War World: Most useless XBLA demo ever?

[BrianA]

So War World released onto the XBox Live Arcade yesterday, and some of the previews I've seen made it look pretty interesting. Giant mechs? Check. Fast-paced shooting action? Check. Decent graphics? Check. How could it go wrong?<br><br>So I download the demo yesterday morning and try it out last night... Who's the idiot who thought this trial mode would help sell the game?!?<br><br>You can only play <b>one</b> mode (Deathmatch, against AI), with <b>one</b> mech, in <b>one</b> scenario. Oh, and you can only play for <b>60 seconds</b> before the demo ends and you're prompted to buy the full game. And, there's no indication in the game that any option is locked because you don't have the full game, you have to just randomly click around before you can start playing.<br><br>This is easily one of the worst trials I have ever seen. This game went from "looks cool, but I want to play it to see how it is" to "well, not gonna bother" based solely on how limited the demo was. I can understand restricting features in a demo to encourage people to buy the full version, but 60 seconds of gameplay? Really? I played the scenario twice (for 2 whole minutes! whee!!) and promptly deleted it off my hard drive.<br><br>Great job Third Wave. -- View image here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif --

 

[The Inquisitor]

Yeah, the demo was awful. I played it several times to see if I was doing something wrong because it kept ending so quickly.

 

[John_Keats]

I tried it and had the same reaction, what a bunch of BS.

 

[Yam-Koo]

Some of the best demos have lasted a long time... I remember the skate demo ran for up to 30 minutes, and I reloaded it a few times to play around with it more!

 

[phil_mckrevis]

It might be a decent game but who wants to take a chance when they f^&* up a demo? That usually is not a good sign when the developer is that out of touch.

 

[PhantomLord]

I had the same feelings and came to create a Topic, but already beaten to it. The first time the demo ended I thought I went into a non-demo area or something. The second time, I saw the countdown timer. <BR><BR>The time they give you is barely enough time to press all the buttons. At first I thought the graphics looked really good, then I started moving. That framerate should not be acceptable anymore. It seems like they designed the game as a regular disc game and then ended up releasing on live. Is it true that Live games can only use one core? Maybe that was just XNA for visual studio?<BR><BR>Sucky demo = loss of an even potential sale.