Down, but not out

There's an art to a good video game demo. How do you make a slice of a game available to prospective buyers that's both representative of the final product and small enough that they still want to buy it? A video game is interactive, so a perfect "trailer" for a game should also be interactive, but how do you ensure that you're not showing your whole hand? A movie trailer can include a curated slice of narrative, but a demo must include a curated slice of gameplay, just enough to hook the player without handing them a full game. It's ??a delicate balancing act.

These days, it feels like the "demo" is in an interesting place. Very few AAA titles put in the work to offer up an interesting demo of any kind. In the rare instances that they're available, the playable advertisements for modern AAA titles feel less impactful than they once did. Some stewards of the demo have preserved the art form for us all, though, and in some quiet corners of the world, demos are b??etter than ever.

The Good

My favorite kinds of demos are the ones that feel like their own little games. Take, for example, the phenomenal UNBEATABLE [white label]. Despite being, ostensibly, a free sampling of gameplay and narrative to accompany the upcoming rhythm game UNBEATABLE, this "demo" features a full-fledged side-story and tons of music. It's a discreet enough offering that it feels like its own rhythm game entirely. Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is a game that I don't really care for, but it's got an impressive demo that manages to show off the combat system and some of the world without containing a single piece of gameplay or story from the full title, acting as something of a prequel focused on a few side charact??ers. These "side-game" demos are a relatively new concep?t, and a signal that care still goes into some demos, even now.

[caption id="attachment_357303" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Another great example of this format is The Stanley Parable Demo, which is basically a companion piece to the 2013 game. It's got the sense of humor that you'd expect out of The Stanley Parable, and it's perfectly representative of the game without giving away any of its myriad surprises. In fact, The Stanley Parable Demo is probably a more incisive and meaningful breakdown of the video game demo than anything I can offer here. I was pretty disappointed when The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, one of my favorite games of 2022, contained no mention of the demo at all - a? symptom of increasingly demo-light times, I suppose.

[caption id="attachment_357328" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The more obvious "good" type of demo is one that offers up a tiny slice of the main game that demonstrates its strengths to the player. These have become increasingly less common, but a good example is something like the recent Forspoken demo. While I don't enjoy playing that demo at all, it feels like I know what to expect after playing it (despite the developers' protestations). The demo for Backpack Hero, an under-appreciated indie roguelike, is an??other recent demo that I love. It tells you exactly whether or not you'll enjoy the full title without giving away the whole experience. These are the types of tried-and-true demos that have existed for decades, and they're as rewarding now as ever.

The Bad

You know what's not fun to see when you're trying to decide whether or not to buy a game? A running clock. Resident Evil Village's time-gated demo was a disappointing sign of the times for me. The demo only contained a tiny portion of the full game, but you could only play the thing for about an hour before you were locked out. I'm speaking in the past tense because, after Village's release, the demo was delisted entirely. The time-gate?d demo was only available for a limited time.

[caption id="attachment_357308" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Capcom[/caption]

Here's the thing that bugs me about this - when I was younger, I had a very limited amount of money to spend on video games. During that time, I would save my money while playing through demos. This is how I discovered some of my favorite games. Months before I bought Cave Story from the DSiWare shop, I played about ten hours of its fifteen minute demo on WiiWare. In fact, WiiWare and Steam demos were vital in fostering my love of?? gaming (I came up in the age of the digital storefront, right at the tail-end of the de?mo craze).

I fell in love with those games precisely because I could spend so much time with them before I bought them. Demos can act as a way to advertise to an audience with a limited budget, and it seems supremely stupid to lock that audience out before they've had time to make a financial decision. Resident Evil Village is really good, and its demo could be good, too, but even?? when it was available, it missed the mark by a wide margin.

Capcom pulled the exact same trick again with the Resident Evil Village Gold Edition demo. This is a scummy, irritating practi??ce designed not to entice players, but to prey on their FOMO. Compared to the demo discs and simple one-time downloads of old, it comes off as downright cynical. And it gets worse.

The Ugly

I need to talk for a second about my least favorite kind of demo: the PlayStation Plus Premium game trial. After Sony's recent PlayStation Plus overhaul, game trials were added to the highest tier. If you pay about 18 dollars a month, in addition to pother PS Plus perks, you can play select titles for about two hours for free. I've already talked about why time-gated demos are frustrating to me, but charging for time-gated demos fe??els almost i??nsulting. That Sony seemingly encourages developers to use this system in place of a traditional demo is even worse.

[caption id="attachment_357314" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

I recognize that this system isn't entirely dissimilar to the way demo distribution worked in the past. Demo discs, which many would regard with nostalgic fondness, were frequently packaged as "bonuses" in magazines and cereal boxes and the like. But digital distribution back then simply didn't exist the way it does now, and charging for demos is bizarrely archaic (especially gi??ven that you can't keep said demos forever, or even for the duration of your subscription).

I don't mean to be overly-pessimistic here. Like I said, the best demos of today are better than anything that came before them. It's just frustrating to watch the highs get higher only for the lows to get so much lower. Oh, well. At least One Piece Odyssey is getting a demo.

The post The dying art of the video game demo appeared first on Destructoid.

An interesting year

It feels like a bit of a copout to say "2022 was an interesting year for video games," because every year is an interesting year for video games... but, well, 2022 was an interesting year for video games! It was the first year in which I really felt like I could see 2020's production setbacks on the release calendar, but it was also a year for projects that seemed like they would never arrive. Who would have guessed that Dwarf Fortress would reach 1.0 and Live A Live would get its official English l??ocalization in the same y??ear?

I didn't have to whittle this list down too much - while there were a lot of smaller games this year, I only really loved a few. Personally, I prefer that to a year with a massive wave of just-okay games crowding out the ones I'm actually interested in. 2022 didn't see all that many releases from massive developers, which meant shorter mid-budget titles and indie games had the chance to really stand out, and I had the chance to play a lot more of them. There was plenty of chaff in there, but I also got to see some w??heat I may have other??wise missed. I might not have even played some of the games on this list in a busier year. So thanks, 2022.

With all that being said, I'd like to run down those excellent games tha?t gave me that warm and fuzzy game of the year f??eeling.

[caption id="attachment_356093" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Vampire Survivors

Vampire Survivors showed up at just the right time for me. At the beginning of the year, I contracted COVID-19 after seeing the most recent Scream movie in theaters (the illness was nearly as bad as the movie). Blessedly, Vampire Survivors had entered early access only a few weeks earlier, and, as luck would have it, I had a spare three dollars burning a hole in my pocket. And that's the story of how Vampire Survivors made my quarantine bearable.

This is by no means a difficult game, but it's a microcosm of what I love about RPGs. Watching my character go from a wimpy little single-weaponed loser to a screen-clearing god over the course of thirty minutes is the kind of dopamine hit that I just need sometimes. This is not a joke - I just opened Vampire Survivors to grab a quick screenshot for this entry and I ac??cidentally played throug??h an entire run.

[caption id="attachment_356095" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Bethesda Softworks[/caption]

Ghostwire: Tokyo

I don't really understand why so few people played Ghostwire: Tokyo. I get that it was never going to be a God of War-sized smash hit, but this is the third title from a studio with a decent reputation, and the pitch is great - explore the haunted streets of Tokyo while slinging Doctor Strange-ish magic at various ghosts and spirits?. What's more, the execution of all those ideas is pretty great.

The empty city at the heart of Ghostwire: Tokyo is gorgeously haunting, and the moment-to-moment FP?S combat feels great. The banter between protagonist Akito and his ghost buddy KK keeps the middling story from dragging the experience down, and collecting what feels like one trillio?n different objects scattered around the environment is a blast. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it rolls along just fine.

[caption id="attachment_356098" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Neon White

Nobody needs to hear me talk about Neon White. I've touched on its cringe-and-proud writing in the past, and anyone who's spent more than a couple hours with it knows how instantly addicting its speedrunning parkour loop is. Neon White is very good, and if you?? haven't played it by now, you really should.

I'm reminded of something like Celeste, a game that made me love precision platforming where other precision platformers could not. I don't care for speed games of this nature, and yet, I cannot stop gunning for those shiny blue medals in Neon White. It's just so great.

[caption id="attachment_356100" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Humble Games[/caption]

Signalis

I have a confession to make: while I love nearly every Resident Evil game released after 2005, I kind of can't stand classic survival horror games. I love the eerie atmospheres and the carefully constructed environments, and every time I start Silent Hill, I become briefly convinced that it will become my entire personality. But I've never finished Silent Hill.

I did finish Signalis, a lo-fi sci-fi sendup to survival horror stories of the PSX era, and I thought it was great. A lot of the things I struggle with in those early survival horror games (esoteric puzzles, poor sense of direction, clunky gunplay, constant inventory management) are present here, but I forced myself to muscle through them, and I found myself really liking them. I was also very taken in by Signalis' setting and its beautiful art style. I guess I should go finish Silent Hill now.

[caption id="attachment_356102" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Bandai Namco[/caption]

Elden Ring

Poet Robert Graves once said, "The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good." That's kind of how I feel about Elden Ring. Often, when a game connects with absolutely everybody else, I can't help but look for its shortcomings. I always end up scout?ing for the seams, the compromises that m?ust have been made to appeal to such a wide audience.

I did exactly that with Elden Ring. I loved the thing on release, and I poured dozens of hours into it, but as soon as I stopped playing, I started assembling my little list of contrarian gripes. It's repetitive, the narrative coasts on being esoteric to mask the fact that it's kind of boring, there are too many damn systems to make "system mastery" feel satisfying, and so on. And then I came back to Elden Ring, and all of those complaints melted away. Because Elden Ring is very good, in spite of all the people who ??say it is very good.

[caption id="attachment_356104" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Funcom[/caption]

Metal: Hellsinger

Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm game with designs that imitate 2016's DOOM and a boss fight set to a Ser?j Tankian solo. It?'s great.

[caption id="attachment_356106" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Crows Crows Crows[/caption]

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

The Stanley Parable didn't really need a remaster, and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe knows it. It's hard to explain what, exactly, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is without totally spoiling some of its most delightful surprises. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ultra Deluxe has surprises, though, because it's The Stanley Parable, and that's what The Stanley Parable is.

The Stanley Parable is the kind of game that you should play if you have any interest in video games as a means of telling stories, and that's especially true now, with the Ultra Deluxe package repre??senting a reasonably major reinvention of the original concept.

[caption id="attachment_356108" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Immortality

I love Sam Barlow's Her Story, a non-linear FMV mystery game in which new scenes are discovered by searching for specific keywords. Immortality, Barlow's newest game, is even better. It features a similar system, ??in which new scenes are unlocked?? by searching for specific items found in video clips.

Immortality is the story of a movie star whose three films were never released to the public. The player takes on the role of an archivist, simultaneously assembling those unreleased films from recovered footage and attempting to unravel the mystery of what happened behind the scenes. It's a story about cinema, and the image-matching game system is a perfect match for that narrative. Her Story is a story about language, the words we use and the reasons we use them. In contrast, Immortality is a story about images, a much headie?r concept in a much more satisfying package.

[caption id="attachment_356109" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Raw Fury[/caption]

Norco

Norco is one of those games that feels special from minute one. This bizarre point-and-click adventure set in a near-future version of the real-world town of Norco, Louisiana is dreamy, melancholic, and simply amazing. It's a striking anti-capitalist text, but it's also a love letter to ??the kind of place that doesn't often receive love letters.

I have found myself considering something new about Norco almost every day since I played it. It blends its near-future dystopia with its current-day problems absolutely expertly. This is the kind of game where a dying mother does gig work in order to amass cryptocurrency to pay f?or her own digital ghost. It's full of tragic sci-fi conundrums lik??e that, and I can't stop thinking about it.

[caption id="attachment_356112" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image from Devolver Digital[/caption]

Card Shark

I don't know all that much about pre-revolutionary France. I know even less about gambling, and next to nothing about cheating at card tables. And yet, while playing Card Shark, I felt myself ?becoming an expert at cheating at card games in pre-revolutionary France. Nerial's period piece, which focuses on the pupil of the Comte de Saint Germain (history's greatest liar), is a th??ing of beauty.

Card Shark looks amazing, and its story is a charming and touching testament to the proverbial little guy, but where it sings is in its gameplay. The card tricks performed in the game are based on very real cheats, and Nerial has produced something of an interactive handbook for fraud. Every trick is taught to the player carefully, and executing on them feels like playing a very painterly WarioWare micro-game. Part of me wishes it was a little longer, but the narrative itself is very well-paced. I just want to play more of the thing, whi??ch is a very good problem to have. It's an incredibly specific game, but the one that I loved the most this y??ear.

The post Sorrel Kerr-Jung’s favorite games of 2022 appeared first on Destructoid.

If you haven't played it, it's new to you

One might assume that the dawning of a new gaming generation would essentially bring an end to the flurry of remasters and remakes that we saw flood the market in the most recent decade. But of course not. Much like the film industry, the concept of taking a second pass at some beloved (and even not-so-beloved classics) is clearly here to stay �wit?h no sign from the cash registers that it isn't still a hugely lucrative endeavor.

2022 contained two very extreme examples of the remaster/remake concept, namely in the form of Square Enix sliding-door RPG Live a Live and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part I. On one hand, we had a long-lost RPG dating back to 1994 and Nintendo's Super Famicom, while on the other we had a remake of a game less than 10 years old �one that had already been remastered at that.

It will be interesting to see how blurry the lines become in regards to how long is "long enough"? And while I have zero problem with the concept of remakes and remasters per se, it's worth raising an eyebrow at the idea that each new generation of hardware immediately requires the re-establishment of the previous generation's best-selling games. Not fran?chises. Games. Time �and the creativity of the next ?wave of studios, developers, and players �will tell.

Here are the nominees for Destructoid’s Best Remaster/Remake of 2022

• Live a Live
• Metal Max Xeno Reborn
• Pac-Man World Re-Pac
• Tactics Ogre: Reborn
• The Last of Us Part I
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
• World of Warcraft Classic: Wrath of the Lich King

The post Nominees for Destructoid’s Best Remaster/Remake of 2022 appeared first on Destructoid.

How do you improve on perfection?

Where do I even begin with this? You can't review The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe like a normal game �no, not even close. Sure, you can call it an open-ended walking sim with multiple endings, but while that may be true, it doesn't even come close to doing the experience of playing it justice. The Stanley Parable is what every other video game that claims to be art should aspire ?to, because it is able to so effect?ively convey its thesis while at the same time entertaining you to all hell.

Nine years ago, we reviewed The Stanley Parable when it originally came out, and James Stephanie Sterling's sentiment was that to give anything away was to ruin the game's whole appeal, and the same goes for The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. So much of what makes this game special is the surprise and the discovery of it all, so in order to maintain the spirit of The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, all I can tell you is that this is a must-play. Not just as on?e of the best games of the year, mind you, but as one of the best games period.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (PC [Reviewed], Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: Crows Crows Crows
Publisher: Crows Crows Crows
Released: April 27, 2022
MSRP: $24.99

I've written pages and pages of notes trying to piece this review together, trying my best to convey why I think this game truly is genius (a word I use sparingly in any part of my life, let alone when discussing video games). I like to think I'm a tough critic, especially when it comes to narrative games, but The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe ??has a way of immediately disarming me every time I boot it up.

For all of its commentary and cynicism, at its heart, it has so much charm, and so much love for the medium it's so dedicated to deconstructing. With any other game, I have to stop and pick apart every little mechanic or how it feels to play or how the UI looks, but at risk of sounding hyperbolic, speaking about The Stanley Parable in that way would feel sacrilegious.

When you're in the business of thinking about thinking about and writing about thinking about video games, there's nothing more refreshing than a game that just takes you on a journey, and The Stanley Parable does just that. There's never a moment where you're hoping the game is going to present you with something engaging �it just does it, it does so masterfully, and it escalates to places you weren't expecting, but you're so glad it did. I will say that if this kind of game isn't your thing, you're not going to enjoy it because the Ultra Deluxe content leans even harder into absurdism. But if you're willing to let go of any ??preconceived notions of what a game is supposed ??to be and roll with it, you're going to have an amazing time.

The new content

I hate talking about it in these terms, but fine: if you're worried about getting your money's worth, don't worry, you're more than doubling the original game's run time. If you're talking about quality, well, the new deluxe content kind of just makes me w??ant to throw my hands up and be like, "I don't know what you want me to say." It does exactly what it needs to do. It's hilarious and self-aware and dripping with i??rony, all while still having whip-smart writing that makes me happy to sit back and soak it all in for a while because it's just that good.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is The Stanley Parable for a new era, for 2022. If the original was a commentary on game design and the way players think about autonomy and choice in video games, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe's extra content is a commentary on game reviews, online commentary, sequels, and hype in the industry �and it does so with the same ?level of wit a?nd sarcasm that you'd expect.

A game for the modern era

The whole experience reminded me a lot of Bo Burnham's Inside. Love it or hate it, that special captured exactly what it felt like to exist in the first year of the pandemic specifically, in a way that I think will act as a sort of time capsule for future generations. The new content of The Stanley Parable's deluxe edition has this same type of specificity �if you want to know what it feels like to be a game developer, journalist, or really anyone who works in games in 2022, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe has you covered.

Another review-y topic that I actually did want to touch on is the game's accessibility �something the devs put a lot of thought into this time around. There are all kinds of new settings to accommodate all kinds of players, like more options for subtitles and impro?ved in-game textures that feature text, new control schemes, such as one that allows players to go through the game playing entirely with one hand, and even content warnings for some of the game's more intense moments. You can tell that Crows Crows Crows put a lot of effo??rt into making sure all players can enjoy the experience, and I have to give them kudos for that.

What are you still doing here? Just go and play it!

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe might joke about overly aggrandizing reviews, but it's one of the few games that's actually deserving of one. For all its smugness, I'd love to sit here and tell you that The Stanley Parable is pretentious and full of shit, but it earns every right to its pretension. And I for one and so glad I'm here to see it. There's a reason it's? considered one of the best games of all time.

The post Review: The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe appeared first on Destructoid.

"The most spoiler-free and coordinated launch possible"

It's best to go into the Stanley Parable completely blind, but this Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe website help??s clue you into the vibe the?? game is going for, without spoiling anything.

That's sort of the intent of the entire page, actually. In a very cheeky way, studio Crows Crows Crows provides the gist of what you expect, while providing soft "guidelines" of what constitutes a spoiler. As the site puts it, in the case of an early launch: "we expect you all to abide by the honor code and wait patiently until all other platforms and store fronts have caught up. This way, we can all hit 'Play' at the same time. Here at the The 'The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Release Preparedness' Initiative we play fair."

Everything from how they came up with the pricing for the Ultra Deluxe version, to spoiler guides, to spoilers in general (with a madlibs chart), to streaming is touched on. I don't want to spoil much more, but suffice to say it's a very similar feel in terms of how the Aperture company rolls from the Portal universe. There's even an "honor? system" certificate at the end so you can pat yourself on the back!

As for impression?s on the game itself, expect those in the near future from our staff.

The post Eve????n the Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe website is clever appeared first on Destructoid.

It's back and better than ever

The Stanley Parable is known as being one of the most innovative games in recent memory, so it's pretty hard to wrap my head around the fact that we're approaching the eleventh anniversary of the original Stanley Parable mod that was released for Half-Life 2 in 2011. The original was an experimental narrative adventure that breaks expectations of what a video game is supposed to be, and plays with ideas of player autonomy and choice. It's been more influential than we realize I think, so it's only fitting that The Stanley Parable is getting a huge upgrade for its Ultra Deluxe edition.

Developer Crows Crows Crows announced the rerelease of the game all the way back at the Game Awards in 2018, but the project was delayed three separate times in the years since. Thankfully, it's finally finished, and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is headed our way. Not only is the game coming?? to consoles for the first time on April 27, but long-time fans will also have something new to look forward to, as the game's script has been expanded upon to make for an even longer run ?time.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMoMi1gMXFc

According to IGN, a representative from Crows Crows Crows expressed their excitement to return to their cult classic title: "Early in development, the plan was just to bring The Stanley Parable to consoles with? a few small tweaks, but as time went on we kept getting more and more excited a?bout what else we could do with the game."

I for one can't wait to play through the game again and discover those new surprises, and I'm also excited to see the game in the spotlight again. It's one of those titles that's old enough to have an entirely new audience all these years later, so it'll be nic??e to see it return to the collective consciousness for a little while.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is dropping on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PC??, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One on April 27.

The post The Stanley Parable’s Deluxe Edition is coming out in April appeared first on Destructoid.