but the demo doesn't bother to mention this, so I'll just assume he's a really important hobo.
Even though coming here seemed pointless, as soon as I left the area, good ole satanic voiceover kicked in, and these black demonic snakes appeared to the left and right of me, proceeding to tear the shit out of the hitmen in the graveyard, biting their faces off. They kindly inform me that I'm their puppet, and finally, I'm given control again. Walking over to the first corpse, in hopes to find some ammo, I notice an option to "devour heart" which does exactly what you think it does. One of the snakes darts over to the body, tears out it's heart and begins to scarf it down. I'm not sure if this helps me in any way, but I was definitely a little squicked by it... especially whenever the two snakes began to fight over the organ, stretching and tearing it apart between their teeth... god, I think that made me a bit queasy to describe.
The "white spot" Yahtzee speaks of isn't really that easy to miss, as it glows like spotlight, and has tendrils thrusting out of it. The game even prompts you on how to use it once you're standing on it. One the spawned demon moves the car away from the front gate, I finish the stage with very little trouble.
The demo continues on, skipping to chapter 7. I usually feel weird when a demo does this... it's like it's saying "These are the only good parts". Regardless, you're told you have a new darkness power that lets you pick stuff of... The iron gate puzzle that caused Yahtzee to give up on the game, really wasn't all that hard... once I figured out I was trying to leap over the WRONG GATE. After the stupid stack puzzle, the game introduces another element, in which you have to go around shooting out, or destroying lights, or the power of the Darkness won't work. I summoned a demon with a mini-gun (I guess they have mini-guns in hell.) and let it do the dirty work, while I went around destroying every light I saw. While this made sure I'd have no trouble using Darkness powers, it made it so I couldn't really see shit. Eventually I reached the end of the demo, where the main character sets a pile of his uncle's money on fire... rather than do the logical thing and steal at least a bit of it.
The game wasn't as bad as Yahtzee made it out to be, but I don't really think I'll be putting it on the top of my want list.
Dead or Alive 4:
See answer for any Dead or Alive game since 2. The series has gotten shinier, but no different, really. Also, the demo didn't have Ayane... and that's a grave injustice. I'll probably pick this up anyway, as I have the rest of the games, and it's probably pretty cheap by now.
Rumble Roses XX:
Yeah, it's mostly boobs and punching. More than DOA could ever hope to be. I've never been a fan of wrestling fighting engines. The demo didn't give me any kind of instruction, so I got to watch helplessly as Dixie got the shit beat out of her by Aisha. I also messed around with the photo shoot option, and it's basically the "rest" option from DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, with a save option. You can tell who this game was made for.
Bioshock:
This review was another game done by Zero Punctuation, but thankfully his gripes didn't apply to me, having never played System Shock 2. So I'll do this from a fresh perspective.
Bioshock is yet another FPS, with heavy story elements, and excellent design. Unlike Prey, there isn't as much of a focus on mind bending puzzles, and more of a focus on combat, exploration, and environment.
It starts out with your character looking at a photo of something in his wallet... as he says something about being destined for greatness, an explosion rocks the plane you're apparently on, and you black out... You awake underwater, and watch as you slowly swim to the surface, only to see flaming wreckage around you, and a large tower nearby. Once you reach the tower, it opens up, looking much like some kind of hotel or resort, and there are statues and quotes from some guy named Andrew Ryan. It seems you've stumbled across some sort of underwater city/society and while very ornate and impressive, as you descend into it, you realize it that something has gone horribly wrong.
I know, big surprise there, right? The game is actually really good at creating the creepy atmosphere. Your first gun is obtained by... removing it from a baby carriage... from a mutated woman who's convinced herself that the gun is her baby. Across the demo you run across recording of things that have happened here, and they're really just disturbing.
A man named Atlas of all things, guides you through the game in a voice over, asking you to find his family. Once you get out of the underwater elevator, you walk toward a shelf which contains large, rather painful looking syringes. Of course, this being a game, the first thing that happens is the main character, grabs one of these syringes and proceeds to just jam in right into his wrist at full force... large misshapen needle and all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that be the LAST FUCKING THING you'd do in that situation? The only time I'd ever think this was something I should be doing is if I was suffering heroin withdrawals.
Well, subsequent spazzing after your "Eh, when in Rome!" injection you've gained the ability to shoot lighting out of your hand. This serves not only the purpose of, "Hey, I can shoot lighting out of my hand!" but you can use it to stun enemies, and short out mechanical foes, allowing you to hack them, turning them into your allies.
Of course, the demo ends right as soon as you reach your goal, and takes you through a slide show of features that are yet to come in the game.
This game is tied right now with Prey for being the number one game in this list I want to pick up. I'm seriously considering doing this tonight. I have this wanted slightly over Prey, cause I'll need to have my stomach ready if I really want to see any more spewing wall sphincters.
So with the purchase of the 360 comes access to my second biggest reason I wanted the damned thing: Access to the new Xbox Live! (Motherfucking GEOMETRY WARS would be the FIRST reason.) With access comes a feature you think a lot of people could cash in on... the release of free demos for upcoming games. For the sake of sanity, I'll leave out the "arcade" (i.e. Catan, Metal Slug 3) games and stick to retail game demos. So without further ado, let me rant about games you've probably played years ago, like it's something new!
My demos. Let me show you them.
Devil May Cry 4:
The original DMC demo was the best part about buying the game it came with. I think we played it way more than... fuck what game was that?! See? I can't even remember what game it came with, cause the first DMC rocked so hard. After that, DMC took a nosedive with DMC2, and earned a new reputation as a painfully difficult action game with DMC3 (which I have... and still have yet to play!)
So when I saw the chance to try out the new one, I went ahead...
First impression... I didn't even notice I wasn't playing as Dante until a loading screen came up telling me how to control "Nero." The demo gives you no story, so we'll just have to accept this for now. Nero still comes from the Dante School of Sword, Gun and Trenchcoat combat, with the addition of a weird glowing arm called the "Devil Bringer." This seems to be the core of fighting and platforming in the game, as swatting at Ice demons with a giant sword wasn't nearly as effective as grabbing onto them with my glowy arm, and flinging them around like rag-dolls. Fun, to say the least.
The demo has a combat mission, and a platform mission. The Combat mission has you fight off a wave of the aforementioned ice demons, before fighting a giant flaming centaur-looking demon. I still have yet to kill the guy, but this is mostly because I'm an idiot. I'm sure I can pull it off, but the sheer badassery of flinging this gargantuan demon across the town like a shot put is enough to give a thumbs up to our surprise new main character. You're not off the hook, Raiden.
The platforming stage is a little less bad-ass, as there's less ass-kicking, and more asskick-avoiding. Of course, if you want to hear Johnny Yong Bosch monologue for a bit, than this is the mode for you. In here you use the Devil Bringer to fling yourself places while grappling onto glowing blue spots in the air. I was getting severe Super Mario Galaxy flashbacks. Reach the end in 10 minutes... and I assume something happens... I didn't actually complete it yet.
Issues I had with the game were the strangely slow movement of Nero, as well as not being able to dish out quite as much awesome as Dante if I wasn't using the Devil Bringer arm. It also suffers from the classic sudden camera angle jerking from DMC/Resident Evil, which can make control, especially during the platforming, a pain in the ass.
I might pick this up.
Eternal Sonata:
About the only Happy Shiny JRPG I know of on the 360.... a system with a penchant for seeing how much blood they can render on screen at one time. It's like a 12 year old's fantasy come true.
The shiny happy in this game is downright nauseating, and it looks painfully familiar... like I've played a game, or seen one, just like it.
The demo is fairly straight forward... tossing you into the game, and letting you know, straight away, what to do... giving you pointers along the way, but never really TELLING you how to do it.
My party started out with three musically named characters, a pretty boy swordsman named Allegretto, a parasol wielding girl (big shock approaching) healer named Polka, and a chubby misshapen dude with a thin hammer who was skilled at..... wait for it... magic, named Beat.
Carbon copy characters and lively pretty colorful settings are part and parcel in JRPGs, so it's coming down to the gameplay... or specifically, the combat system to pull some sort of originality. Luckily, this game has a rather fun one. It's an odd hybrid of action and turn based combat. Basically, once your turn comes up, you can choose to move your character, start whacking at an enemy on the field, or even
cast an ability, all while a timer counts down. One the timer stops, you're frozen where you stand until your turn cames back up. The enemies also have the system, and when they start to wail on you, you can use action commands, similar to Super Mario RPG, to defend yourself from the blows, and lessen the damage.
Another interesting combat feature is the use of light and shadow on the field. If your character uses an ability while standing in the light, this attack will be different if they are standing in the dark. For example, if Polka casts her ability in the sunny open field, she'll heal herself... but if she casts it while in the shade of a tree, she'll swipe forward with a wave of shadow energy. Enemies are also affected by this, as the wimpy pumpkin enemies transform into much more formidable foes if they are standing in the shade. It's clever and I'd like to play a bit more with it.
I'll amend this review once I finish the demo properly. I didn't have time the first time I played this though. Will I buy it though? It's unlikely, unless finishing it really wows me. I have enough unplayed and unfinished RPGs lying around here as it is... My apologies to Persona 3, Tales of the Abyss, Dragon Quest VII, Steambot Chronicles, Valkyrie Profile, Wild Arms 4, Final Fantasy XII, Xenosa...
(E.T.A.: I completed the demo.... you fight a giant boar, who really wasn't all that tough, and after the boar falls, you get a screenshot of the game's box, with a "coming soon" paragraph. I think a white piece of notebook paper with the words, "It's over!" scrawled upon them would have been more informative. There's no danger of me being intrigued further.)
Dead Rising:
While I could definitely see playing this game, the demo was jerky at best.
After the laughable classic Capcom style intro scene, including a jiggly breasted girl in a low cut office suit, and dialog such as "Why did it have to be zombies?" and "Do you know how to use this [gun]? Well, I've covered enough wars. I think I have an idea." I appeared in the mall, with zombies all the fuck everywhere.
Since I don't like to combat legions of ANYTHING unless I'm prepared, I decided to play more of a game of avoidance, and search every nook and cranny of the mall for neat weapons. Unfortunately, doing this caused me to trigger a cutscene where these dorky looking rednecks wielding Sniper rifles, were gazing upon me through their sights, ranting about survival and the second amendment. Subtle, Capcom. As soon as they starting goading the dorkiest of the trio into shooting me, the demo ended. ... well that was weak.
Giving it another run, I decided to run TOWARD the zombie hordes, and of course, this is where the fun comes in. You start out with a sledge, which you can use to either crush a zombie with a vertical smash, or topple over a surrounding mob with a wide horizontal swing. What I wasn't expecting was for my sledge to somehow fall out of my hands and become UNUSABLE. It's not like a hammer has ammo, and I KNOW it didn't break. What gives? I'm certain this is to give the game a sense of balance so I cant just spin around mowing down every thing in my path with a 25 pound chuck of metal on a stick, but that doesn't make it logical.
So now, it is no longer hammer time, and I have to find something else to defend myself with. This is where the game gets wacky... you can use ANYTHING to fight zombies. Some useful, most useless and serving as a zombie hindrance to help you escape, or find something better. The weapons available and how you use them, are downright goofy, as you can actually chuck CD's like ninja stars, and toss handfuls of jewelry with the force of a shotgun.
If you wanted to play a game where you can beat down zombies with a teddy bear, you've fucking found it.
If I find this at a decent price, I might pick it up.
Prey:
I must be out of the loop. Was this the fault of GTA: San Andreas? Maybe the 360 tendency to merge the PC market with the console market... but why are so many games using the word "fuck" like it's just another thing to say? It shocked me the first time I heard it in F.E.A.R. on the PC, but I got used to it. Now I get that shock revisited when playing Prey on the 360. "Fucked up", "Shit" and the like are peppered throughout with lines from your character, and others.
Prey is a First Person Shooter by 3D Realms... so it's possible that this game was to be Duke Nukem Forever until the board meeting got out of hand. (Alright, what if Duke had to do gravity puzzles! No, what if he had a girlfriend to rescue! No, what if he was Cherokee?! ... ...new game?) It features a dark storyline, creepy enemies, and disgusting fleshy environments. You play as a Native American man named Tommy, who's not exactly keen on the ways of his people, and is looking to live a new life...
The game starts as you look at yourself in a bathroom mirror, talking to yourself. Already I'm sympathizing with the guy. If I was even bothering to listen to him, I think he was ranting something about wanting to move out of the reservation he was on, and take his girlfriend, with him. His girlfriend, is the bartender. Instead of giving us a cutscene, we're treated to a more "Half-Life-esque" style of storytelling, where people chat with us while were controlling the character in real time. In my fascination with the arcade games lining the wall, I spend more time playing rip-off Pac-Man, and Video Blackjack than trying to chat up my curvy girlfriend to advance the story along. A few events later and the game gets rolling. I'm given my melee-weapon du jour, a wrench, and use it to beat up a couple of overly racist rednecks who call my girlfriend "Pocahontas" and use other lulzy stereotypes... making me wonder how the fuck they got on the reservation in the first place. As I'm whacking away at their lifeless bodies while Tommy says lines that don't exactly match what I'm DOING, a thunderous shake engulfs the room and lights flicker outside. Things go from bad to worse, and the lights tear apart the bar, and beam up Tommy's grandfather, Tommy's girlfriend, and or course, Tommy.
Black out and wake up, and you get shown a horrifying... but LOOOOOONG sequence that also seems really similar to Half Life 2. You're led around on a rail tour of an alien spaceship, cuffed to this weird pod, watching aliens roam around, listening to people scream. While really freaky, the whole thing goes on for way too long. Once the ride is over, you somehow get free, and begin to go about trying to free your girlfriend.
After wandering aimlessly, gazing at the pulsating, filth-spewing sphincters on the wall, beating aliens with a wrench, and acquiring some weird ass alien gun, I'm led into a trap, and fall to my death...
...only to awaken in the American southwest. Keeping any kind of spoiler aside, you go through a series of training exercises, and learn how to "spirit walk". This becomes the main puzzle element in the game... where you will use this ability to explore areas that are normally impassable. Other puzzle elements involve shifting gravity, and walking through portals to advance your way forward. It's jarring, but easy to get used to, especially if you've played Super Mario Galaxy, and/or Portal.
I can say that I got lost a few times, but it really never got to the point I felt "stuck" The game is pretty generous with giving you hints on where to go, thankfully, and even though not all of them are obvious right away, a bit of trial and error can solve the worst of them.
You can't "die" in this game. If your health is ever depleted, you find yourself in this strange ghost world, where red and blue creatures circle around, and you can see your body in the distance being let down by a beam of light. Once your body reaches the bottom, you return to where you died, with a percentage of health back. (I think shooting down the spirits flying around affect how much health you get back.) It helps move things along, and doesn't leave me disoriented when I have to load a save game, and figure out where I left off.
This game is gory, fleshy, cussy and puzzly. I'm definitely interested in getting the full game, and even though I'd rather play it on a PC, I think this is a decent compromise.
The Darkness:
Those who know of Zero Punctuation, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, and recognize my icon, might have heard his review on The Darkness for PS3... it was fairly spot on, but I didn't have as much trouble as he did.
As he's covered, you start out riding along in a car with a pair of mafia members, who drive like insane bastards, causing death and destruction and shooting blindly at the cars behind you. After the weird beginning, the demo tosses you into Chapter 3, with a small blurb telling you you've been betrayed by your uncle, and have hitmen after you while you hide out in a graveyard. They don't waste time lighting you up, however, and it seems it's best to flee to the nearest area, rather than try to take them all on. The only place I was able to go was some underground restroom, where I meet a homeless man, and have a pointless conversation, where the main character complements the bum on his lodging, and is subsequently berated for it. The game feels the bum is important enough to display his full name EVERY TIME I walk near him. I assume he's featured in the comic, but the demo doesn't bother to mention this, so I'll just assume he's a really important hobo.
Even though coming here seemed pointless, as soon as I left the area, good ole satanic voiceover kicked in, and these black demonic snakes appeared to the left and right of me, proceeding to tear the shit out of the hitmen in the graveyard, biting their faces off. They kindly inform me that I'm their puppet, and finally, I'm given control again. Walking over to the first corpse, in hopes to find some ammo, I notice an option to "devour heart" which does exactly what you think it does. One of the snakes darts over to the body, tears out it's heart and begins to scarf it down. I'm not sure if this helps me in any way, but I was definitely a little squicked by it... especially whenever the two snakes began to fight over the organ, stretching and tearing it apart between their teeth... god, I think that made me a bit queasy to describe.
The "white spot" Yahtzee speaks of isn't really that easy to miss, as it glows like spotlight, and has tendrils thrusting out of it. The game even prompts you on how to use it once you're standing on it. One the spawned demon moves the car away from the front gate, I finish the stage with very little trouble.
The demo continues on, skipping to chapter 7. I usually feel weird when a demo does this... it's like it's saying "These are the only good parts". Regardless, you're told you have a new darkness power that lets you pick stuff of... The iron gate puzzle that caused Yahtzee to give up on the game, really wasn't all that hard... once I figured out I was trying to leap over the WRONG GATE. After the stupid stack puzzle, the game introduces another element, in which you have to go around shooting out, or destroying lights, or the power of the Darkness won't work. I summoned a demon with a mini-gun (I guess they have mini-guns in hell.) and let it do the dirty work, while I went around destroying every light I saw. While this made sure I'd have no trouble using Darkness powers, it made it so I couldn't really see shit. Eventually I reached the end of the demo, where the main character sets a pile of his uncle's money on fire... rather than do the logical thing and steal at least a bit of it.
The game wasn't as bad as Yahtzee made it out to be, but I don't really think I'll be putting it on the top of my want list.
Dead or Alive 4:
See answer for any Dead or Alive game since 2. The series has gotten shinier, but no different, really. Also, the demo didn't have Ayane... and that's a grave injustice. I'll probably pick this up anyway, as I have the rest of the games, and it's probably pretty cheap by now.
Rumble Roses XX:
Yeah, it's mostly boobs and punching. More than DOA could ever hope to be. I've never been a fan of wrestling fighting engines. The demo didn't give me any kind of instruction, so I got to watch helplessly as Dixie got the shit beat out of her by Aisha. I also messed around with the photo shoot option, and it's basically the "rest" option from DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, with a save option. You can tell who this game was made for.
Bioshock:
This review was another game done by Zero Punctuation, but thankfully his gripes didn't apply to me, having never played System Shock 2. So I'll do this from a fresh perspective.
Bioshock is yet another FPS, with heavy story elements, and excellent design. Unlike Prey, there isn't as much of a focus on mind bending puzzles, and more of a focus on combat, exploration, and environment.
It starts out with your character looking at a photo of something in his wallet... as he says something about being destined for greatness, an explosion rocks the plane you're apparently on, and you black out... You awake underwater, and watch as you slowly swim to the surface, only to see flaming wreckage around you, and a large tower nearby. Once you reach the tower, it opens up, looking much like some kind of hotel or resort, and there are statues and quotes from some guy named Andrew Ryan. It seems you've stumbled across some sort of underwater city/society and while very ornate and impressive, as you descend into it, you realize it that something has gone horribly wrong.
I know, big surprise there, right? The game is actually really good at creating the creepy atmosphere. Your first gun is obtained by... removing it from a baby carriage... from a mutated woman who's convinced herself that the gun is her baby. Across the demo you run across recording of things that have happened here, and they're really just disturbing.
A man named Atlas of all things, guides you through the game in a voice over, asking you to find his family. Once you get out of the underwater elevator, you walk toward a shelf which contains large, rather painful looking syringes. Of course, this being a game, the first thing that happens is the main character, grabs one of these syringes and proceeds to just jam in right into his wrist at full force... large misshapen needle and all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that be the LAST FUCKING THING you'd do in that situation? The only time I'd ever think this was something I should be doing is if I was suffering heroin withdrawals.
Well, subsequent spazzing after your "Eh, when in Rome!" injection you've gained the ability to shoot lighting out of your hand. This serves not only the purpose of, "Hey, I can shoot lighting out of my hand!" but you can use it to stun enemies, and short out mechanical foes, allowing you to hack them, turning them into your allies.
Of course, the demo ends right as soon as you reach your goal, and takes you through a slide show of features that are yet to come in the game.
This game is tied right now with Prey for being the number one game in this list I want to pick up. I'm seriously considering doing this tonight. I have this wanted slightly over Prey, cause I'll need to have my stomach ready if I really want to see any more spewing wall sphincters.