Left 4 Dud

I got to try the Left 4 Dead demo when I was over at Alana's on Friday. I came away disappointed. One because you can only play 2 player split screen (and we know I hate that), and two because the game just wasn't that fun.

I didn't really feel a sense of urgency while I played. I didn't think the weapons felt very effective. I also didn't feel that the zombie horde was that scary. I'm not even sure you can die completely. I got vomited on by that fat zombie and got swarmed, but I didn't die. I just waited for it to wear off while I peppered them with my shotgun.

I really thought this was going to be the game to beat this holiday season, but instead I found it's just a slightly better version of The Club.

The Club

I finally recorded a video for The Club demo that came out. I wasn't able to get it with my European gamertag because it was only for gold members apparently. Anyway, it seems like a decent game, although it's pretty shallow. The guns don't feel very significant when you shoot them, and enemies go down pretty easy. Otherwise it's ok. It's a rental, but that's about it.

Burnout Paradise Demo

I downloaded the new Burnout Paradise demo this evening and took some gameplay videos. I like it, but I'm a little concerned. The open world design is nice and all, but I really miss the menus from Revenge. I haven't looked to see if I can just jump to the events through the map, kind of like the Need For Speed series, so it might be a moot point. Anyway, watch my vids!

skate n' stuff

I played the skate demo last night. I liked it a lot. It's a great change from the Tony Hawk series. I personally have never liked any of the Tony Hawk games. The best part of the demo is the ability to record movies and edit them. Once edited, you can even upload them to the EA site. This is where the problems begin.

When I was playing NFS Carbon, you could take pictures at any time and upload them to EA. You could view them, but only once you logged in to EA.com. There's no such thing as being able to look them up by your gamertag, and don't dare think about sharing them with your friends by sending them a link. I could actually save the pics, which was cool, but why all the hoops to jump through?

This brings me back to the skate demo. I uploaded a cool video to EA's servers, and then rushed to the computer to watch my video. Apparently my old "classic" EA login was no longer working, and I need to create a new ID. I created it, then was told I had to link it to my gamertag. Surprisingly, that was unsuccessful. In the end, I gave up out of frustration.

We're on the cusp of something really cool with the ability to capture our gameplay footage and upload it to the web. When Halo 3 drops, the floodgates will open. The only problem is, you will have to have a capture card to get the videos onto the internet. Is there a problem with giving us the freedom of uploading a video, then posting it wherever we want, ala' YouTube?

I have this same issue with the pictures you take with your Vision camera on Xbox Live. You can't view them on Xbox.com, you can't save them to your hard drive, you can't do anything with them. You can send a pic to a friend and create your own gamerpic. Neither of these can be saved for future use. Why is that? It just doesn't make sense.

Bioshock Demo

I downloaded and started to play the Bioshock demo last night. It froze about 10 minutes in, so I quit. I'm not sure I really give a shit about this game. It looks great, but I'm not convinced it's a must play yet. I would much rather play Stranglehold.

Crackdown