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To Demo or not to Demo


JV44

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Demo's are a bit of a double edge sword, they can make a game or kill it and to that end I thought we could have a bit of fun and list the 5 demos that made us buy a game and the 5 that killed a game for us!

My five great demos are:(that spring to mind)

1....Test Drive unlimited (XBOX 360)

2....Rush for Berlin

3....Combat Mission

4....Imperial Glory

5....Battlefield 1942

My 5 demo stinkers are:

1....Codename Panzers 2

2....Squad Assault (Poo! hold your nose)

3....Ninety Nine nights (XBOX 360)

4....Blazing Angels (XBOX 360 )

5....T72 Balkans of fire (oops sorry but it sucks)

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Rush for Berlin is a great game , of that genre it isn't realistic in content but you end up doing realistic things to solve problems , e.g.

I was stuck as russians, couldn't get past this german long range arty that was killing me when a moved near any enemy units (they act as observers for arty) So I thought I know I'll charge 7 T34's through front line into rear, they will all get killed by one should destroy arty , what a disaster as soon as T34's got behind german lines with no support, they slowed to a halt, panicked and tried to turn and withdraw,shot to pieces :(

The Graphics are stunning and I love that movie style link between each mission, it has RPG features and interesting things like leader special skills which while fantastical are great fun, oh and you can capture and control a MAUS as russians, brilliant! (but only if you use that noodle again :D )

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can't come up with a list of 5 demos that made me buy a game. And I can't come up with a list of 5 demos that turned me off of a game. A lot of the time a demo will just confirm a decision I've already made to get a game. I will rarely download a demo for a game that I'm not much interested in.

I had already planned on getting CM when the beta demo came out, for example.

The single biggest demo to ever have an effect on my game buying was the Half Life Uplink demo. THAT demo convinced me to buy into a whole genre of games that I had rejected before.

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Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

The first time I tried the CM:BO demo, I hated it. I went away for several months and then downloaded it again

DITTO. I was like WTF is this and WTF is going on?!

And then a few months down the road I was researching some war games for my bro and came across it again...DLed...read some stuff played it and was floored!

I was broke so I sold 30 some odd PC games to a used game shop to get the money to buy it.

So, demos that made me buy a game that I was happy with;

CMBO

Doom

Alone In The Dark

Bad Demos

None.

Mord.

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My five great demos are i.e. (One that made me buy the game)

1. Combat Mission

2. Close Combat 5

3. Commandos

4. Company of Heroes

5. Medal of Honour

My demo stinkers are:

1....Combat Mission 2 - The game's great, but the Demo stank!

2....Jagged Alliance 2

3....Warhammer: 40,000: Dawn of War

4....Panzer Command .. too many units on the field

[ October 10, 2006, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: Prankster ]

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I'm not big on demos as I usually know whether I want a game or not. Some demos I have run across by chance and was instantly hooked.

1. UFO:Enemy unknown from the cover of PC Format magazine.

2. Medieval Total War

3. Commandos

4. Myth

5. Trackmania

Recent demo which sucked

Hearts of Iron II even though I kind of liked HOI

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For me an all time great was the demo for Battleground Ardennes. I did not own a pc and only got on my dads once a week. Played the one mission to death and loved avery minute till i finaly bought it shortly after buying my dads PC. Played PC wargames ever since. (Although the battle for Veleki Luki came first on an amiga smile.gif )

steve

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For me, demos provide not only a way to get a feel for a game, but also to test the system requirements. For example, after trying the demo I held off on buying LOMAC for a few years until I had a system that could run it at 50fps on high settings. I recently had a serious problem with the T-72 demo where the gunner view (and only the gunner view) 'pulsates' to the point where it ruins the game experience (see T-72 tech support thread for more info :D ). That the problem exists in the final game was confirmed by other players. A new video card and different drivers (ATI to Nvidia) didn't even help, so it's most likely a coding issue. It's also a good way to test out tech support for a game (which for T-72 is pretty sparse).

Thinking back, I didn't really have much interest in CMBO until I played the demo. From then on I was completely hooked, and bought every game in the series. Others I've bought based on the demo:

- MTW \ RTW

- Brothers in Arms EIB

- GRAW

- Close Combat

- IL2

- BF 2

- SH 3

- Half Life and HL 2

- Company of Heroes

The problem a lot of times is the release of crappy demos. A game company can't have it both ways. I always laugh when they release a garbage demo and then complain when gamers are turned off of the game by it, fueling the developers' argument that demos are a waste of time. If you want it to sell your game, make it representative of the finished product. Some are even providing a full release for a short period (Red Orchestra Ostfront comes to mind).

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