For some reason, I never seem to try out demos. Even of the games I'm really really really looking forward to (like Fallout Tactics), I never seem to get around to going through all the steps of downloading, installing, and trying out. I'm not sure why that is.

Anyway, I somehow overcame that when Bad Mojo lent me his PC Gamer demo disk. I guess it was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I was a bit tired of coing for Night's Edge, so I popped in the demo disk and installed some demos.

First one I tried was for a real-time strategy game called "Real War". The idea behind it is that it is a modern-setting that uses contemporary units (no Obelisks of Light). It makes use of air, sea, and land vehicles, as well as infantry. I can't really say anything bad about the game, but then I can't really say much good about it either. It's likely that there are intricacies and additional command keys I didn't know about. The truth is, I found it a little unpolished, and uninspired. Tanks shoot at each other, and moving targets take less damage than stationary ones. But can you get your tank to move and shoot at the same time? Nope, even though the M60 main battle tank is more than capable of doing so and still retaining its accuracy. Planes circle the sky, launching missiles at each other. Hrm.

Next up was Operation Flashpoint. I'd seen an mpg movie of the game while searching for M60 machinegun pics one day. It looked interesting and had some eerie similarities to Night's Edge. The game certainly is breaking some new ground, though I found the weapon models to be sub-par and the combat sequences to be mainly an exercise in chaos. Your squad has a "Leader" that issues orders to the team, though it took me a while to even figure out what number I was (each team member has a number designation). The leader's voice is a flat monotone that is strangely reminiscent of my old university's computerized class registration phone system. This is no doubt due to the fact that the leader's orders are simply a stream of concatenated prerecorded words stuck together, without inflection or accents. I found the game played rather slow on my system, and attributed this to the wide open landscape on this mission. The "map" was very Tribes-like, in that it was a large terrain area with no end in sight. In fact, you do a lot of travel in the one mission included with the demo, on foot, in a jeep, on the back of a truck, and in a doomed helicopter. But still, I got piss poor framerate, a lot worse than I get in Tribes 2 (and I was playing in 640x480, while in Tribes I play at 800x600). I hope they're working on the game's appearance in modes other than 1024x768, because the demo's support for them was pretty bad. Overall, an intriguing game and I hope they work out the kinks.

Due to the last outLAN, I have bad associations with Giants: Citizen Kabuto. But I wanted to try out the demo anyway. This was like the 2nd demo, which was a few missions for the Reaper race (water chicks). Played well, kind of reminded me of Heretic 2. Graphics were nice. I haven't finished the two missions included with the demo, so maybe I'll have more to say later on.

The last thing wasn't really a demo, it was the full "They Hunger" mod for Half-Life. Overall, nicely done. The best feature of the game is probably its maps. The weapon models were somewhat shoddy, and their functionality almost totally mirrored games from Half-Life or the Opposing Forces add on. For example, there was some kind of submachinegun that looked kind of like a Thompson M1 submachinegun (military model), but had a strange white handguard and fired and launched grenades just like the MP5 from Half-Life. I guess the head programmer had some difficult with the coding. The majority of game's monsters (zombies) were all very simple, doing straight forward claw attacks like the head crab scientists from HL. A lot of the other monsters were taken straight from HL, simply reskinned (zombie cops), or taken directly and not reskinned at all (head crabs, those barnacle beasts with long tongues, water leeches, or the giant water monsters). Still, the team succeeded with what was likely the intended goal: a scary game. The atmosphere is top-notch, and there's even an intro to the game which drives the plot (sort of). I haven't finished yet, and I'm anxious to see what else the mod has in store for me.