Demo Station

This is a new section of the site where we will be looking at the demos that are made available during the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Marketplace, Wii Shop and eShop updates from the previous week before singling out those worthy of praise or humiliation.

The Darkness II (Xbox 360)

I must admit that I played the demo for the original The Darkness which came out in 2007, towards the beginning of the current generation of consoles, and found it to be utterly abysmal. Understandably it was with a little apprehension that I dove into the demo for The Darkness II. The demo opened as a standard on rails shooter which tried to impose a sense of urgency in trying to save the main characters life, and a sense of camaraderie with some of the NPC’s. It needn’t have bothered as (spoilers) the host of The Darkness cannot die AND all the NPC’s end up dead anyway.

The controls were the standard FPS fare, with the triggers being mapped to the two shoulder triggers, unless in single gun mode where the left trigger allowed for aiming down the gun sights, and the shoulder bumpers controlling The Darkness’ tendrils. The thing which bothered me the most was the fact that you can dual wield guns but cannot aim down the sights whilst doing so, with the crosshairs being massive it made accurate aiming nigh on impossible, forcing the player to rely on the crosshairs changing from white to red to even be aware if they stand a chance of hitting something.

The voice acting and character animation seemed a little twitchy at times with characters facial features switching between emotions in the blink of an eye rather than flowing from one to the next, talking characters have flapping mouths rather than forming words and occasionally speech will increase in tempo almost as if there isn’t enough time to get them into the game.

One clever aspect that I actually liked was that The Darkness was weakened in bright light, and in order to use the healing and murder powers bestowed to the gamer any source of light had to be destroyed, or the player had to hold back in an easily defendable position using gun fire alone, before progress could continue. This lead to some interesting choices during battles, should I shoot at the lights pitching the area into darkness allowing me to use The Darkness, acting like a tank, or do I try to reduce the enemy numbers from a distance before wading into hell?

The demo was mildly entertaining, once The Darkness arrived on the scene, but didn’t have me grinning from ear to ear with delirium as the action became repetitive extremely quickly. The over the top violence, seemingly for the sake of being overly violent, seemed a bit unnecessary and overly gratuitous, even in the context of the perceived story. There was a brief period where I was enjoying the game and the enhancement of the powers seems like a good way of keeping the player playing but this is one gamer that will not be purchasing The Darkness II.

Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

I’m speechless. This looks to be the Resident Evil game we have been wanting for years, as Resident Evil returns to its roots with a single protagonist finding themselves alone in a mansion, with no idea how they got there, and all kind of nasties out to get them.

The controls take a bit of getting used to as was evident from the number of times I viciously attacked the walls and furniture rather than picking up the item I had intended to. At least I posed a threat to something as the creatures themselves take a pasting before they drop to the floor and are strategically placed to get the drop on the player. The control scheme means that you cannot move and shoot at the same time, which is rather annoying but understandable given the user interface available to the designers and it being a Resident Evil game.

For a handheld system the graphics blew me away, I will readily admit that my 3DS has gone mostly unused in recent months, until Super Mario 3D Land came along, and I have to say that this demo is the best looking game I personally have seen on the platform and whilst the 3D looked good, the game looked much better without it.

For me this was the best portable version of Resident Evil ever, and a return to the series roots of survival horror is a welcome, though I’m still not entirely sold on purchasing the game. Maybe my mind will be changed with subsequent playthroughs, but I can guarantee this; I will be playing this demo again in the very near future.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (Xbox 360 + PS3)

I need to quickly get something off of my chest: FUCK YOU EA! I don’t want your stupid Origin service just to play a fucking demo you twats!

So yeah, I have no idea what the story lead into the demo was, I was too busy raging against being forced, FORCED, to get an Origin account, but for those whom have played games like Skyrim and Fallout there is the standard character creation menu, although you are dead at the beginning instead of being a prisoner.

This game has completely taken me by surprise. Having never heard anything about it prior to download I entered Amalur figuring it for a fantasy RPG style game, which I normally hate, fully prepare to take notes on ripping it a new one only for the exact opposite to happen. Of the three demos I have played this week Amalur is highly likely to be the only one I actually end up owning as it had me hooked from the start (or at least, when the rage died down and I started paying attention) all the way through and to the end of the 45 minutes of gameplay after the demo ended. Normally had you told me there was a demo to play, followed by more time playing the game, I would have done the bare minimum and stopped playing, yet I was genuinely disappointed when the extra 45 minutes were up.

Some of the environments were interesting, if graphically a little fuzzy, and the camera does its best to show off the environments without being too much of a hindrance when it comes to battling.  The art style is very appealing, aiming for a human yet cartoony approach to NPC’s yet similar to The Darkness II there was some mouth flapping going on during dialogue. At one point the demo also glitched which left my avatar twitching for a solid 5 minutes until the game righted itself.

If anything was to raise a complaint it would be that you can tell that this is EA’s blatant attempt to muscle in on the territory of the likes of World of Warcraft, Fallout and the Elder Scrolls. Admittedly I have played very little of these games but even to a complete noob like myself it is very obvious that there are probably many other games out there that do this kind of game much better, but Amalur is still looking good.

All I can really say is if you haven’t already downloaded this demo GO DO IT NOW. Then come back here and read more InfinityFeed, see you in a couple of hours!


One last thing, I spotted this during Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Look familiar?:

Dead Space

Yeah, that's just lazy.