[bad soda]

I’m sure that Xbox Live has the demos also, but seeing as Live only makes new content available to Gold members for the first week I’ve decided to not bother with it, Gold member or not.  Real quick: you know what my problem with that is?  It doesn’t actually give us Gold members anything, everything remains exactly the same.  If I didn’t bother checking, I wouldn’t even know that “perk” was there.  Actually, if you see the date of the article I’ve linked, you’ll notice it’s 6 weeks old because I had no idea I was being granted such a virtual boon.  Now I am apparently more privileged than others.  Woo-f!@#ing-hoo.

edit: From the wording of Major Nelson, it’s possible that Live has always been like this, but they’re kind of restating it because we Gold members seemed somehow unsatisfied with our silent superiority.  How dare we have something unless others know they don’t?  I can’t remember waiting a week for my downloads when I was Silver, so I don’t know how long it was supposedly this way.  Either way, taking something away is a punishment, doesn’t count as a perk even to those left unscathed.

ANYWAY, the games:

[PS3] Devil May Cry 4 (demo from PSN) – FIRST IMPRESSION:  An absolute blast to play, but I’m still wary spending the $80 for the special edition.

It’s two parts, which seems familiar.  I think the Lost Planet demo Capcom put on the 360 way back when did the same thing.  It’s fun, giving a “two-level” taste of the game, though I prefer the more meaty demos like God of War II.  The two missions include a slaughterfest and boss guy, both controlling Nero.  As expected, he’s practically identical to Dante even with the addition of the Devil Bringer (his demonic arm).  If somehow they had never removed Dante and decided to give him Nero’s weapons and a crazy arm I would have been just fine with it.  Oh well.

As for the mission that’s more of a level:  it’s timed, so you’ve only got 10 minutes.  This is lame, but the game is only a few weeks away.  Sword and gun feel fluid and fun, and the Devil Bringer is a blast if you manage to wander around enough to upgrade it.  There’s a lot more destructible objects in a given room than any previous DMC, but even after a busy fight there was very little of it that had been incidentally destroyed.  That’s a minor observation, but with so much fun stuff to break I wish it would actually get broken mid-fight just to be interesting.  The environments were actually pretty comparable to DMC2, which is ironic considering the whole company seems to pretend that game either never happened, or was all bad with nothing worth reworking.  Well, apparently open outdoor environments were worth another attempt.  They seemed to work just fine, but I was busy being blown away by the smoothness of the graphics and animations to really pay attention.

In the other mission you get to kill a few guys that try to be as cool as the ice monsters from the first game and then tackle some demonic/cen-minotaur (Belial or something).  This guy was amazing.  He managed to fill the screen while still getting around quickly and the flames surrounding him and his attacks were unbelievable.  Nero’s Devil Bringer completely opened the fight up by allowing me to snap up to Belial’s height briefly, feeling more like the interesting boss battles of the first DMC instead of the scripted patterns of DMC3.  But behind the beautiful graphics and interesting features, the action was recognizable and possible to master instead of being lost in the options available.  It was what I hope the rest of the game remains to be, definitely the better of the two offered missions.

[PS3] The Club (demo, PSN) – FIRST IMPRESSION:  I have no intention of having anything else to do with this game unless something else convinces me.

Was this game supposed to be something?  I had a bit of fun, I guess, and if the only character option available in the demo had been more of a balanced character instead of the big tough slow guy I might have given it more of my time, but this is boring.  Bringing back points-based-competition is worth commending, like Excitetruck the goal doesn’t have to be First Place technically, but instead the objectives within the trip itself are what makes a winner.  In the case of The Club I just don’t really see anything worth $60.  Maybe $30.