Be Excellent To Each Other

There's a new mech combat game on XBLA called 'War World'... it's a neat cross of Heavy Gear, Mechwarrior and deathmatch (with a dash of Virtual On, I suppose).

There's a lot of little games to play, a variety of mechs ranging from little Heavy Gear-style humanoids to giant stomping beasts reminiscent of the venerable Riflemans and Marauders of Battletech. Each has a special ability (some can shoot through walls, some can fly) and it all looks superbly good fun. There's only one play mode and one mech on offer, which is fair enough as it's a trial.

However! I don't know how the fuck I'm meant to decide if the game is worth buying or not if THEY ONLY LET YOU PLAY FOR 20 FUCKING SECONDS.

Arse - this looked like fun.

Ha! I remember I had one with a real time clock for how long the demo should last, sadly the loading time was entirely dependent on the quality of your PC, so by the time it had loaded, I had about 10 seconds left to play! Rubbish.

The Drivel (Driver, what a shit game) demo that came with Offical PS Mag took about 2 minutes to load in the demo level. You could fail the mission in about ten seconds, and even if you deliberate arsed about you wouldn't be playing for much longer than 30 seconds.

I rather like the demos of the 18 Wheels of Steel series (and its sister product, Bus Driver) in that, much like the XBLA, you get the whole product that instantly unlocks with a code. You can play for an hour before the demo stops working.

Psycho Pinball (widely acclaimed as one of the best PC pinball games) had a stingy time limited demo that angered me so much I refused to buy the full game.

With War World, I'm surprised the developers didn't learn from Koei's harsh lessons learned with the Fatal Inertia demo (which put a lot of people off buying the full game)

Bus Driver is awesome!

Not as awesome as Tokyo Bus Guide, though. And no game has had better bus physics than Midtown Madness.

I've never owned a DC, so haven't played it. Bus Driver was a very relaxing game.

You are the only person I have ever known who could have a well-formed opinion on which game as the best bus physics.

Something I am sure you are quite thankful for, no doubt! Imagine knowing two of them, and they didn't agree!

I'm sure many women will be experienced with that length of time, having already had this frustration with a game called Sex*


*this is no reflection on my performance**

** seriously I go for hours***

*** has anyone got a ladder, I seem to have dug myself a rather large hole for the sake of a cheap gag. Sh*t

But having a meter (and penalties) for maintain a specific brake pressure on a game which will likely be played on the keyboard is idiocy. I don't want to have to tappa tappa tappa every time I slow down, dammit.

Imagine if that happened and it still wasn't the nerdiest conversation you'd been in!

I'd have to kill myself, frankly.

Now which game has the best bicycle physics?

I can tell you what game DOESN'T - No Fear Downhill Mountainbiking by Codebastards. The least convincing bike physics ever. Say you're on your bike, and you lose it a bit and are left pointing at a fence or tree or something. To get back on course, do you:

A) back up painfully slowly away from the obstacle before continuing
B) grind your way slowly forward against the obstacle until you're pointing in the right direction again
C) Just plant your fucking feet down, lift the front wheel up, turn around, plonk the front wheel back down and resume your ride, having only lost four seconds.

I'm personally quite proud of my record-breaking speed runs.

Was this on the PSx? If so, I have played it,* and can safely say the answer is option C.


*should there be a comma here, or a semi-colon, or nothing at all?

I probably would have gone with "If so, I have played it; it's safe to say the answer is option C."

Yup, it was on the PSX, and yes, the correct answer is option C.

Except, option C is not possible in the game, leaving me to conclude that nobody on the dev team has ever actually ridden a bike.

Bully has excellent bicycle physics.

Please explain further, I played the demo and didn't like it, but then saw the game for a fiver and picked it up.

Is it better than I'm expecting then?

It was too long ago, I can't remember, but I remember there being a fair bit on the games websites slagging off the demo.

I was quite looking forward to it, myself... I think in the end it got 6/10 scores.

Am I the only one who upon seeing a demo I don't like think "Well, I'm not buying that then" as opposed to "I don't like it, but it's cheap, so hey ho?"

The Xbox Forum is full of people compaining how they thought the demo was shit so they unlocked the full game to play it and now they don't like it. I don't understand the logic. I thought the demo was so shit even if it was the BEST GAME EVER I wouldn't buy it out of principle.

It lets you play until you've killed 2 robots.

That took me about 8 seconds.

That level of idiocy in the demo shows that they don't know how games work, so I prompety deleted it.

Regardless of the price, if it's shit I won't be buying it.

*cough*Cricket*cough*

As a videogame of cricket, it's not a bad approximation. I can't help it that you don't like the best sport in the world.

Looks like you're not missing much 4/10 from Eurogamer

I spent a couple of puzzled minutes scratching my head and wondering whether I'd done something wrong after my first go. Then the same thing happened again on my second go and the penny finally dropped that, yes, it was possibly the worst demo ever.