glots

I'd imagine that the original Unreal Tournament demo is high up there, 2003 and 2004 probably got played a decent amount too. Does Half-Life: Uplink count? Cause I'm pretty sure I replayed that one a fair bit too.

Outside of those, I'm not too sure! I used to buy and subscribe to several PC gaming magazines that came with demo discs on them, so I played a looooot of demos. First one that comes to mind when I try to think is the Hulk game from 2003, so that'd probably be one?

I didn't have a Playstation myself, but I do remember that I played at least the Crash and Spyro demos over at my friend's place a loooot of times.

...maaaan, I really miss Demo Derby.

Probably shouldn't have come as a surprise when they already had a limited demo for RE2, that I think you could originally play only between certain dates, but it is still incredibly dumb for sure, even if (or because) it's meant as some marketing scheme.

I suppose it's still better than paying for your demo like with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 and Crash 4, but still hardly a good idea. Really, just put out your demo for people to play for as long as they want. I'm pretty sure that will still get you new customers.

A point 'n click game in 1996 and a roguelike in 2021. It's basically the same thing when writing a narrative, if you really, really think about it.

@bigsocrates: Yeah, it’s definitely not everyone who has doubts about the price (or the game as a whole) just because it’s a roguelike. Doing a game with a narrative in much bigger focus and also marrying it with the looping gameplay of a roguelike is a pretty risky move to make. But it’s also something they’ve been working on for three years (though I think they are using things they learned from Stormdivers, so one could say technically 4-5 years) so I’ve some faith in them pulling through. We’ll see soon.

Though they actually *do* have some experience on narrative-driven games, but I don’t think a lot of people in 2021 remember Alien Incident anymore...they really should put that thing out on GoG.

Upon the original announcement, I was just glad to see a new Housemarque title, after they had some rough going with their last few games. After every new trailer/stream and article I've read of the game, I've grown more excited for it and now I'm definitely way interested in it. If it manages to be even half as good as Hades, which is now my go-to roguelike (one with an evolving and good narrative at that), I'll be pretty stoked.

The price is...eh, yeah. If Hades had cost 80€ to grab originally, I probably wouldn't have jumped on it as fast as I did, but I think that by the time I had +45 hours clocked in, it would've justified that price tag too. Unless the reviews trash Returnal completely, I think I'm ready to drop the asking price on launch day already, even if just to support Housemarque, because I'd hate to see them taking a new step with this and then just having it flop terribly.

Also Selene is voiced by Jane Perry of Diana (Hitman) fame!

P.S. I watched the State of Play stream from a while back just recently that the duders talked over and Jeff mentioned that it is kinda odd/dumb, how roguelikes do have this stigma of "Well a roguelike game can't be full-priced, because reasons" and I have some of that same "brainrot" too. Because visually this looks kinda amazing to me (especially in motion and with 60fps) and it sounds like they're doing neat stuff with the Dualsense too, so it's not like this is just a PS4 downloadable game that they're putting out on PS5.

Still playing this, though the difficulty is ramping up, as expected. Have ran into some frustrating bugs on the way and the checkpoint based saving is at times really tiresome, but it hasn't made me quit - yet.

Haven't listened to the latest Bombcast, so I don't know if they're still talking about it (can't see it in the tags). I think Jason at least had played a bit of it when it came out...hope someone gets a Quick Look going. Probably can't be Danny, since that'd be a lot of work for someone not working on the site.

I don’t think there’s any game that pops to my head on a weekly basis, but World of Warcraft gets close. It was such a big part of my life (for good and bad), that I doubt I can ever forget about it completely.

I guess I do think about Grim Fandango often enough-ish too. That game’s setting is still so unique to me and I can’t think of another game that would’ve come close to being that memorable for me. I recently replayed it from start to finish for the first time since it came out and I still remembered just about every detail from it.

Didn't even find the guy before my cover was blown in a very compromising way, ran out of disguises and died in a gunfight. That might be only my...third failed Elusive Target since the first game, so not feeling too bad about it!

I feel like this'd be a fun thread to bring back from the ancient Hitman (2016) days.

So the first Elusive Target for Hitman 3 specifically is here! You've got 10 days to off him.

Tried out Heart of Darkness again recently-ish and I feel like that thing’s still few notches above Oddworld in difficulty. I don’t know how I had the patience for it as a kid...maybe the same as with Oddworld, where the style and visuals drew me in. That game’s surprisingly grim when offing your character.