Comments on: Jade Empire

By: nlanza

nlanza — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 12:58:13 +0000

The Fallout quirks system was pretty great. I’d love to see something like that in JE2.

Also, let me know how Psychonauts is — I’m kinda intrigued by it, but really shouldn’t pick up another game right now, especially since I’m already thinking about getting the new Midnight Club.

By: quecojones

quecojones — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 05:35:16 +0000

I know it’s crazy, but I think that maybe they did it as a way of lowering expectations so that, when you finally play the full version of the game, you think it’s so much better. Not that they had to resort to anything like that considering their track record.

By: Adam Rixey

Adam Rixey — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:57:08 +0000

I agree with all that you said, the Jade Empire demo was pretty lackluster. And too short, just as I was starting to get the hang of the combat it timed out. The full game was great, and there was certainly enough backstory for them to use the setting again — and I hope that they do. Just beef up the fighting a bit more. And maybe introduce a Fallout-style quirks system so I can sacrifice an arm to be even more of a badass kung fu master.

By contrast, the Psychonauts demo in the latest magazine took me about an hour and a half to play through four levels. I was definitely left wanting to play the rest of the game (and likely will in the near future).

By: peterb

peterb — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:24:31 +0000

My experience with the demo is the same as yours. I was all psyched to get the game, and then when I played the demo I said “This is terrible. I’m not buying this.”

I’m glad I was wrong, but you’re right — it really makes you wonder what they were thinking.

By: psu

psu — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:07:17 +0000

Interestingly, The Splinter Cell demo *was* basically the first chapter
of the game.

If I were a game developer, I would dread the entire idea of a short demo.
Putting such a thing out is like putting out an abbreviated beta, but even worse because
games are so design heavy. It seems to me that given this, good demos for good
games are probably even more rare than good games.