Demo Review

Played two different XBOX 360 demos recently: Blue Dragon and Fatal Inertia. I've also downloaded at least three more, so possibly you'll see reviews of those here once I get a chance to play them. This may not be til after the Florida trip though.

Blue Dragon: Compile as many big names in the JRPG business as possible, put them to work on a 360 title to try and get more sales in Japan. That's the name of the game, and I have to say that the demo has me intrigued. The demo only lets you run around on two different fields (or dungeons, if you prefer), and gives you pretty powerful characters to play with. The field map is pretty nice, and you can always see enemies: if you choose to encounter them or they ambush you, you get taken into a battle mode with all the characters present. The neat trick here is that you have the option of encountering multiple groups of enemies that are on the field at the same time: you fight them in sequence, but after each fight completes you get a random bonus for the next fights. So it gets easier and easier. Battles themselves are very FF (early) style, with different commands for each character, an overdrive equivalent that shreds enemies and refills mana, and great graphics. I thought it was pretty fun, and though there's no direct story in the demo, there's hints about it: why do these characters have these freaky totemic shadows behind them? Why do those shadows sometimes materialize and kick massive butt?

Fatal Inertia: Wipeout style futuristic racing game, with weapons and stuff. The controls are funky, about what you'd expect, but the relationship between what I did with the controller and what the ship did on screen had me frustrated more than once as I slammed into walls. Maybe I need more practice, but I think if I've played this style of game before there should be some basic ability there, which certainly was not noticeable with how easily I rammed walls. The weapons are ok, except for the having no clue what they actually do. It's an icon! It looks like... horseshoes! It throws these piddly little bolts forward and does... I dunno? I think I hit something once, but it wasn't really clear what it did. The controls also led to frustration here: it was hard enough to stay on the track, much less actually aim any of the weapons. Some were really flashy, but ultimately the only one who was destroyed in each race was myself.