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Xbox 360 Live demo availability thread

yeah.. normally I download XBL demos lightning quick.. this one has taken me most of the evening.. is this being hosted out of someone's 56K basement?
 
i'm impressed.

Visuals:
+ Lara's model looks great
+ Lara's model looks great wet
+ Environments look nice and have a good layout
+ Water looks very nice as well
+ Lighting is awesome
++ Animations are incredible, very nicely done.
- Enemy character models are all the same, so far.
- Enemy character models don't look quite up to Lara's quality.
- Framerate isn't perfect, but is basically fine imo.

Gameplay:
+ Platforming elements feel really good.
+ The one major puzzle in the demo required quite a bit of thinking. It took me about 7 or 8 minutes.
- Shooting elements are only decent.
- I would rather shoot animals than humans in a Tomb Raider game.

Overall demo score-8.5

What i would have done different:
: Take out all contact w/ humans. That includes shooting humans, and the voice over your mic. This would create a more visceral experience imo. Making you truly feel like you're all alone in the middle of some deserted tomb.
: There's a nice over the shoulder shooting view, but you can't move while in it. I don't undertand this.
: In place of shooting humans, have traps w/ wild animals, where you have to run from a pack of dogs while shooting behind you, that sorta stuff.

This will likely be the only April purchase i make. I'm excited to finally see a true sequel to a once great franchise.
 
Colour me impressed! Think I'll grab TR:L off the back of that demo as I have some credit to spend instore anyway! Hopefully it has a decent Croft Manor section!
 
sky said:
It's so frustrating that you can't browse the system or do anything else while it downloads.

You'd think they'd patch the system to enable you to do something else while you download something. You'd think.
 
Impressions from someone who has played multiple versions now:

Bloom is way overdone on Xbox 360. Framerate noticably worse than non-next gen versions. Textures are high end PC worthy. Model detail and environmental detail are stuck in that obnoixous "between gens" area.

Only true next gen touches I felt were the rushing water, and the awesome depth of field effects when using binoculars.

Gameplay is identical to previous gen console/PC versions. Controls are best using Keyboard/mouse, I feel. And since PC is also the cheapest version, it's a no brainer.

Fun bug to exploit in the Xbox 360 demo, when you first get inside the ruins, and you get to the first chain challenge, jump at the first chain(the one on the left), and simply hold on until you disappear into the hole in the floor. You'll soon fall through the map and will get to see Lara's new long fall animation and scream.
 
This demo sold me,I'll be picking it up next week :D
 
Either I am stupid, or that last puzzle sucked IMO. Took me a while to figure out, you wouldn't think Lara has enough weight to catapult a huge crate. It seemed like the damn crate kept sliding off and was not even on the damn thing anyway.

Other then that the demo was pretty awesome. Impressive graphics for a port, the platforming was fun too. I'm probably going to pick this one up.
 
sky said:
It's so frustrating that you can't browse the system or do anything else while it downloads.
You can, just press the Guide button to exit out of the download blade (anything else will cancel it). The download will proceed as normal while you play around with the system, but to check its progress, you've gotta reselect the file in the Marketplace menu and choose Download Again in order to pull up the download blade.

A bit of a pain, and a bit unpolished, but better than nothing.
 
comments:

graphics, somewhere between last gen and next gen. models were a bit above last gen, animations were still pretty much last gen. textures were quite a bit better, and much of the effects (Water, volumetric fogging, depth of field, etc) were WELL beyond last gen.

gameplay, yeah, it was good. I haven't played a tomb raider since TR2, but it is similar to what I remember. considering that most feel the series started sucking hard after 2 I'll assume this is a good thing.

as for the last puzzle, before you get hung up in semantics take into consideration that a) they are light enough for her to move around, b) to actually SUCCESSFULLY do the puzzle you need to do a pretty good length jump, c) it's a videogame you physics nerd, get over it! :D
 
DenogginizerOS said:
I just noticed that the Kameo Co-Op patch is now available.


Yup, it's free and it's fun. Yeah, I know you could play splitscreen, but where's the fun in that if you have a nice HDTV. It's cool to have a pal jump in you r game and have it. I didn't bother to purchase any of the Kameo outfit packs.
 
BuddyC said:
You can, just press the Guide button to exit out of the download blade (anything else will cancel it). The download will proceed as normal while you play around with the system, but to check its progress, you've gotta reselect the file in the Marketplace menu and choose Download Again in order to pull up the download blade.

A bit of a pain, and a bit unpolished, but better than nothing.

Nice find!

Edit: This only works once. I went to look and see if it was working, and the progress had gone up 10%. I went back to the music thing, and checked in again later and it was still at the same place (30 minutes later). So I guess the background downloading only works the first time you try it.
 
brokenwatch said:
Nice find!

Edit: This only works once. I went to look and see if it was working, and the progress had gone up 10%. I went back to the music thing, and checked in again later and it was still at the same place (30 minutes later). So I guess the background downloading only works the first time you try it.


I was about to say... Shit don't work.
 
Played the 360 demo last night... thought it was surprisingly great.

Although just little details, the complete lack on interaction with the foliage and water really stuck out as looking cheap though, and the sprite based vines/chains as well.
All these physics based videos and demos have me spoiled...

The lighting is awesome, especially once you hit the temple area.

Anyone else spend a few minutes admiring the Jeep Commander *product placement/in-game advertising* towards the end?
 
truffleshuffle83 said:
there is like 3 threads to post impressions of the game. everytime the thread is bumped i expect to see a new demo
For a pre-release demo, there's gonna be a good amount of chatter. One way to not get excited when this thread gets bumped - the Marketplace seems to always update Monday-Wedsday. So only get excited if you see this thread bump on those days.
 
Finally... I'm a huge fan of Amped and Amped 2 but chose to avoid 3 for obvious reasons. The demo will be my first chance to play the game. If the gameplay is solid, I might just pick this one up.
 
Excellent news! I'll give the Amped demo a spin for sure.

Played both the Tomb Raider and Blazing Angels Demos over the weekend. Tomb Raider was fun, but it seemed like they took some of the challenge out of the game on making the jumps and such too easy, or clearly spelling out to you where to use the grappling hook. Maybe some of that was just for the demo. Still, I may pick this up down the line.

Blazing Angels wasn't as bad as I had thought that it might be. It was decent, if not spectacular. Graphics were kind of blah to say the least, but flying the plane around was fun, and it was easy to shoot down enemy planes. I would maybe pick this up on a bargain rack when I had nothing else to play.
 
Sp3eD said:
omg the Amped 3 demo sucks. And please note this is coming from a huge Amped 1 and 2 fan.

as a long time fan myself, this is a step in the wrong direction, i agree. still, its not all bad. i actually like the art direction. surprisingly, it works (IMO) and is funny. of course i really dont think it has broad appeal in that regard.

i am pissed they took away the stick control. i cant use the buttons for shit, and the stick worked much better. maybe i'm just accustomed to using the sticks and the buttons will just take getting used to...?

graphically, its better looking then amped 2, but not by much. certainly not next-gen.

in all, i'd say i'm a bit dissapointed. its certainly not as good as 2, which fucking rocked. i do hope that it preformed well enough to make a 4, i just hope that they take the series back in the proper direction.
 
I just downloaded the BF2 demo and played it for a while. I must say double u tee f. A promise of a fun game destroyed by non-existant debugging. I saw characters die mid air. Once I got stuck inside a wall, and once between a wall and a crate, in a space I was apparently not supposed to enter.

Oh well. I guess it's Bootcamp + BF2 to me.
 
Chittagong said:
I just downloaded the BF2 demo and played it for a while. I must say double u tee f. A promise of a fun game destroyed by non-existant debugging. I saw characters die mid air. Once I got stuck inside a wall, and once between a wall and a crate, in a space I was apparently not supposed to enter.

Oh well. I guess it's Bootcamp + BF2 to me.

i've played the BF2 demo for hours and never encountered anything like that guy
 
Been playing the BF2 demo for an hour or so and loving it. Didnt run into any bugs except for the fact that nobody seems to be chatting.
 
Chittagong said:
I just downloaded the BF2 demo and played it for a while. I must say double u tee f. A promise of a fun game destroyed by non-existant debugging. I saw characters die mid air. Once I got stuck inside a wall, and once between a wall and a crate, in a space I was apparently not supposed to enter.

Oh well. I guess it's Bootcamp + BF2 to me.

Latency?
 
Chittagong said:
I just downloaded the BF2 demo and played it for a while. I must say double u tee f. A promise of a fun game destroyed by non-existant debugging. I saw characters die mid air. Once I got stuck inside a wall, and once between a wall and a crate, in a space I was apparently not supposed to enter.

Oh well. I guess it's Bootcamp + BF2 to me.

it's a demo...
 
Yeap. I'm a huge Tiger Woods fan... played the last 4 iterations so much with my roommate. Tiger 06 on the 360 is actually worse in almost every respect than the Xbox 1 Tiger 06. Less courses, more slowdown, less gameplay modes, less actual gameplay mechanics. The only thing it had going for it was actual 16:9 support.

(Which, incidentally, was purposefully taken out of the Xbox 1 version to make the 360 more appealing).
 
Kindbudmaster said:
Tiger Woods 06 demo up on xbox live. 890 MB

Cool. And for the people that complain about a demo coming out late or not on time, what's the deal? It's not like MS has to do this at all, it's a bonus and a very good bonus.
 
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