Electronic Arts & DICE’s Mirror’s Edge isn’t an easy game to grasp by watching trailers or gameplay footage. I know it is a first person parkour game, however how does it control? How easy it for the player to control Faith and pull off all those acrobatic moves? You certainly can’t get all that info from a piece of game footage. Thank goodness for demos. If there was any game which needed a demo this holiday season, Mirror’s Edge takes the cake. Now the question is: Did the demo help or hinder Mirror’s Edge?

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So while I was trying out Pure, PlayStation 3 owners willing to pay for Qore were testing out an old build of Evolution Studio’s MotorStorm: Pacific Rift. A month later, Sony released the very same build to the masses. I finally get to try it. Does this demo amaze me like the original MotorStorm’s demo did? Or was I mistakened for putting so much faith in this sequel? Well, I wasn’t as starry eyed as before, but it was plenty of fun.

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I didn’t mind it when Sony packaged the SOCOM: Confrontation beta with Qore. I didn’t even mind when they bundled that MotorStorm: Pacific Rift demo with it. However, when I found out that they bundled Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles demo with the latest issue of Qore, I shook my head in disbelief. The bloody demo is freely available for European and Japanese PSN users. Bundling it with Qore is just silly, SCEA.

As fun as it is to make fun of SCEA for their peculiar strategy, let’s get down to business. I’m here to talk about my time with the Valkyria Chronicles demo. Thanks to SCEE, I was able to try this 581 MB demo and you know what? It’s surprisingly good! I came for the art the style, but I stayed for the game’s unique blend of real-time turn based strategy gameplay.

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In 2007, Xbox 360 owners received a few games which PS3 only gamers were not invited to. Two them included 2K Games’ BioShock and Namco Bandai’s Eternal Sonata. A year later, those two games are no longer exclusive. I’ve already taken a look at BioShock’s PS3 demo and now it’s Eternal Sonata’s turn. Will the PS3 demo finally convince me to pick up this JRPG?

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On Monday, I was blessed with a LittleBigPlanet beta code courtesy of 1UP. Since then, I’ve put in approximately 8 hours or so into this beta. It took awhile for me to sit down and write this little piece for you all because of two simple reasons: 1) the beta has so much to offer and 2) I was too busy tinkering with my level.

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2007 was a special year for gaming which some regarded as the best gaming year ever. I thought those comments were greatly exaggerated. What wasn’t an exaggeration was how wonderful BioShock was. It was a brilliant game which just about everyone got to play. Well everyone who owned an Xbox 360 or a capable PC. PS3 only gamers were left out of the fun, but now their time has finally come. Rapture awaits, but will this port deliver the same wonderful experience Xbox 360 and PC gamers were blessed with last year? Or should you save your pennies for a new AMD HD Radeon 4850?

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LucasArts has two internally developed games for “next-gen” consoles in 2008. There was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which I wasn’t very fond of, and Fracture. I’m sure this isn’t earth shattering, but I’m not fond of Fracture either. Today, the 700+ MB demo debuted on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live! Marketplace today and I spent some time checking out the game’s terrain deformation. My findings? Both The Force Unleashed and Fracture share very similar faults.

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I caught gameplay videos of Pure earlier this year and I was very impressed. Seemingly out of nowhere comes an off road racer brimming with style and flash. It looked great, it sounded great, but does it play as good? Definitely. After installing the 1.2 gigabyte demo and spending forty minutes with the one available level, I’m left incredibly impressed. However, I’m not going to pick this title up this Fall. Why? The answer and more follows.

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I have not yet bought this game, nor do I know if I even will.  However, I have been having fun lately perusing the bountiful free ps3 Demo collection available on the Playstation Network Store.  Yeah yeah, everyones going on about how great Bionic Commando: Rearmed is and I wont offer my thoughts on it because we already have a review of the full game here. 

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The Star Wars: The Force Unleashed demo was released earlier today on both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live! Marketplace. The game sounds brilliant on paper and definitely showed well in demonstration videos, but as the gameplay videos began to trickle in, doubt began to settle in my mind. I want a spiritual successor to the Jedi Knight games with rich lightsaber combat and despite the obvious subtitle; I was hoping The Force Unleashed would deliver on that. Unfortunately, I expected a bit too much.

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