Over the weekend I had a little time to catch up on some of the demos that have been piling up on me for a while. I’d already played through Braid (which is a beautifully conceived game), and had on deck Madden 09, NBA Live 09, and the XBLA game: Pirates v. Ninjas dodgeball. My experiences with these three demos could not have been more different.
Madden 09
First, my Madden thoughts – as always the production values are top notch. John Madden makes an ethereal appearance to tell you about some of the new features, most importantly the all-new adaptive difficulty setting, which tests your skills, and then adjusts the games challenge accordingly. This really ended up being my entire problem with the game. It runs you through a few drills, including passing, running, and defense. The issue, is that, everything in the virtual football world is very nicely spelled out. When you’re avoiding tackles during the test, Madden will flash the appropriate move over the defender rushing in to tackle you. So when you’re told to, you hit up on the right stick, left or right, “A,” or “B,” at the appropriate time to dance around defenders like a pro. This is all well and good, except there are not such guides in the actual game.
I’m not bad at video games. I have decent eye hand coordination and can play games with some amount of finesse. I am, however, pretty awful at football. I have almost no skill at reading a play, calling audibles to adjust, or executing a winning pass for a solid gain. So, the result for me, was I sailed through the testing with flying colors rating very highly in every conceivable way. The demo then through me in the shoes of the Giants at 4th and 1, against a very effective Patriots defense. Making matters worse, since I was apparently a Madden savant, the defense was relentless, plucking through my offensive line in seconds. Essentially, this made the demo way too difficult. In contrast, the concept of the Madden IQ, seems like a good idea, and if it continually adjusts to your strengths and weaknesses throughout the course of playing a number of games, it could be a really great way to make Madden challenging and competitive for rookies and all-stars alike. Unfortunately, since the Madden moment is the only actual gameplay in the demo, it failed at the goal of showing you how the adjustable difficulty can make the game more interesting.
NBA Live 09
I just have to step back for a second and say wow. Honestly, they didn’t even need a demo to sell me on this game. The introductory video/voiceover explaining what they’re doing with player DNA was sharp enough to get me very excited about the possibilities for this game. Basically the plan is to follow the regular season, including player hot streaks, injuries, and overall performance, and relay it to the games in real-time. Additionally, you can replay every game of the season the next day, using the actual stats and performance from that night’s game. Of course, you may want to turn this off, if you’re building your own juiced super team, but it breathes new life into the sports genre in general, that just hasn’t happened before. Add to that the fact that the game itself was absolutely beautiful and played intuitively with fluid controls, and teammates that hold down what they’re supposed to do, and it definitely looks like this one is going to be a must-have for even the mild basketball fan.
Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball
Rounding out the weekend demoing was this much-hyped gem. You have pirates, ninjas (and robots) duking it out in various scenes with dodgeballs and weapons. It’s a hard concept to screw up, yet somehow, this demo just didn’t work. Initially, the 
load times were atrocious. It took many minutes from first bootup just to get to the menu screen. The game itself came across as fairly repetitive, with clunky controls, okay graphics, and questionable hit detection. Maybe this game wasn’t for me, or maybe the demo just didn’t show off what’s fun or interesting about the game, but it only held my interest for a single game, and that was pushing it.
So there you have it. A little slice of beauty sandwiched between two pieces of unnecessary negativity. I may end up picking up Madden at the end of the day. I think my gripe has a lot more to do with poor demo choice than anything wrong with the game itself. PvN Dodgeball on the other hand got an instant delete from my HDD. Anyone else try these demos or get these games? Did you have radically different experiences with them?
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