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It's become clear to me that on all accounts, Capcom really fucked up by making the RE8 demos timed.

Madflavor

Member
After reading the reactions to the demos from multiple threads, it's become pretty clear this was a mistake. Forget the whole thing about not being able to play a demo as long as you want. Sure that sucks, but there's another major problem here. Resident Evil games are not the type of games you rush through, on your first playthrough. You have to immerse yourself in the atmosphere, take in the visuals, feel the pacing, read the notes/journals, etc etc. You have to start building your ammo/health items from the beginning, getting to know the lay of the map, and decide when it's worth using up your resources to survive. This ain't the type of thing where you should drop the player in the middle of a section of the game, expect them to hit the ground running with a 60 minute timer, and think they're going to have an ideal experience. The kind of experience you're trying to aim for.

The biggest grip players have from what I've seen is the gunplay. Guns not feeling powerful, enemies having almost no reaction and feedback to your bullets (which actually isn't true, they do sometimes stagger), and also being bullet spongey. Now maybe these are legit problems that playing the game in full won't relieve. But shit, the timed demo situation couldn't have helped. Maybe to me, the gunplay would feel less substandard, if I started the game from the very beginning, felt weak as fuck, but over the course of the game and some upgrades, I would feel guns start to have more weight to them. But in the end, I feel like these demos didn't do much to draw in more people. If anything, it's caused some people to decide against a Day 1 purchase, whereas if they hadn't played the demo and bought it Day 1, their experience may have been more pleasant.

Or maybe I'm talking out my ass and ultimately these are just a few loud people who didn't like it.
 
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kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
I missed all three opportunities this time. I guess people with other responsibilities can just fuck off right Capcom?

The complaint about the gun sounds just like the last entry. To some degree I chalked it up to playing as a character who isn't an elite operative (aka not stars or police). Maybe that's a lame excuse because you play as Mia and Chris with similar gunplay in RE7 as well.
 

Madflavor

Member
I missed all three opportunities this time. I guess people with other responsibilities can just fuck off right Capcom?

The complaint about the gun sounds just like the last entry. To some degree I chalked it up to playing as a character who isn't an elite operative (aka not stars or police). Maybe that's a lame excuse because you play as Mia and Chris with similar gunplay in RE7 as well.

From what I've seen, your enjoyment of the game is going to heavily depend on your tolerance level for substandard gunplay.
 

slade

Member
The gunplay felt the same as its always been. I was more interested in the RE4 like inventory and upgrade system. Hopefully you get lots of weapons like in RE4.
 
After reading the reactions to the demos from multiple threads, it's become pretty clear this was a mistake. Forget the whole thing about not being able to play a demo as long as you want. Sure that sucks, but there's another major problem here. Resident Evil games are not the type of games you rush through, on your first playthrough. You have to immerse yourself in the atmosphere, take in the visuals, feel the pacing, read the notes/journals, etc etc. You have to start building your ammo/health items from the beginning, getting to know the lay of the map, and decide when it's worth using up your resources to survive. This ain't the type of thing where you should drop the player in the middle of a section of the game, expect them to hit the ground running with a 60 minute timer, and think they're going to have an ideal experience. The kind of experience you're trying to aim for.

The biggest grip players have from what I've seen is the gunplay. Guns not feeling powerful, enemies having almost no reaction and feedback to your bullets (which actually isn't true, they do sometimes stagger), and also being bullet spongey. Now maybe these are legit problems that playing the game in full won't relieve. But shit, the timed demo situation couldn't have helped. Maybe to me, the gunplay would feel less substandard, if I started the game from the very beginning, felt weak as fuck, but over the course of the game and some upgrades, I would feel guns start to have more weight to them. But in the end, I feel like these demos didn't do much to draw in more people. If anything, it's caused some people to decide against a Day 1 purchase, whereas if they hadn't played the demo and bought it Day 1, their experience may have been more pleasant.

Or maybe I'm talking out my ass and ultimately these are just a few loud people who didn't like it.
That is a possibility but the jury's still out on that one.

Timed demo's do suck though.
 
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Zeroing

Banned
i think the gunplay was made weak to install more fear into the players… if you were to go guns blazing it would feel like a different genre.

I have no idea why the demo is time limited, I assume is for people to get a feel of the game but prevent exploration, meaning you go into the full game not knowing everything about that level
 
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Astral Dog

Member
I agree its a game you take slowly and enjoy the atmosphere, but i think they just wanted to push pre orders so soon before release, the hardcore fans are already buying it day one they know its a sequel to VII, they don't really need a demo.

But the average Joe gamer may play for 30 minutes, want more and push that pre order button. Still better than no demo at all i suppose 🤷‍♂️
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
I was going to try it, then I wasn't sure if it was even available to play so I never did I dont really care........so I'd say a failure, I'm less likely to buy it now than if they had just put out a normal demo.
 
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All your complaints have nothing with the demos being timed. If anything youre making a great argument for it being timed. Only huge fans got to play the demos, and they will buy the game despite the flaws. While the common gamer will be unware.
 
Yeah, I don’t liked timed demos at all either, but I’m grateful we even got that considering demos excluding the Switch are unfortunately becoming a thing of the past for whatever reason.
 
All your complaints have nothing with the demos being timed. If anything youre making a great argument for it being timed. Only huge fans got to play the demos, and they will buy the game despite the flaws. While the common gamer will be unware.
Lol what? Did you miss an /s there? So the point of the demo wasn't to attract people? It was only for the huge fans that were going to buy the game anyway?

Lmao. The truth is capcom have really stupid marketing department. Why would time a demo? For real, what's the benefit? Do they loose money by letting people play the demo?

But what can you expect from a company that released a "one shot" demo? It's practically like they don't want us to try the game and the only reason they're releasing a demo is because they're contractually obligated too
 
You must not noticed the s/ if youre gonna keep driving the point that its a mistake for it to be timed. Demo’s purpose has been accomplished. It forced streamers to all stream at once and get people to talk about it. You didnt get to play it? Buy it.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
its just a demo, the time given is enough for you to have a taste on the full game : )
 

Nickolaidas

Member
I downloaded the demo and intended to play for five minutes. Only wanted to see if the game can adequately run on my PC. I ended up playing for the whole hour, as slow as I could in order to explore as little as possible and not spoil myself.

Pretty sure I'm gonna like this more than RE8 in terms of bestiary and feel, but I must admit I didn't feel as tense as I did with RE7, but that makes sense since I played less and wasn't as invested in my game time as I would be on the original RE7.

Have to admit though, my first combat encounter in the village was pretty well done and gave me some Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibes with the obscured vision due to the fauna.
 

Exentryk

Member
As someone new to this genre and RE games, I did spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to defeat an enemy once I was out of ammo. Eventually figured that we had a knife. It somewhat soured my experience. Having more time to check stuff would have been better.

So yeah, a better option would be to lock the zones so we can't explore too much, and get rid of the timer.
 
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Shmunter

Member
Downloaded it day one, still to play it lol. It’s never open when it’s convenient for me. So counterintuitive it’s making me into a pretzel.
 

TheGejsza

Member
The gunplay felt the same as its always been. I was more interested in the RE4 like inventory and upgrade system. Hopefully you get lots of weapons like in RE4.
I can't agree. It feels like RE7 but RE7 focus was not on action. RE2Remake had superb hit reactions where each bullet would chop off a chunk of zombie body which gave superb feeling. In RE8 the enemies are like punching bags.
 

TheGejsza

Member
I was 100% day 1 buyer before playing demo. Now I'm not so sure. The RE7 was much scarier for me. Gunplay feels like RE7 so like two steps back from RE2Remake. I don't buy whole crafting/hunting animals. Also I don't like the idea of possibility to BUY ammo.

Demo was terrible imo... it amplified every bad thing about RE series (clunkiness, gunplay) without showing true strength of the series (tension, atmosphere, survival).
 
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I was on the fence after watching a YouTube video of the demo. I suspected that the shooting was not great.

Played the demo and found the shooting to be passable enough to tip me over to a day one purchase.

As for the timed nature of it, that was not very clever.
 
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kittoo

Cretinously credulous
I dont like first person in RE so that biggest gripe of mine continues here too. Although at least the setting seems to have more varied areas than mostly confined RE7.
The timed demos thing is absolute bullshit. First you can download only between certain times, then can only play between certain times and then only for a certain time? Fuck off capcom. I have other things to do so kept missing the times (even after downloading once).
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Shockingly archaic decision, timed demos. Even 20 years ago times demos were not okay.

Nothing sells me more on RE8 like watching someone speedrun through it because an arbitrary timer is compelling that person to go as fast as possible.

Nice fuck you to you art and level designers too.
 

NeonDelta

Member
Totally agree. Only managed the first 30 minute demo and finished it in 25 minutes. Felt so rushed and it put me off the game conpletely. I'll wait until its a tenner now.
 

Bankai

Member
Not for me, I was really intrigued because of the timed nature of the demo's. Made them feel exclusive and like a sneak-peek.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
Timed demos are really annoying, but all of these jokes in the thread pretending that it dissuaded them from buying the game are crazy. The actual game still looks just as good as it ever did.
 

Miles708

Member
The only "clear" thing here is how timed demos have been massive successes for capcom every time they've done it.
Worked for RE2, worked for RE7, and guess what, it's working for RE8 too.

In the past they always put an unlimited demo afterwards, so I wouldn't worry that much.
They've turned a demo into an event, like a beta test without, you know, the annoying beta testing. It's brilliant marketing.

But yeah don't worry, they'll likely just release that afterwards.
 

SCB3

Member
Timed demos are fine if its a 30 mins, "here's what its like" and doesn't have a fixed end like this one did

The real issue was that there was only a 8 hour window in which it play the demo, that kinda screws anyone that wanted to check it out but couldn't as it was on a Sunday night where a lot of people are busy getting ready for work the next day or whatever
 

TonyK

Member
I decided to buy the game when Resident Evil Village title appeared in the first trailer, so I've approached to the demos more as a tech benchmark than a representative gameplay.
 

TheKratos

Member
So both the lack of FOV and terrible gunplay is to "install fear into players"... so this is the idea of horror to Capcom now? This only adds frustration not fear.
 

sublimit

Banned
It's the second (or third?) time they are trying this bullshit. I didn't even bothered this time and i'm actually put off to ever try the demo even if they completely remove the timer.

I'll just play the game whenever it becomes dirt cheap.
 

Max_Po

Banned
I gotta agree..timed demo sucked... finish 12hour shift ....play 3 hours with 3 year old put to bed....pick up ps5 controller ...


Timed out bitch ..come back later...
 

Nickolaidas

Member
Started playing it, and I love it. The lycan encounters so far are t-e-n-s-e, and I just entered the castle and acquainted myself with a loving mother and her daughters.

I'm just happy they didn't stab my/Ethan's dick.
 

DavidGzz

Member
Once you play it, you realize it was fine. Re8 isn't your typical slower paced RE game . Pop some heads and run.
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
But they had demos at least. This is another game that wasn’t in my radar but I liked the demo so I bought the game and I am loving it.
 

Jaxcellent

Member
I guess it's timed to 30 mins so players don't go full on exploring, this way you won't have played too much, when you start up the game for real, also only 30 mins is not enough to soak it all in.. this made me want to buy it, so I could.

The only playing on certain times is weird but you got to admit, it made headlines.. and people talked about it, although kinda negatively, still its better to have a demo then no demo IMO.

I'm sure they will release another demo so people who are on the bench about it can give it another try.

I bought the game yesterday and I'm really enjoying it.. I'm happy i diden't see any more stuff in the demo.. i like to be surprised.
 
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