Game Demo Day

[authors note: I am behind in blogging. In real life it's a few hours until April 6, but in this chronological blog date, it's only March 30th. I clearly have a lot to write, and would like to try and catch up. So, we'll see how this goes.]

Too many video game demos.

It's my final day in California, and it's my final day with video games. This means but one thing – play as many as possible before I lose the ability for some great time to come. I can't recall all the things I played, and that's probably for the best. There was a great collection of terrible in the mix. I'm now really starting to appreciate the difference between a good game, and a god awful game. And it's shocking that they still exist. Back in the day you could just flood shelf space and someone would buy your game, but in this world of demos, if you have a crap product – well then people will know.

It's a good thing most people don't research before they buy.

There was some terrible fairytale game that I thought was promising – it was not. There was a game called WET which you go and shoot people in bullet time, sliding, jumping, and wall running. If the animations were polished, and the game wasn't suffering from disconnected elements – such as the transition in and out of slow motion – it could have been something. As it was? Lame.

Then there was Just Cause 2. This had promise, but I failed at it, failed because I just couldn't get a handle on the Bionic Commander grapple hook. There seemed to be a lot of promise to this one though. As for Red Faction, which I'm told was lovely – I just couldn't get into it either. But I think this was just failing of the demo. The game seemed solid, I just didn't have a handle on the controls.

Then there were the good games. Games like God of War 3, which really made me want to go back and play 1 and 2 again. Well 2 for the first time. I noticed that the protagonist could fly momentarily using Icarus's wings. This implies that in an earlier game he killed said winged god and ripped them off. I would like to play out that section.

And Bayonetta. I was not expecting this to be as good as it was, but it was so slick and polished – and a whole lot of silly gun shooting, magic, tongue in cheek fun. Good for it being such a lovely game.

And then there were the downloadable games. There is a great number of cute little games that are small, and only a few bucks. The demos of these were pretty lovely too. Pixel Junk Eden? I highly recommend it. It's just a fun trippy game. And Fat Princess? capture the flag meets the internet shouting out ideas. The demos for both had a good amount of full game play – so even for one not looking to buy, it's worth checking out.

At six my buddy got back from work. It was at this point that I subjected him to the last two years of games, through demos. To this point the PS3 was mostly just a movie player for him. But this may have changed (and I'm not sure if this is a terrible terrible thing I've brought upon him or not.) But he saw Bio Shock, and Heavy Rain (what a demo – as wonderful as I thought it would be!), and all those mentioned above... except for the terrible ones, which I'd filtered.

Yes – that's me, filtering the terrible, bringing video game love to all the good boys and girls.

After more gaming we decided that would would probably be an acceptable thing. In this case? Burgers. Fridge burgers, with year old ketchup, and BBQ sauce that still seemed alright. Cutting mold off cheese made that just fine too.

Feast feast feast, and then that was that. Day over. Stay over. Tomorrow I will wake up and head on out to the airport. Huzzah!