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Magazine disks, free from stores, or downloaded over XB Live. Here's the catch-all thread to talk about new demos, new demo availability, and interesting trailers.

OK, found this demo just today for Spore.

It seems to have been a round for a little while, but it's new to me.

Seems interesting, and it's very pretty even in this early stage.

heh, and here's the link

The first 360 E3 demo is up, and it's Test Drive Unlimited. Tomorrow is Lost Planet, and Wednesday is MotoGP6.

I will say this - TDU is not my style of game at all (open-ended driving lifestyle sim), but it looks amazing. A go-anywhere chunk of Hawaii with great lighting and realism, and these spiff pseudo-holographic checkpoints and markers.

You're a bastard, I thought it was going to be a playable demo :)

Just call me ODB 2.0
=)

Spore is really the only game I'm excited about coming out this year (besides Oblivion). Should be cool as hell.

Lost Planet demo is up now in the Marketplace.

And it's FANTASTIC.

I've been excited about that one for awhile.

Man, playing the demo has put me firmly in the "buy it the day it's released" camp. It looks great, plays really smooth... and you get to PILOT A DAMN MECH.

I got to what I think was the end boss fight on both of the missions that were provided on the downloadable demo. Damn does this game look good.

What is the release date and is there a multi-player component at all?

It is amazing what a difference in quality there is between this and TD:unlimited which manages to crash my 360 all the damn time.

SWEET MERCIFUL FUCK!!!!!!!

I just tried this. Boom! Boom! Monsters! Explosions! Robots!!!

The most amazing moment for me was fighting the second boss monsters. Durring the fight my character was lugging around one of the gatlin guns that the VS's use.

EXPLODO!!!!

Steambot Chronicles- Finally picked this up last week, as the store got their copies in at last (it was a freebie w/Metal Saga). Like Smylie, I had a lot of trouble with the controls, but I liked the free-form gameplay more than he did. Scattered, yes, but it felt more coherent than, say, Romancing SaGa.

The story begins typically, as the unfortunately named Vanilla is awakened on a beach by Connie. He has no memory, and there's a shipwreck in the distance. There's also a Trotmobile. What's a Trotmobile? Well, it's kind of like a headless Transformer: it's a car that's been rejiggered into walking weaponized robot, an Autobot Wanzer.

You take Connie and the friends in her band all the way back to the oddly named Nefroburg, where you can do pretty much whatever you want around the place until you hit Connie's band concert, in the town square which is raided by thieves at the point where the demo cuts out. Oooooh, nice cliffhanger!

Trot control has been cited as an issue in the reviews, and I agree it's not perfect: combat is fine, even enjoyable, but the dual analog control is a bit too complex, making moving around correctly difficult to get used to. Turning is particularly annoying, but I was able to take care of that by pulling the sticks in opposite directions.

Despite these problems, however, I found the game very entertaining and pre-ordered it. Maybe I'm becoming a Mylonas-esque snob or something, but I liked the game world and the fact that it felt different from what what's out there right now. So I'll give it a shot.

--Dan

LOCO!

ROCO!

LOCO!

ROCO!

LOCO ROCO!

The love for this demo is utterly justified.

Played two 360 demos recently:

HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY - maybe I wasn't in the right mood, but at any rate I didn't care for it. When the character controls are even stiffer and more constrained than in Oblivion, I'm not a fan. I guess I'm just a Zelda fan at heart.

RUMBLE ROSES - I'd never played one of these before, and literally knew nothing more than "it's scantily clad women wrestling". I figured there must be some redeeming quality to it, something to make it rise above the level of low-grade softcore nerdrotica. I was wrong.

The Rumble Roses demo made me embarrassed to be a gamer. It's uniformly awful, with no trace of the mighty Veil of Irony within three miles of the thing.

Why not just go all the way, and publish a lesbian sex simulator?

And title it "Uncanny Valley".

The non-interactive demo of Rumble Roses in which they showed specifically how to make a character's breasts larger...and then played video with the change was - well, pathetic.

The playable demo includes the "photo shoot" feature.

Nuff said.

Oh, yuck.

Probably the most endearing game I've ever played, and lots of fun.

I'm a little uncertain as to whether it can sustain a full game, but it's earned my trust.

If Lemmings can sustain a full game, Loco Roco can.

Been playing a bit of the demo for World Soccer Tour '06 for the PSP, and if I had any interest in soccer of sport games in general, I think I'd really like this.

It looks good, the controls are nice, and the load times aren't awful, I suppose.

Just not for me.

Played the Prey and Chrome Hounds demos yesterday and today. Chrome Hounds is not available to North America yet, but the demo isn't region coded, so I set up a dummy Japanese account on my 360 and DL'd it. For anyone interested, the instructions are here: http://www.gamersreports.com/article/19/

As for the demos:

Chrome Hounds is all about customization and multiplayer, and the demo features neither. It's a pair of boring single player missions, with your standard "go from A to B and eliminate all the opposition inbetween" fare. I was hoping to convince my clan to pick up Chrome Hounds, but the demo turned them off to the game. As for me, I'll probably pick it up and keep my fingers crossed that I'll find competent teamates on Live.

Prey was as good as it could have been. The campaign was straightforward enough, and neither portal-hopping nor gravity-switching ever threw me off, which was a little disappointing. The multiplayer was fun, but with only Deathmatch to play and 8 maps, I don't see myself playing it for more than a week or two.

As of right now, neither game seems worth $60, but I need something to tide me over until Dead Rising next month, so I'm leaning towards Chrome Hounds.

Is Dead Rising next month? I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Thanks for the DLP recommendation many moons ago, BTW. As seen in another thread, I am LOVING mine!

I enjoyed the Prey demo too - I'm hoping it finds a way to get past the "goo and pipes" architecture.

I don't know if it's even possible to make the mostly linear story-driven FPS "fresh" anymore. The enw portal, gravity, and spirit mechanics help, but it's still a bit samey. I like the freeze effect, though.

Chromehounds is ploddy. I know it's supposed to be ploddy, but it's got Slow Mech Big Map syndrome bigtime. The scenery is pretty, but there's only so many minutes you can slog around it before you start to yawn. Nice explosions, though.

Dead Rising is August - the most recent GameSpot hands-on was very promising.

If there were one game tempting me to get a 360 right now, it's the one that lets you fight zombies in a shopping mall with a bowling ball and lightsaber.

I shudder to think what will happens if it ends up as good as I'm imagining it to be.

It took me ~15 seconds to do a rotation in my mech. That's just not acceptable. Nor fun. Also, If I can build future fighting robots, I should heave a reticle without going into shaky-cam. Overall, it was not worth the effort and potential bannage of making a german account.