Demos are wonderful things, they give us a glimpse into what a game is like and, in turn, whether the game is worth purchasing or not. I used to live on demos in the olden days, they were my link to the gaming world. There have been some demos which stand out above the rest, they may have introduced me to a game series, a new genre or were the entrance to what would be one of my favourite games of all time. These are some of the demos which stick out in my mind, and always will.
Half-Life Uplink is, for those of you who aren’t aware, the classic demo for the original Half-Life. It is also the first taste of Half-Life that I experienced some ten years ago or more when I came across the demo on an old demo CD that came with a long-gone PC magazine.
With certain new games set for release at ever higher prices, while others (such as Men of War) have a distinctly lower price point and regular sales, it seems time (as ever, I suppose though) to think about what games should cost. Rather than blathering on in an opinionated fashion, I did a little survey, firing off a short list of questions to a section of The Reticule’s eminent friends in development to see what they thought about it. …
So often I find myself starting these impressions thingymajigs with a confession. Today’s confession is that I’m not very good at flight sims. I’m not using that in the broad sense of ‘anything that has you flying a plane.’ I’m using it in the sense of trying to simulate what flying is, down to which knob gets turns at which point, otherwise you go headfirst into the nearest bit of dirt, with accompanying explosions. What I am good at, however, is the arcade flying games, like Ace Combat, and.. well, I’ve not played many other’s like Ace Combat. So when I played Hawx (screw those bloody dots and that silly capitalisation. I’ll do it for the post title, but no more), I was rather pleased that it was like Ace Combat, but, well, more fun.
I’ve got a relationship with strategy games. It’s not very healthy, and it pretty much always ends in me looking reproachfully at the exe as it leaves me. Infinitely alluring, yet ultimately pointless, I’m really a very bad strategy game player. I can just about get by in the Total War series, when I’m not too rushed, but in something as wonderfully minutely detailed as Men of War, it’s really a lost cause. So any impressions of it will be tainted by the fact that I’m woefully crap at the game. Bear this in mind as I tell you of it’s wonders, for the Men of War Demo is Out.