I was in a demo mood last night, and got 3 of them, Paraworld, Star Wars Empire at War Forces of Corruption and Flight Simulator X. Read on for my comments Paraworld
This is a very strange strategy type building resource collecting type game. You start off as controlling these three explorer people, who are shipped away to an island to “train” for an upcoming expedition. It is quite a classic build an army and take over game by the looks of it, but you get to train dinosaurs as chariots and fight barbarians who have some BIG armoured dinos to crush you! It sounds childish, but I found it a lot of fun (kinda the same thing I suppose…) The graphics aren’t brilliant and the plot makes some jumps that require some…suspension of disbelief (you are training dinosaurs though…) It was good fun for the small time I played, and would recommend if you want something a bit different.Star Wars – Empire at War: Forces of Corruption Expansion
As well as having an insanely long and annoying to type name, this is the expansion to one of my favourite strategy games of late (which I have yet to purchase the full thing…still only got the demo…) It is basically more of the same goodness from Empire at War, but with an added Corruption aspect, which allows you to do some bribery or dabble in the black market. You also get to steal an artefact from Jabba the Hut! My only gripe with the demo was it cut off and told me to buy the game or quit just as I was finishing up a level. Maybe it was meant to, I don’t know, but seemed a bit abrupt. Good fin if you liked the original. (Try the original demo!)Flight Simulator X
When I started writing this post, I hadn’t actually gotten round to trying out this demo. I have always been interested in Flight Sims, but never found one I can actually use (I do have a reasonable joystick now, that could help my cause). For example, I just started up this demo and loaded a Caribbean Landing mission. Easy enough you say? Pointing in the right direction and given vocal instructions telling you exactly what to do. Not so. When you don’t know the controls in a game like this, things go wrong. In 5 minutes I managed to do get myself into an unrecoverable tail to nose spin and crashed into the water. All the nice woman could say, just before I hit the deck, was “We are going a little fast, reduce your speed to 150 knots” (or similar)Now, you may wonder what this makes me think of this game? I think it is great fun! I love flight sims for the very reason you can do stupid things like that if you want, or take it deadly seriously and actually have a wee memorial if you lose a plane…Once I get the controls sussed a bit more, I will get back to you!
That’s it for now, time for bed. I also have gotten another demo and a beta for a couple more games and will post my thoughts on them when I get round to it!