Xbox 360 Demos (new)

NHL 08:

I not into hockey but I was quite impressed by the presentation of this game. The game run very fluid and fast paced. Didn't see any slowdowns. The controls felt tight, to me, which might not be saying much since I don't play this genre. Graphics and animations looked good also. Nice replay angles. If you're into Hockey, this looks damn good!

 

I just got caught up on demos. Here we go.

Beautiful Katamari:
- It's Katamari. The demo is only 3 minutes of free play. Terrible demo, but says nothing about the game, minus that the graphics aren't really what you might expect from next-gen (Viva Pinata shames it).

Eternal Sonata:
- I expected to hate this demo, but ended up really liking it. I don't typically like JRPG's, but the combat is very action/adventure-y, which I dug. I'm actually interested in picking this one up now.

Skate:
- I'm with everyone else. Awesome demo. EA has a hit on their hands.

Timeshift:
- I expected to be disappointed and I was. The shooting was overall pretty generic and unsatisfying. The AI would frequently screw up (enemies would just stand there facing a wall while I shot them in the head). The time power usage was juevenille. I couldn't even bother to finish the whole demo.

 

sega rally demo up. 690 MB.

oh and impressions of the juiced 2 demo. I only played one game (and late at night) but it took a while to join a game. I didn't really see lag or the cars jumping around. The graphics aren't that great and the reflections are 15 fps but the game looks ps2 level in cockpit mode. The game's very arcadey like need for speed and powersliding is kind of fun but everything else is kind of boring. I also don't like how the mirrors don't seem to reflect in cockpit mode.

update: played Sega Rally.

There's two tracks, canyon and tropical. lol it's fun switching between them.

Canyon specs: *** difficulty. square=75% star=25% (square is paved/hard road and star is offroad/soft road)

Tropical specs: **** difficulty. square=35% star=65%

Two cars are:

Subaru Impreza WRX STi SpecC Type RA (no specs given for either car)

Mistubishi Lancer Evolution IX FQ340

you can choose manual or automatic of course.

Two tire/suspension types:

OffRoad: More grip and traction on loose surfaces.

Road: Faster acceleration and higher top speed.


Canyon impressions:

I used a subaru with off-road tires. Track is packed dirt and highway. You can feel every tire track you go over in the dirt, it feels AMAZING. It makes you really avoid the ideal racing line when you can. I don't like that you can just bounce off walls and that there's no car damage/wear. racing is still very fun though. I tried as hard as I could but I couldn't out-mojo first place and got second.

Tropical impressions.

Decided to change it up and went for mitsubishi and road tires. immediately saw that was a bad idea and restarted with off-road tires. this is definitely an off-road track. I'm pretty sure the same tire tracks get deeper when cars go over them. the track was really hard, got last and 13 seconds behind first. There's some things like fences that can be destroyed when you hit them but you'll still bounced back by an invisible wall.

 

NBA Live 08:
Very nice. Similar to NHL. Not for me, but fans should be happy. Graphics and animations looked great and everything was fluid. Would be 10/10 if the players could fight, rap and flaunt their complete lack of education.

Juiced 2:
Avoid like a STD. If you want an arcade style game, get PGR4 or Dirt. Just avoid this. You're better off donating $60 for a charity. You'll feel better about that than spending it on this.

Spider Man: Friend of Foe
Should be called "Raped: Hard and Dry" because that's what would happen to $60 of your money. This should be a XBLA game at best.

FIFA 08:
Played well but I just realized that only thing more boring than watching soccer is playing a game about it! The die hards (euro's) should be pleased though.

Skate.
Most impressive demo out of the bunch. Again, a genre that has no appeal to me but I played through the demo a few times because it was fun. Gameplay/graphics/animations all looked good to me.

I'll try to play through Tony Hawk and Sega Rally tonight so I can slam them tomorrow. Sit tight!

 

NBA2k8 demo was up this morning (according to GAF it went up @5AM). Started d/ling it before I left for work. Impressions when I get home.

Edit: Impressions as promised.

It's improved in every way over 2k7. Graphically everything got an upgrade, most especially the crowd. The game moves much more fluidly and you can notice more animations resulting from contact. Defenders will roll off of picks and try to split the gap between the pick man and the ball handler in order to stay with their man. When driving to the basket offensive players will contort their bodies to get the shot off after contact. When instructed (via a new command mapped to the "B" button) to get open your teammate will set up their man to run them off a pick and curl for an open jump shot. This makes for some uncannily realistic-looking action.

The crowd noise is more emphasized this year and when the visiting team goes to the FT line they get loud. Unfortunately they don't react to the result of the shot and just stay loud the entire time the player is shooting, which diminishes the effect a bit. No announcers in the demo, which is understandable.

The AI seems much improved over last year. You can't cheat off your man as easily because the AI will pass the ball to the open man pretty quickly. They will also occasionally back-cut you if you try to beat them to a spot when defending off the ball. In last year's version you could gamble pretty freely (against the AI) to try to get steals by taking advantage of the lack of the above. Your AI teammates also position themselves more intelligently on offense than last year. And they keep running on the fast break! It was hugely annoying when your teammate would inexplicably stop at the 3 point line when you could have had a 2 on 1.

Other misc improvements I noticed:

Post-play celebration animations like chest bumps and low-fives with teammates.

On offense, a circle appears under the player that would receive a pass if you were to hit the pass button.

Shot stick has been tweaked and seems much more consistent and intuitive. When driving to the basket, for example, you can push the shot stick to veer slightly off to try to get the shot off against a defender trying to cut you off. Or once you have a lane to the basket push towards the basket to take the ball hard to the hole.

It's still not perfect, but is is clearly better than its predecessor, which was already a very good game. Fortunately, it seems that they changes they did make were all positive and if they can continue to refine the gameplay year on year, one day they may get there.

 

Sega Rally:

I'm actually pretty impressed! The groves being made in the track were awesome. This was by far the best use of rumble I've seen in a racing game. The lighting look a bit flat and the graphics a bit cartoony but I did enjoy the demo. Unfortunately, it'll be going up against PGR4 and I'll be getting that. Had this come out in Spring I'd be all over it. To me, it was much more fun to play than Dirt, even though Dirt look better.

 

I'm not a big fan of soccer games but I have PES6 and it's a very fun game to play online or with another person, although I always liked Fifa better because of the licenses. I wanted to get rid of PES forever and ever as a franchise and no I have good reasons to do so. Thank god

What impressed me the most about PES6, in general, was the naturalness of the game, since some things looked logical compared to real life, and that's not easy to achieve in a (sports) game.

Now, in PES08, the faster pace of the game destroyed that and it's as unrealistic as uninteresting, it's so fast it makes no sense. That's were Fifa 08 stands out, the pace of the game is very realistic, perhaps the most rational soccer game I've ever seen in that regard. Also, the graphics are better but Fifa's graphics has been always better in comparison with PES, so that's a minor point.

Fifa 08 features more game modes, leagues, licenses, better control (with everything in Manual you are the maximum responsible of good choices and mistakes) and you don't feel like you are playing basketball instead of soccer since, on the contrary to PES, the scores are "logical", because of the aforementioned pace of the game. EA need to tweak a couple of things; the ball-going-in-net animation and CPU's overpowered free throws, but other than that Fifa is superior (imo).

So, if I ever purchase a soccer game again, welcome EA, bye Konami. Anyways, as I already stated at the beginning of the post, soccer games are not my cup of tea.

 

If you enjoyed the demo, why do you need to wait for "favorable reviews"?