I'm really picky when it comes to buying games and with the trend of demos getting rare and short I'd thought I go through all my experiences playing demos and finding out which demos was the worst marketing scheme.

I'd also like to point out this list of the worst demos has nothing to do with the quality of the game but the quality of the demo containing it.

Dead Space's 'Dismemberment' Demo.

Don't start the show with the show stopper but this demo was punishingly cruel and unfair. In this demo the main character is in a hallway with only one room being available to "explore".  I used quote marks on "explore" because this one room is about the size of a living room with nothing of interest besides the few enemies. When said enemies are killed, the door you came through unlocks and you able to open the door to see a scripted event of your character dying.

Then the demo ends.

When I got the Dead Space demo I'd expected a few weapons, couple of nasty looking monsters and some rooms and hallways to shiver my way through. What I got was a debug room and a stupid ending. If you want me to buy your game don't let your main character be unavoidably killed during the demo.

Skate 2

The first Skate demo was well crafted in every aspect, great little sandbox area, 40 mins of playtime and a few challenges which weren't required to complete. Sure it didn't have any customizable skater or board and you had to go through training every time but it was exactly what a free roaming game demo needed to be, plenty of your time at your own freewill.

Skate 2's demo is the opposite to that and one of the killing factors is the Time Limit. The Time Limit is messed beyond belief which all sorts of problems. You start the game with 8 mins. That is all of your training which rounds of at 6 - 7 minutes. Now the challenges around you give you extra time but not alot, 1 - 2 minutes each. Now if you rush through these you'd get around 9 minutes of freeroam time. Adding all the playtime it required to get the extra time and the begining and end results you'd get about 15 mintues of total playtime and half of that is doing objectives around the small skatepark.

What the hell happened? Did EA think that undercutting the first demo for the second would get better sales? What was going through EA's mind when the suggested 'Hey, let's cut the demo time from the first demo in half and make the player do stupid missions?".

But they didn't stop there....Oh no they didn't my friend as the time limit reaches zero an annoying seemingly unskipable cutscene comes on and you now have to watch this awfully put together montage of plot and gameplay. I just do not see how EA went from hit to shit.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix's trial.

Fighting game: Awesome. Only 2 Selectable Characters: Understandable. They're Ryu and Ken: Disapointing. Verses Mode Only: Annoying. No Online: Angry. Second Controller Required to Even See The Game: Fuck This Is Shit., Dashboard.

YOU DO NOT RELEASE A DEMO IN WHICH IT ONLY HAS LOCAL MULTIPLAYER CAPCOM.

 Ninja Gaiden's Xbox Demo

I have one problem with this demo. It's not the unforgiving difficulty, odd bugs or useless save point which was seemingly lfet in the demo, it's that when you die once you get thrown right back to the demo screen. Not the game start screen, all the way back to the demo disc main menu. I think this is a bit rare seeing how you had to have a copy of OXM but this is an unforgiveable demo sin.

I can think of anything else, but if you have a horrid demo you would like express about put it in the comments section. Cheers!