I’m going to age myself horribly here but, BACK IN MY DAY, gaming magazines (for the younger readers a magazine is the internet made out of a tree) used to come with demo discs. A little compilation of gameplay sections or trailers that let you know a bit of how upcoming releases let you play. This was a simple but effective method allowing people to not waste their money on something they might end up disliking to give you a better idea of what to expect from the game. However, for a while this practice seems to have all but died out.
You would be hard pressed to find demos for games across any of the online stores for the last 10 years, and it would be even more difficult to come across one of the free-standing demo booths in a game store. I still vividly remember spending good amounts of time playing a demo for the first Halo with my friends, very likely upsetting the store owner who just wanted to make a sale. Demos were still around but seemed to be held for JRPG titles and of course the ill-fated Silent Hills and its now legendary P.T demo. Then recently along came CAPCOM.
On January 11th 2019, Capcom dropped a one shot demo for the upcoming Resident Evil 2 Remake. A 30-minute snippet of gameplay that let you explore the early area of the zombie slaying title. While not exactly what was coming, it still let you test drive a lot of the remakes features and really get a feel for what was coming. It worked wonders on me as I was sat squarely on the fence for this one, having not played the original game. Then, 15 minutes into the timed experience I knew I wanted more! Come release day, I had the full game downloading and Capcom had another few pounds from me in their coffers.
Most recently the notion of a demo again worked its magic on my easily swayed little brain. CD Projekt RED, knowing that the first crack at Cyberpunk 2077 had gone down about as well as a could be expected from a game lost in development for almost 10 years (looking at you Duke Nukem Forever). Excited fans had their hopes raised and then dashed quite expertly when Cyberpunk was revealed to be a bug addled mess only running marginally well on high-end PC’s. So, a little over a year later, you can believe that gamers were going to be a little sceptical when CD Projekt announced that the 1.5 update was available and would work just fine on PS5 and Xbox Series X. I must say I was in this camp of scepticism myself and distanced myself from the launch. Until I was told of the 5-hour free trial that is!
In a play straight out of the how-to manual of 2003, CD Projekt gave players an honest to God demo. Sure, it might not call it that, but its more or less what this trial was. Five hours to settle in and see if this is now a playable game you’d like to spend your hard-earned eddies on. You know what? It worked like a charm. I went in with absolutely no desire to purchase an update to a game I already thought was rubbish, but being given the opportunity to try it before I buy it? Hell yes, it worked like a treat, and I sit here now chobbling down my humble pie as CD Projekt counts my money and I run about the now WORKING streets of Night City punching cyber jerks in the face and running away gleefully knowing I’ll no longer fall through the floor or end up in some 4th dimensional plane of existence…
In conclusion, Demos work, bring back the old days!