360

Various Live Arcade Demos (360)

Lost Cities – Might be a good game somewhere in there, but the presentation is awful and very hard to read. I got fed up with having to squint to work out what all the numbers were. Deleted.

Battlezone – I love the new look, but the demo is too short to give me any indication of whether the gameplay stands up. Seriously, it lasts about thirty seconds. Deleted.

Sea Life Safari – Actually seems okay and I think my wife would like it. It’s a lightweight Pokemon Snap with an Endless Ocean skin. Basically. I’d spend 400 points on it, but not 800. Not bought, but not deleted.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Demo (360)

Nice long demo. So long I didn’t bother finishing it. Seems all right, maybe even quite good, but I don’t think I want to pay 1600 points for it. Also, oddly, while it was genuinely funny in places, the dialogue I saw between Tycho and Gabe fell completely flat for me. I was expecting that to be the highlight.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Demo (360)

Oh! I like this. Unexpectedly. I like this a lot.

There’s not an awful lot to it, but the thrill of slicing ninjas into bloody chunks didn’t get old for the duration of the demo. It’s fast, fluid and just plain old fun to play.

And the camera, while being a bit silly, wasn’t as awful as I’d heard.

Trouble is, I’m not sure if I’d like the full game or not. The demo seems to send you against early enemies with late-game weapons, I think, and doesn’t have any boss fights in it. So as a judge for annoying the full game will be, this demo does a bad job. As a piece of entertainment in and of itself though, it’s excellent.