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Games that beat the shit of of recent demos

category: general [glöplog]
The darkness looks pretty nice! Some inspiration by Max Payne II though..
added on the 2007-04-22 21:27:25 by Stelthzje Stelthzje
49games looks like "family entertainment" or something.. somebody should give them a huge chunk of money so they can make a really impressive game.
added on the 2007-04-22 21:28:55 by Stelthzje Stelthzje
i was dead impressed with "shadow of the colossus". technically it's not that great: the engine is good but too slow.. but the music is simply astounding.. in combination with the story, scenery and action it's an awesome experience.

FFXII is a totally different game. this one is is so fucking rich with detail... only taking a look at, for instance, each one of the weapons you can carry (and there are many dozens) will produce this feeling. there are many more examples: the character design, the scenery, the gambit macro system. the engine is damn smooth and has a completely steady framerate. i could find no real bugs or odd stuff even after 80 hours or so of playing. it's simply fool proof. i saw 1995 and starstruck as gems of the modern demoscene which pooped in the front garden of the gamesbiz. however, with a game like this
i think they still have a distance to travel in terms of design.
added on the 2007-04-22 21:29:40 by earx earx
earx, if you enjoyed "shadow of the colossus (ps2)", then you might also be impressed by "ico (ps2)" some years before from the same creators. same style.
added on the 2007-04-22 22:35:17 by scythoior scythoior
earx: and god of war 2 :)
added on the 2007-04-22 22:37:23 by keops keops
what about recca on the famicom?

added on the 2007-04-22 22:42:32 by _-_-__ _-_-__
or maybe gunstar heroes?
added on the 2007-04-22 22:44:05 by _-_-__ _-_-__
A few weeks ago in Las Vegas I played a couple of video games for the first time in quite some time. They were a couple of old upright arcade machines, Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede. Ms. Pac-Man still rocks.
If you would make demos that look like the games mentioned here, everybody would start complaining because it is only a boring 3D flyby and requires the latest hardware.
Definitely, I would be the first to do so.

Besides, as inane or derivative most demos' look are, games nowadays are still in their infancy in coming to terms with what they want to look like. Granted, graphic designers have been putting a lot of work (see for example the halflife2 games and their crafted colors and cities) yet they fail to be bold stylistically.

Especially as they're often trying to look real first, and applying movie-like approach to design. (photography/direction) I guess it's the only way you get such big teams to agree on anything: make it look somewhat real and relevant to everybody. Throw enough graphicians and they'll manage to reach whatever goal you set them out to do, because they can relate on a very basic level. After a few generations those games simply look dated as we realize how broken their simulation of reality is. And damn that guy in the screenshot of alan wake looks fucking creepy. Not in a good way.. rather in a break the fourth wall kind of way.

The only counter examples I can think of are capcom's killer7 or things like vib ribbon. Or games of a more iconic nature. (Katamari Damacy springs to mind as being able to be both stylistically recognizable, easy to approach, and somewhat realistically looking)

Shadow of the colossus and ICO still are good example of games mentionned here that look like they had someone with an aesthetical vision behind them. Very smart and significant games.

added on the 2007-04-22 23:37:31 by _-_-__ _-_-__
Although we sometimes see demos and games collide, when both make it cheap.

When they apply the standard i'm out of ideas approach to looking fancy: let's put glow everywhere and shiny lines or reflections and people will tell us we are beautiful.

Think tron2.0.

I reckon I enjoy some of that. It's just pretty stale as far as aesthetics go.
added on the 2007-04-22 23:41:21 by _-_-__ _-_-__
[url=http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=25861]What rob said.[7url]
added on the 2007-04-22 23:43:17 by xernobyl xernobyl
A lot of these games look really great, but as soon as I see that the main character is some crackhead running around with a gun, I get this feeling that playing it would be boring and pointless. I'm so tired of games like that. It's getting to the point where, if the character has a gun, I'm automatically not interested.

What I like about demos is that you get everything out of them in 5 minutes, you don't need to spend 60+ hours slaughtering an entire population with a handgun to see everything.

On a side note, I really really enjoyed this game: glowgrass. It only took like an hour or two to finish.
added on the 2007-04-23 00:03:54 by yesso yesso

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