Random Demo Theater #2

Sometimes short bursts of videogames are enough.

by Wootini

New demo disc came with my Official PlayStation Magazine, and I checked out a few. Out of curiosity and boredom. Can you tell which was which?

 

BLACK

This is the new hyped-up shooter from EA that has been described as gun porn. I don't know about that, but it sure is dirty. In the grimy and filthy sense. You start off in a tiny room, but you've got to stay clear of the window because you'll get shot up. Silly me tried to open the door to get out of there, but there's no action button. No, you've got to shoot the door off to scurry to another hiding place. See, it's all about the blowing up and blasting of scenery. Which is fun, but in the war-torn urban environment, it's easy to lose track of the enemies in the flying debris. I tried the demo a few times, getting a little further each time, but was never inspired to keep trying after my third go-round. And if it's supposed to be gun porn, why can you only hold on to two weapons at a time? The shotgun sucks at a distance, but when you've got tons of ammo for it, why give it up for the machine gun? Gun porn should weigh you down with more firearms than you can handle. Oh, yeah -- the graphics are pretty, but the environments are blasted-out urban decay, so the color pallet is naturally grim and monochromatic. It just wasn't terribly fun.

 

OKAMI

Is it possible for a game to be too beautiful? In Okami, you are a white wolf that travels through an incredibly stylized Japanese world. You leave flowers in your wake as you run, and you use a brush to draw things that affect the environment. It sounds really weird, and you know what? It is. Although honestly, it was strangely engaging when I saw the two posts in the ground by the woman doing her laundry in the river and I used the brush to draw a pole to rest across the top of them for her to hang her laundry on. Then she wished the sun would come closer to dry her clothes faster, so I looked up and drew a circle in the sky that transformed into the sun to do its work. This would give you a bonus from the woman, but only in the real game. The demo kept quitting before I could get very far. I guess it's a good sign that just as I was getting into it, the demo would spontaneously quit, leaving me disappointed. Unless they did it on purpose! Combat is interesting; you run into the enemies a few times until a red circle indicates that you should use the brush to draw a slash through the guy, tearing him in half. Since the drawing is seemingly crucial to gameplay, involved in combat and also advancing storylines, I'm worried, since it's a little awkward to control the brush with the analog stick. Still, the style of the visuals is utterly gorgeous, with everyone and everything looking like a beautifully colored Japanese ink drawing. On the other hand, sometimes it can get a little busy and it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at. Still, I'm intrigued.

 

COMMANDOS STRIKE FORCE

Hm. A  World War II  FPS. Haven't seen one of those before... The mission in the demo is relatively simple, and the support squad did most of the work for me as I tried to adjust to the stuttering framerate. Not sure why it was so jittery -- the graphics weren't that impressive. Not that they were ugly, but whatever. It's another WWII shooter. But this time, you have a squad. I guess that's different.

 

DRIVER: PARALLEL LINES

Never played any of the earlier Driver games, and you know what? I don't know if I want to play this one, either. The demo throws you into the streets of Harlem in the 70s and has you race around to lose the cops. Oddly enough, after you succeed in ditching the fuzz, the game tells you to just explore the city. So I did. For a while. Until I got bored. I did enjoy listening to the 70s music on the car radio, but the cars controlled like ass, and crashing into anything stops you dead. There just wasn't anything else to do. I'm sure in the real game, there will be all kind of side-missons and GTA-style minigames going on all over the city. Hopefully there also won't be giant red X's blocking the areas you can't explore. The giant red letters kind of killed the reality I think they were trying to achieve. I'm just saying.