Your Demo Sucks

[sms_117b]

Savage Moon off the PSN, completed the demo and brought the game there and then. Spent hours on since (about 3 days ago that was).

Just before then I played the UFC demo on the PS3 then went and pre-ordered it.

I agree completely that the demo for Resident Evil 5 was terrible, I was uminh and aring about getting it. Played the demo and didn't even consider buying it.

 

[zBeeble]

Amusingly, it's been many indy game demos that have sold me. Besides the Plants vs. Zombies demo (popcap is evil --- no other explanation for the addictiveness of their games --- and I wouldn't call popcap indy), I've bought Audiosurf, defense grid, ifluid, oddworld and mr. robot based on their demos. I havn't bought Osmos, cogs, braid or "And yet it moves" based on their demos (which is fair) although I'm on the fence about the latter.

As for mainstream games, I bought FEAR 2 based on it's demo. Interestingly, the demo isn't in-game content. It gives a good idea of what the game is about, but it's flow is a contrived glue-together of several bits of the real game.

It may also be worth mentioning that having encountered a hacked copy of Half-life 2, I was so impressed with valve that I bought their complete pack awhile back. In escence, the hacked copy was a demo .

 

[johnman]

Crysis, mount and Blade and max payne are the only demos i have really tried out. The last one i played was empire total war and that just put me off.
Mount and blades demo is massive. It give you till around level 20 before it ends, and you can take as long as you like to get there, and you get the entire game. It really sold me on the game and it lets you experiance most of the thigns that are possible in game.

 

[Izerous]

The last demo I played that did it's job was actually quite recent. The Phantasy Star Portable on the PSP was a good demo. It let you play a few of the first levels. Could repeat till you reached level 10 or completed a specific level. Gave enough story to make it interesting too, and had the full character creator.

 

[Blights]

Red Faction Guerilla great demo but that was the story demo not the multiplayer demo... or plants vs zombies aah "there's a zombie on your lawn"

The multiplayer demo is out now, go download it. NOW. ITS AWESOME.

 

[Copter400]

The demos for Geneforge and Avernum are always great. They give you a huge chunk of the full game, with the option to buy the full game once you've reached the limit. In Geneforge, that's an hour's gameplay if you rush through it. In Avernum, it's about the same size as a normal game.

 

[vede]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

There was some reveal at the beginning, then your mentor dude was like, "Okay, now, there's some baddies, and you should kill them." So I killed them. And then I restarted the demo and killed them again. I just loved fighting them so much.

But, I tend to only care about gameplay. If the whole demo had just been a short control tutorial, then combat, I'd have been fine.

And the RE5 demo you highlighted here sounds perfectly okay to me.

 

[Deef]

The last demo I played was Mirror's Edge, I now know to never trust a demo.

 

[Rugged 13]

After playing the Red Faction Guerrilla demo I went and pre-ordered it. I was probably going to do it demo or otherwise though.

 

[hamster mk 4]

Last demo I played was also Mount and Blade. The only restriction on the demo was the player could not advance past character level 6. The entire map was unlocked as were all missions and NPC's. I played the demo three times before I broke down and baught the full version. I was not disapointed.

The demo hinted that I would be able to reshape the political land scape by starting/ending wars, raiding caravans, and sieging castles. However as a level 6 character I wasn't strong enough to do that sort of thing. I tried but fail miserably. After building up a character to level 35 I was going about doing all those things I wanted to do in the demo and discovering new things while I was at it.

 

[lacktheknack]

Interestingly, later Tomb Raider games are VERY good at this. The anniversary edition is about a half-hour, and ends with her guns pointed at a frigging T-Rex! And underworld also shows off the better bits of the gameplay before plunging her off a cliff to end it. I bought those games... because of the demos.

 

[Robyrt]

Recent good demos: Civilization Revolution, Too Human (BETTER than the full game), Bioshock, Sins of a Solar Empire, Mirror's Edge.

 

[Cousin_IT]

last demo I played that was any good was F.E.A.R's. Introduces you to the plot, gives a good idea of both the normal gunplay mechanics & also a glimpse at the spooky stuff. Then, just as you come to encounter a robot thing, it fades out & ends. Had free multplayer map too which was pretty fun

 

[meatloaf231]

The Red Faction Guerrilla demo was one of the best I've played.

 

[Hazy]

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

Not to mention that it was like.. An Hour Long
I loved it.

 

[DJ Lord Destructocon]

For me it would have to be Civilization Revolution as i played the demo about 20 times

 

[Bongo Bill]

Better a bad demo than no demo, I guess. That's one trend I'm glad to see.

The last demo that sold anything to me was Braid.

 

[PersianLlama]

The best way to have a demo would be to give the player the game but only get to like, say, an hour into it.

That way you start from the beginning, understand what is happening, and learn the basic mechanics of the game play. Then the demo ends further into the game, leaving you at a point where you want to know what's happens next.

Basically, a good demo is one that doesn't feel like a demo. One that feels like your playing the actual game, including the foibles the game may have.

The last demo that got me to a buy a game was the one for Plants vs. Zombies. It gives you the actual game, let's you play it for an hour, then tells you to buy it. As soon as the demo ended, I bought the game.

Yup. <3 Plants vs. Zombies

 

[E.X.D.]

The super metroid game was the last demo that intigued me

 

[squid5580]

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one who was turned off by the RE5 demo. It almost made me cancel my preorder (glad I didn't but still). When I first got my 360 I d/led every demo on the marketplace. Nowadays (since my library has grown) I tend to either avoid them altogether (regardless if I am interested or not) or play them for a few minutes just to see how the game controls and leave it at that. I find either I love the demo and hate the actual game (like Iron Man) or hate the demo but love the game (like RE5).