An interesting thing about video game demos is that rather than watch a video of the game in action, you get to play it and experience it for yourself. For a movie trailer, different scenes are carefully put together to showcase the movie without giving away too much about it.
Game demos are kind of the same way. Developers are often on the fence about them because they can give away too much about the game or actually playing it may turn away some gamers. Of course, really good demos may get people excited about it.
The latter was the case with the God of War III demo, at least in my case. I had never played the first two and had only seen images of the third one. When I bought District 9, it came with the GoW III demo. I decided to try it out.
The demo begins about halfway into the game (as I found out after buying the actual game) and you start off with weapons and power-ups you don’t actually have when you reach that point in the actual game. I should note that many demos do this; they give you items and powers earlier than normal so you can try them out. Anyway, you start out walking around a corridor and you see the lava titan climbing Mount Olympus in the distance. The depth and scale is amazing here and you can really tell how monstrous the titan is as he scales the mountain.
You fight your way through enemies, which include skeleton creatures, centaurs (which you can gut), harpies, and a chimera. You reach a point where you kill the sun god Helios, by ripping off his head and using it as a lantern.
You walk through dark caverns, lighting them up with your newfound lantern. You finally reach the chain of fate (I think that’s what it’s called) and you fly up the chain with your wings (taken from Icarus). You dodge beams, walkways, and falling hot Cheetos (actually just lava rocks) until you reach the end and you see the lava titan in front of you. He reaches to grab you as Kratos (the main character) flies at him with a blade ready to stab. As he approaches the titan the screen goes black and the God of War III logo slams onto the screen, ending an action packed demo.
The demo is actually one of the best I’ve ever played. I immediately wanted the actual game and did in fact buy it because of the demo. The demo was different from a trailer of the same game in that you get to experience it yourself. You get to press the O button repeatedly to rip off Helios’ head. It ended right as it was really picking up and left on a cliffhanger, making you want more.
I’ve seen some great movie trailers but they never had the same feel as a good game demo. A movie trailer isn’t too hard to put together (not that I’d know) but selecting different scenes to show off is quite different from deciding what part of a game you let players experience.
This is tricky because some games have slow parts with little to no action and some games take a while to get good weapons and power ups. If you let players demo a slow part of the game, it might turn people away. If you give them too much, the same might happen as well. Creating a good demo is difficult and some developers refuse to do it. If the GoW III demo had me solving puzzles, I might not have wanted it afterward (especially the puzzle that took me 20 minutes to figure out). On the flip-side, if the demo was the fight with Poseidon (one of the most epic fights ever put into a game) it would’ve killed the rest of the game, because how do you top a fight on that grand of a scale?
The demo was exceptionally well done but that’s not always the case with game demos. I think overall, crafting a good demo is far more challenging than making a good trailer, because so many more elements go into it. It’s not just a visual showcase; it’s an experience – an experience that should leave you wanting to play the actual game when it comes out.
~JV
