Which game demo last impresseed you enough to buy the full game?
For me it was Battlefield BC on Xbox. I’d previously never had a PC that could handle the Battlefield games and when I finally got to try one of them (on a friend’s computer) I didn’t get it. Just ran for ages then got run over by a friendly tank.
So I was a battlefield virgin when Bad Company came along. I liked the way it looked in single player and thought the destuctive environments were a fun.
The online mode was pretty addictive to begin with and I still get the occasional kick out of it. I liked the 4-man squads and figured they’d, in theory, lend themselves to some interesting team tactics. The guided anti-tank missiles were good, too.
The Age of Empires 1 Demo. It was awesome, I got so much play time out of that thing. You could download mods and stuff for the demo as well, to increase replayability. I played it so much, in fact, that I didn’t buy the full version at the time. I got it years later and ended up spending less time with the full version than I did with the demo.
Um… Deus Ex I think. The demo just went on and on and on. It dazzled me with the scope of my choices which I had never seen before in an FPS. I couldn’t buy the game fast enough!
I rely on forums these days and know my tastes pretty well, which is good because demos these days are increasingly rare.
Was quite impressed with the Ninja Gaiden II demo, also going back a bit Bioshock Demo was top notch. Both demo’s did the trick and sold me the games, which otherwise wouldn’t have been in my collection. Oh yeah and the Eternal Sonata Demo sold me that game too, Graphics are great!
Left 4 Dead almost turned me off (openning section doesn’t have the nicest maps), if I hadn’t already pre purchased it I may have not got it… but I’m glad how it turned out as the game is actually fantastic.
Bioshock is the only demo ever that I’ve played multiple times, so that has to get my top vote.
The World of Goo demo was really good, a whole chapter to play. Left 4 Dead’s demo period was also great fun, and it didn’t even reveal the whole No Mercy campaign - it was just enough for you to get the idea. Introversion’s demos have been nice too, they usually let you play as much of the game as possible, with only multiplayer disabled.
The Mirror’s Edge demo impressed me for sure. This is going back a ways, but I recall being pretty impressed at how fun it was to fly around as Superman in the Superman Returns demo. It’s too bad the rest of the game really didn’t live up to that good core mechanic.
The Bioshock demo is another one that really sold the game. Prior to the demo I knew I wanted the game, but I wasn’t feeling any sort of real anticipation for it. After playing the demo I was rabidly anticipating the game.
