Demo Rundown March '09 Part 2

Currently listening to
Rage Against the Machine
Microphone Fiend
Album : Renagades



Ninja Blade



Oh Ninja Blade, how you've pained me since I started your demo up on my xbox. There is no redeeming value in this game for me. My first thought was: "Ooh From Software, they made some OK Tenchu games, maybe this will be pretty good. I was sadly disappointed. The demo starts out in 2015 Neo-Tokyo with a chopper full of Ryu Hayabusa clones. When your character hops out, he is thrusted into a lame Quick Time Event (the first of many) and takes out what looks like a bunch of giant eagles. Once you hit the ground, you're thrusted into a broken down building full of generic monster baddies. You start out with 4 different weapons. One being a shuriken like weapon, which you throw with terrible accuracy. The Crosshairs are slow and the weapon itself is almost useless to the point where you don't even want to use it.

The Demo is full of ideas that have already been seen and done to create an overall mediocre experience. There is a lackluster and long boss battle with a spider which starts in yet another QTE sequence, which by this point outnumbers the amount I've seen in any game in such a small amount of time. The controls are horribly average, the characters are generic and it feels like nothing more than sluggish Ninja Gaiden Clone. This one hits American Shores April 7th.

Guitar Hero : Metallica



This Demo gives you the chance to try your plastic instrument skills on 4 different songs.

• No Excuses - Alice in Chains
  
• Stone Cold Crazy - Queen
  
• Seek and Destroy - Metallica
  
• Sad But True - Metallica
  

Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of Metallica, but the demo contained two of their better songs. The demo also features the insultingly easy Beginner difficulty. As if easy weren't enough? I do understand it's probably for 5 year olds, but what Neo-yuppie scumbag wants their kid listening to Metallica in the first place.

The graphics look great and the band members look spot on, as they did in Guitar Hero Aerosmith. I'm not really sure what else I can say about a Guitar Hero demo. Anywhich way you slice it, it's Guitar Hero. It hits street March 29

The Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena



It amazes me to see how a mediocre character from a bad movie franchise can go as far as to make a good looking set of games. I like that the game is very stealth based and they definitely let you know that by throwing at you in a ship with a huge crew. When Riddick kills, you can see the fresh blood on his hands, which is nice attention to detail. Also, the kill animations themselves are impressive.

There is a neat section in the demo who you take over a bike-esque control node to guide drones equipped with arm blasters through heavily populated corridors to pick off some baddies before they reach you. I don't really buy the allure behind Riddick as a character so I found things relating to the story to be a bit silly. Vin Diesel's voice acting doesn't make that fact any better. I guess you're better off sticking to what you know. He does his thing well, it just doesn't do anything for me. Assault on Dark Athena is set to release April 7.

And with this concludes my first ever Demo Rundown. I hope to do this more, But I guess that is dependant on the way Xbox Live releases demos. Perhaps I oughta look into OXM as well. Thoughts?