Demo Roundup – 31st July 2007

We’ve been playing demos from both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store. There’s a nice range available but none that really make me go ‘Wow!’ Nevertheless, they’re worth a go:

The Darkness- Xbox 360

As far as I can tell, this is a first-person shooter but with tentacles and demons instead of as well as guns. The demo gives you two levels; a very early one and one where you’ve developed a few powers. Here’s how they play out…

Early level: Run around, hide behind corners and kill people with your guns.
Later level: Run around, hide behind corners, shoot out lights and kill people with your demonic tentacles.

Sure, there’s some other stuff about using a giant evil head on a tentacle (pictured) to crawl around flat surfaces and eat people’s ankles. It’s mildly entertaining but not that exciting unless you really like crawling around an inch away from the floor/wall/ceiling. You can also spawn minions from shiny demonic portals. When they come into play, the game becomes Open door, shoot out lights, direct minion into room, wait for it to kill everyone, walk in and pick up the pieces.

It’s a simple game and, as far as I could tell, the AI is quite pedestrian. If you like a bit of horror setting in your simplistic kill-’em-all games then go for it. Not my thing, though one of our mates ordered it on the spot.

Overlord – Xbox 360

This minion-management game looks, sounds and feels like a Lionhead game, right down to the West Country voice acting. But it’s not a Lionhead game. This is no bad thing – more developers should strive for humour and regional variety.

The game looks lovely. The minions are wonderfully crafted and their animation is packed with character. Pity the gameplay itself seems quite dull.

You’re the Overlord. You’re mighty and powerful. You have a big-ass sword, you can shoot fireballs from your bare hands and you can order your minions to swoop around the world and kill everything in their path.

That’s… it.

The demo was basically a tutorial, which may have had something to do with the lack of challenge. There was never any sense of being part of someting greater, or striving for something more. You got the impression that the whole point of the game is to literally swoop minions around the game world and kill everything in their path. A demo needs to provide some kind of obstacle to overcome if it’s going to make me buy the game.

OTOH, it is worth downloading just to see the manic happy bouncing sheep. They’re adorable! Added bonus – you can swarm them with your goblins. Watch your minion grab the sheep’s soul and kneel before you in adoration and terror.

Heavenly Sword – PS3

Now this game is fun. This is what I was expecting when I played Dynasty Warriors 5. Instead, DW5 turned out to be mostly a boring strategy game.

Heavenly Sword is a button-bashing medieval beat-’em-up in the style of the Dynasty Warriors (that game is the reason why the square has totally rubbed off my third-party PS2 controller). You play the barely-clothed warrior typical of so many Japanese fighting games, battling dozens of enemies at once. Not quite the thousands you get from the DW series, but they don’t randomly disappear off the screen either. I think that’s a fair trade-off.

The demo is a little cryptic but it appears to follow the sword-fighter tradition of beating up bad guys until your special-attack bar is charged, then cutting loose with some form of devastating move… and it’s on the PS3 so it all looks awesome! It’s the sort of game that Genji: Day of the Blade really wanted to be, but without the obstructive camera.

There are a couple of pointless Tomb Raider:Legend-style button-bashing action sequences, but these are over quickly. I really hope they don’t turn out be a mainstay of the game. I really like this game. It looks like great fun.

Related sites:

Overlord (Warning: site makes strange noises)
The Darkness
Heavenly Sword

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