Demo Roundup Part 2: From Dust, Payday: The Heist, BloodRayne: Betrayal, and Sideway: New York

I really wasn't expecting for all of these to be downloaded, but apparently signing up for Playstation Plus has perks I didn't realize. I logged in and it had updated my firmware, downloaded patches for games, and finished downloading all these demos (and more) during the previous night. Very Nice.

From Dust 
I've heard several complaints about this game, but I actually enjoyed it. I think I'll go ahead and purchase the full version. The graphics are nice and the terraforming gameplay is unlike anything I've done before, and I'm always looking for new play experiences.

The controls are a little sensitive and the camera could be a bit better, but I imagine that I'll overcome those difficulties in time.

Man, does anyone else remember how awesome Populous was? I only had a demo for it that came with SimCity 3000 and it was fantastic.

Payday: The Heist
I'm not normally one for first-person shooters, but this was sufficiently different to hold my interest. It's a 4-player cooperative objective based shooter.

The demo level had me robbing a bank and breaking into the vault. It was actually quite interesting. The shooting was solid and the game features non-linear levels and solid action. Overall the experience was very fun.

The levels are apparently somewhat random so you get a different experience each time you play it .


BloodRayne: Betrayal

Does this image interest you in it? I bet it doesn't.

The demo actually reminded me of Shank, except it seems to be much better than Shank was. The art is repetitive and somewhat low quality, but the gameplay is actually really solid.

The thing that's great about it is that it seems to fully embrace the campiness of the series. From the gameplay videos I'm seeing, the levels get much better later in the game. I'm definitely interested in this game now.

With an excellent combat system and good encounter design, this get's my recommendation.

Sideway: New York
Hmmm...a visually innovative platformer with a shallow gimmick. Yep, it's not very good. The idea of this game is that you've been transformed into a graffito and are platforming around with graffiti powers on the side of buildings. You'll go around the corners of buildings and walk on their roofs. If you approach a roof from a different wall, the gravity while on the roof will be different than if you approached form a different wall.

The problem with making a platformer is that an interesting gimmick isn't good enough. If the baseline platforming isn't solid enough the whole game just falls apart. The most important part of a platformer is the jump. If you don't have a good jump, it's over. And overall, I'd say that the jump in Sideway is just too floaty. It'd be like Halo platforming, and that's definitely a bad thing.

They couldn't have all been winners today.