Demo before release is the way of things on the PC. Companies releasing a new property have to woo consumers on the fence, and in order to do that they’ll release a gameplay snippet. Maybe it will be the first hour or two of gameplay, maybe it will be a short segment created just to demonstrate the game’s selling points. But, for the demo to be effective it needs to be compelling. A bad demo can torpedo sales, giving people critical info about how shitty your game is so they can avoid the $50 stupid tax they would otherwise end up paying. And of late this is especially important.
Video games have hit an age of sequels, and quality has started to suffer en masse. People are willing to ride of the coat tails of earlier titles, and gamers have been eating it up for a while now. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sequels, its more that developers aren’t as smart as they think they are. They’ll take elements from a previous game without understanding what made them work and copy paste them into a new setting, bereft of the context that had made it great.
And now two of the first major releases of the new year, both sequels, have dropped their demos and the time has come for self-important douches like me to weigh in and give our two cents on them. Of course, I’m not a professional reviewer and so, like other consumers, I have to rely on demos. And so I thought it might be nice to look not just as these two demos, but the demos of their predecessors as well as the concept of what makes a good demo.
Killzone 2 doesn’t really make a blip of my radar, incredibly high review scores aside, so the first major releases for me this year are about to drop: Project Origin, F.E.A.R.’s long awaited proper sequel, and Dawn of War II, Relic’s amalgam of their two most successful games in recent memory. Both DoW2’s beta and Project Origin’s demo appeared at about the same time, and they both made profound impressions on me.
To start this off I’d like to bring up the first F.E.A.R.’s demo. It was the first demo I’d ever played that made me excited for a game. I must’ve played through it seven or eight times before I bummed a ride to get to Best Buy after its release. It was well crafted, intelligent, and expertly paced; everything that F.E.A.R. itself would be. It gave access to the toys and gameplay that would make F.E.A.R. great and didn’t beat us over the head with its horror aspects. They were irregular and disturbing in a way that horror games usually aren’t, thematically true to their cinematic inspirations.
Not to say that F.E.A.R. was piss your pants scary, just that it operated on the same principle as Eternal Darkness: it’s a lot more unnerving when you alter the context of the game and force the player to adapt to these new circumstances. By spacing out these events and never letting the player know what was around the next corner the F.E.A.R. demo managed to communicate exactly the sort of experience the game had. I’d also like to praise it for being a spoiler free piece of game consisting of a few gameplay segments slapped together, rather than levels ripped from the finished project. It ensured that people who purchased the game would experience something new. At the risk of sounding cliché, it showed that the designers cared.
Judging from the demo, Project Origin’s hasn't learned a single lesson from the original series, bullet time aside. The opening scene could be charitably described as a “horror sequence,” which consists of our latest voiceless protagonist following Alma down a burning, backlit city street. There are no traces of the remarkable and unnerving sound design from the original F.E.A.R.. In fact judging by the scene’s placement they want us to get good and comfortable with these horror sequences. They’ve essentially used one as our tutorial.
The game goes on to go through a 1-1 ratio of gunplay to horror sequences. Each time a gun battle ends you can reliably expect your next experience to be “horror” themed. It kills the pacing of the game and, moreover, negates any sense of surprise you might normally get from the events they show you. They even kill off a character in the demo, a character introduced through a text file and a few random sound bites, as if we’re supposed to care. It’s reminiscent of Jankowski’s death in the original F.E.A.R., but the ambiguity surrounding that was easily the more disturbing element. And let’s not forget that Jankowski's arc was a big fat unresolved plot point, one of the few disappointments I had with the original F.E.A.R.. Basing a large part of your demo on one of the weakest parts of your previous game is a bad idea.
What’s worse, the staple gunplay seems off somehow. In F.E.A.R. it was fun, if routine. Your approach to each scenario could vary and multiple tactics were effective at any difficulty level. Even the demo managed to showcase this, giving you access to new and interesting toys with each encounter.
Project Origin’s demo, on the other hand, consists of an unexpected arsenal of SMGs, assault rifles and shotguns until the very end, when it hurls a bunch of genuinely interesting weapons at us without giving us time to use them. But even within the arsenal we’re given none of the guns are particularly compelling, a crippling factor for a first person shooter. The assault rifle is sort of enjoyable, but judging by the number of headshots it takes to down an enemy it might as well be shooting spitballs.
Even the powered armor sequence at the demo’s finale seemed poorly planned. The interface is claustrophobic rather than awe inspiring and the controls are pretty clumsy. What could’ve been an amazing “holy shit” moment was instead sort of “meh.” Enemies will walk into your field of vision, obscured by the atrocious mech interface, and you’ll squeeze off a few rounds at a time until you stop seeing incoming fire indicators. The giant mech's appearance at demo’s end added a little variety to it, but it reeked of trying to capture the “Oh fuck” moment at the end of the original F.E.A.R. demo, and ended far too quickly with too little of a threat.
So in case you haven’t gathered, I didn’t like the Project Origin demo. In fact, it convinced me not to buy the game, which wouldn’t be quite such an accomplishment but I’d been looking forward to PO since its initial announcement. If I hadn’t played the demo I’d probably be $50 in the hole. Now I’m going to spend that money on something more productive, like hard drugs or prostitutes. The demo was toothless, clumsy, and made me think that the game would be more of the same. Still, I encourage you to play it before you make a decision. Maybe you’ll see something I haven’t.
And now on to Dawn of War II. The original Dawn of War and its demo were solid pieces of work. The demo wasn’t a “here’s the first two hours of the game” segment, instead giving the player brief storyline previews and access to late game units. It did a solid job of demonstrating what Dawn of War had to offer: visceral, varied strategic combat with an intriguing balance between infantry and vehicles.
And the game itself lived up to expectations, although the storyline was overlong, plodding and repetetive. It was all fun, original, and realized a classic IP in an exciting way. It even expanded on the way RTSes work, introducing new ideas about map and resource control. It had a lot in common with Starcraft, sure, but Starcraft had a lot in common with Warhammer 40k in the first place. It was a new take on some old ideas, and even if you didn’t think it was the “best game evar” it’s hard to deny that DoW had some interesting pull and deserved a look.
Enter Dawn of War II’s multiplayer beta, one of the most compelling games I’ve played in recent memory. I’m a big fan of RTSes that focus on the control of territory or specific tactical assets and limit resources. Myth was one of my favorite games of all time, and I still play DotA more than I play conventional WC3 (and enjoy it a lot more). So perhaps I’m just the sort of person this is targeted to, but Dawn of War II’s gameplay is expertly crafted.
DoW2 has the series traditional focus on map control, along with its much touted removal of base building but what is more compelling is the way all the various tactical pieces fit together. Flanking, mixed forces and fixed positions are all necessities in this game, and I rarely find myself giving an attack move order, the traditional RTS standard. Instead the game encourages you to think of the resources you can lose or gain with a specific move.
Each time my scout marines probe a control point or my devastators pack up their heavy weapon I find myself a little afraid. What if the scouts meet heavy resistance? What if the devastators are ambushed before they can set themselves up again? Every action brings with it tension and the chance for great rewards, even if its as simple as choosing how to move a unit from point A to B. Paired with a default game mode which allows for last minute comebacks and daring gambits, Dawn of War II is an intense and fun RTS, and probably the best crafted RTS I've played in almost six years.
Of course, it is a beta, and as such is plagued with bugs, balance issues and other problems. Games for Windows Live is one such problem. The service, which works well enough on the X-Box, seems horribly out of place on the PC. Its clumsy matchmaking, tiny chatboxes and piss poor voice communication all take away from the game experience. I understand why they’ve attached it; Microsoft wants to make it a big deal, and they need a great game to make sure that people will actually use it. But the entire thing is crippled by bad design. Jerry Holkins has done a much better, more reputable write-up on this, but I just want to say that as I play I wish I could use Steam’s friend and matchmaking tools over the ones provided. As the late Mitch Hedburg might say, GFWL is like a midget trying to strangle the grown man that is Dawn of War II. It’s not a real threat but it is an inconvenience, and it’s fighting the product tooth and nail.
But even with these issues the beta has convinced me to buy the game. If it maintains even a fraction of the promise it holds now it’ll be amazing. And, given the treatment Relic has given past serieses I’m very excited to see what the rest of the Warhammer universe is going to look like come expansion time. And all this excitement has spawned from a beta that crashes just about every fifth game.
So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the demo and the beta are underappreciated means of reaching the consumer. Generally, people aren’t stupid and they want a chance to assess a product. Showing them that you know this, and that you’ve made something incredible even if it still needs some polish, is just a good thing. And trying to overhype a project that adds nothing to an existing franchise is just a bad idea. If you’re going to fail try to do it quietly. The first Killzone should have taught us all that.
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