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Demos that unsell
Legba
He did.Registered User regular
He did.Registered User regular
One thing that came up in my [recommend on] thread, where I was asking for advice on single-player games with a lot of playtime, was that RPG demos and the Xbox don't seem to go together.
That kind of set me thinking; there have been a lot of demos that turned me off games. Most recently the pretty poor Bionic Commando demo took it from a "must have" to a "meh, I'll get it eventually" title.
That's not to say demos are always a negative draw. There's been a fair few that sold me on games I wouldn't normally pick up. After playing the Kane & Lynch demo, I decided I had to have the game. Same for Stranglehold; good, gripping demos sold me on a product I'd never otherwise consider.
And in the case of Too Human, the demo unsold me on a game I was previously interested in, but when I later actually bought the game I enjoyed it a lot.
One problem is that some games are just not well designed for demos - which are by their nature short snippets of game play. Games that feature a non-intuitive control scheme, like Too Human, or a slowly unfolding story, like JRPGs, will suffer more than they gain from putting out a demo that simply drops a player into the action.
Bethesda caught a lot of flack when they announced that they weren't putting out a demo for Fallout 3, but chances are limiting the scope of the game would have unsold a fair number of people, and with a brand name as strong as Fallout, a demo wasn't needed to draw in an audience.
From a publisher's point of view, do you think it would be a good idea for more companies to follow in Bethesda's footsteps, and focus their energies on creating internet hype for their games (or, less realistically, on making a better actual game), or do you think it would be better for game publishers to spend more effort on creating something more than a half-arsed demo?
And as a consumer, do you find that demos tend to make you want to buy it, make you leave it, or a bit of both? Are there any stand-out demos that tipped you over either way?
That kind of set me thinking; there have been a lot of demos that turned me off games. Most recently the pretty poor Bionic Commando demo took it from a "must have" to a "meh, I'll get it eventually" title.
That's not to say demos are always a negative draw. There's been a fair few that sold me on games I wouldn't normally pick up. After playing the Kane & Lynch demo, I decided I had to have the game. Same for Stranglehold; good, gripping demos sold me on a product I'd never otherwise consider.
And in the case of Too Human, the demo unsold me on a game I was previously interested in, but when I later actually bought the game I enjoyed it a lot.
One problem is that some games are just not well designed for demos - which are by their nature short snippets of game play. Games that feature a non-intuitive control scheme, like Too Human, or a slowly unfolding story, like JRPGs, will suffer more than they gain from putting out a demo that simply drops a player into the action.
Bethesda caught a lot of flack when they announced that they weren't putting out a demo for Fallout 3, but chances are limiting the scope of the game would have unsold a fair number of people, and with a brand name as strong as Fallout, a demo wasn't needed to draw in an audience.
From a publisher's point of view, do you think it would be a good idea for more companies to follow in Bethesda's footsteps, and focus their energies on creating internet hype for their games (or, less realistically, on making a better actual game), or do you think it would be better for game publishers to spend more effort on creating something more than a half-arsed demo?
And as a consumer, do you find that demos tend to make you want to buy it, make you leave it, or a bit of both? Are there any stand-out demos that tipped you over either way?
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PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
The Last Remnant's PC demo was just horrible, it was somewhere halfway through the story, there's a bunch of dudes standing around talking about all sorts of things I know nothing about and then one of them sends me off to a mission at some other place. I fought a mob there but there was no explanation for the combat. Also the tooltips were all 'press X!'and 'press square!' while those were not the PC controls at all.
That's interesting, because I came away from the Crackdown demo decidedly on the "meh" side. I've heard nothing but good things, but I'm in no rush to pick it up, mostly because I thought the demo was so bland. Mind you, I'd heard nothing about the game until that very moment, so I had no idea what kind of game I was actually playing.
I felt like the particular world they picked for the demo was a bad choice. Nutty Acres would have been much more interesting and would have portrayed that game better.
I'm glad I picked it up because it ended up being on of my favorites this past holiday.
I LOVED the demo of Halo Wars, and decided to was going to be a day 1 purchase, and I had never tried an RTS before. Then, I tried EndWar, loved that, and since that was already out, I went and got it.
Since then everytime I feel like playing Halo Wars, I fire up the demo. Its hard enough that it's a challenge, and I just play for a bit and am fine. I feel like the demo is the exact amount of gameplay I am up for and I have no intention of buying the game, because the demo is fine by me.
The demo came highly recommended from my friendslist. Tried it once, deleted it. And here I am, hoping their Bionic Commando playing will be a quick fad.
This.
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Which means that when you do get it, you can LP that sucker.
Haha, I have had SO many people message me on youtube about LPing it and I'm always like "sorry guys but I'm not getting it right away, maybe down the road or something"
Maybe someday in the future..
I need to try inFamous and Red Faction as well, but I've got so many games right now that I really don't need any more OMG MUST BUY NOW stuff piling up in the backlog.
Though being spoiled for choice on "Which fucking awesome game do I play right now?" is pretty sweet.
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you are so full of shit
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I do this with a lot of RTS's actually. I like RTS's enough to try them, see what they're doing with the atmosphere, units, interface, etc., but my ability to play them and interest level always drops to zero just after the tutorial. I don't think I've actually bought an RTS since Starcraft, but have loved a lot of the demos (particularly Dawn of War).
Also, not to derail the thread or anything, but this is just as good a place to ask this as any: what the fuck is up lately with only giving the demo (or giving it early) to people who pre-order something? Can someone explain to me how that is not completely backwards logic?
- I love the Burnout series, but when I played this I just got a horrible sense of the game, but I persisted and bought the game anyway. Wow, what a misconception the demo brought upon the public, I still play this game to this day (unfinished, damn Elite license), but yeah...horrible demo, but phenominal game.
Weird, I got the same impression from the demo that it blew ass. Are you suggesting that it, in fact, does not blow ass, and that I should pick it up now that it's only $20?
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This for real. I read all the great reviews of the game and got excited about it, but the demo was just so awful that I couldn't make myself get the full version. I still wonder whether the game just wasn't to my taste or whether it was a bad demo.
EDIT: RE5 is another demo that unsold me. If not for the demo, I probably would have bought it eventually just because I remembered liking RE4 a lot.
I would definitely encourage it. There's a bunch of free DLC as well that makes the game even better today that from launch.
but after having bought and played through both of these games, i can say that I love them :P
I'm of the opinion that it was a bad demo. The building mechanic is spot-on though so if you didn't like that part then the full game won't win you back. The challenges they chose, though and the area they are in made no sense. I know they sent you to Banjoland (world 3 I think) instead of Nutty Acres (world 1) with parts that you would have at the beginning of the game. This made the demo's challenges too hard (and one of them that was chosen - protecting Clanker's eyes) is a bitch in the full game, too so showcasing it makes no sense. It's certainly doable, but you don't get there until working through at least half of Worlds 1 and 2, finding new parts around Showdown Town, and beating up on Grunty a couple times to upgrade your trolley.
There is enough in the full game that if you're a Banjo fan I'd say grab it for $20, and if you still hate it at least you didn't spend a lot on it. Nuts & Bolts is definitely a great game with a bad demo. It was easily my favorite title from last Christmas.
Awesome games with bad demos:
- Burnout Paradise
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
- Dead Rising
Terrible games with bad demos:
- Blue Dragon
- Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
I can second this. I hated the demo when I tried it (360 if it matters) and love the full game (PS3, whim buy off PSN). On the PS3 side, at least, Burnout Paradise still has a pretty active online community, too.
I was going to explain why but then I remembered that I already told you on steam :rotate:
The best example I can think of is the Red Faction SP demo. It's incredibly replayable, and incredibly fun. Most of the time I don't even bother with the mission. I just run around shooting people and blowing up/crushing people in overly elaborate ways until the timer runs out. I haven't even played the MP demo yet thanks to not having a gold account at the moment, but I don't even care, SP is fun enough.
Then again, some demos completely turn me off of buying a game, like the Halo Wars demo and Infamous demo.
Halo Wars was fun, very much so. Just watching the Spartans kick ass in skirmish was a delight. However the demo AI was atrocious. It couldn't even keep pace with a person who was playing a RTS for the first time. Nevermind someone who had played them for over a decade. Despite the game being fun, that definitely turned me off of the idea of getting the game.
Infamous was another demo that unsold me.
I was probably going to get it some time after I picked up Prototype, but the demo was filled with annoying little things like enemies that could run just as fast as you and kite you to death, making the melee system an afterthought unless you snuck up on someone, a reliance on the shooting system which was kind of clunky and inaccurate, and a climbing system that was very annoying when you needed to drop down somewhere quickly thanks to a Conduit or rocket launcher/mini wielding goon coming your way.
Okay, the climbing, sure.
But the shooting is in no way inaccurate (in fact it's super-accurate), and you're complaining that enemies are fast and actually give you a challenge? You should play Dynasty Warriors or something then.
But yeah, the RE5 demo sucked. Enough that it took a complete lack of impulse control for me to buy it.
but the game is pretty fun, and much better than that horrid little shit demo, so long as you don't take the voice acting seriously
or if you're a weeaboo like me, change it to JP and listen to Nene because he has the single greatest voice actor that has ever lived
The shooting is in no way accurate at close range with an enemy that's aware of you being there. It'd be alot more noticeable if the basic lightning attack drained power I think, since I regularly have to fire at least three times to be able to hit someone at that range.
At long range the thing works like a super-accurate sniper rifle, which makes absolutely no sense.
The force-push power is much more accurate, since it's basically the equivalent of throwing a wall at your enemy, thus the target range is much larger. However you have to go into shooting mode to do it, which is annoying and a bit tedious when you're flipping around trying to dodge bullets, rockets, and some dude with a minigun that can kill you in five seconds flat. They should have made an extra key setup to do it to something directly in front of you in melee mode.
For clarification, I don't mind a challenge. It's when playing a game becomes tedious and boring that I tire of it. Infamous was definitely tedious to play for me.
Actually Blue Dragon is pretty much the most standard mediocre JRPG I've ever played with the worst damn story.