Wow, this is... something.
\"like Alice through a particularly shiny-looking rabbit hole, with no explanation as to what the hell is going on.\" The whole thing takes place in a dream - of course there\'s not gonna be any explanations. The fact that you use an Alice reference shows that you should have made that connection yourself.
\"The last thing you do is walk down a literal hallway! Exactly one of the major sticking points of its direct predecessor (as usual, the MMORP Gs don\'t count), mentioned by name, and used literally. Like something out of a snarky Decline of Video Gaming style online parody video. Hell, I\'d take it as Square Enix poking fun at themselves... if they didn\'t have less of a sense of self-irony than Morrissey. \" This is a tech demo. SE have already proven that the rest of the game will be open world. It\'s not like this is the first ever glimpse we get of the game...
\"Oh, and while on the subject, anyone who thinks Ground Zeroes was a short, unsatisfying teaser that had trouble justifying its own existence has got another thing coming. This\'ll give you perspective, if nothing else (and you know there isn\'t)! \" Ground Zeroes was $30 (half the price of a full game) at launch, and the content was... not much. This is free.
\"The final straw are the in-game objects you can use to make time pass faster, or change the weather. Shameless, ostentatious Scenery Porn of the most condescending kind.\" How dare a tech demo actually do things to help show off a game\'s graphical engine ! Especially for a game series that\'s been known for its graphical quality since it went 3D ! If you feel looked down upon by this kind of option... seriously, don\'t play anything with good graphics. Every movie and game with good visuals does stuff to show them off. There\'s nothing condescending about that.
Uh, in case it escaped your notice, the Platinum demo\'s story (such as it is) is entirely separate from the main game (and the previous demos), being more of a general look at Noctis as a child. It\'s not indicative of the game overall, much less the final product, so much as a look into small details - good to know for extra context, but not required (and also more of a tech demo, as stated by GXG).
The Duscae demo(s) should be your true preview, since they are actual XV gameplay - basic, watered-down, limited options compared to the final game, yet still.
As others have pointed out, this is clearly a tech demo that they decided to give away for free for extra promotion :P It\'s probably not going to be your best moment, devoting so many words to complaining about a tech demo being a tech demo.
Maybe I should've outlined that somewhere, but this is coming from a guy with no knowledge or indeed interest, of all the behind the scenes complications detailed in your replies. The "Platinum" demo's entry in the Play Station Store contains no indication that this is a demo on the "tech" level. It's false advertising, at best. The other demo(s) are seemingly unattainable through means other than buying other (undoubtedly similarly sub-standard) Square Enix products. For all intents and purposes, this is the no-strings-attached window into the game available for the uninitiated, and I cannot imagine anyone—especially "outsiders"—wringing much of any enjoyment out of this debacle. If you ever needed proof that Square stopped giving a shit about drawing in new audiences long ago, this is it.
A good demo should have the same appeal to everyone, regardless of how much they know of its content or context beforehand. In this regard, this is an abject failure that I would, and indeed have, rated below some computer magazine demos from the '90s I've long since forgotten.
\"False advertising\". No. You\'re just pulling stuff out of your ass, now. Just because it\'s not labelled as a tech demo doesn\'t mean it\'s not one - besides, they\'re not selling anything to you, since the demo is free ! Square Enix dedicated an entire show just to give details about the game and it\'s tie-ins, for god\'s sake.
\"A good demo should have the same appeal to everyone, regardless of how much they know of its content or context beforehand.\" Not necessarily. To use the example of Ground Zeroes again, it was a good - but extremely incomplete - demo of MGS 5\'s gameplay, but it was little else in terms of story. The fact that it was litterally a chunk of the game that they took out of 5 and made into its own 30$ game makes it arguably even worse - and yet I don\'t see you complaining about that. A demo can be about whatever it pleases, even if it\'s mostly tech stuff and not much of the gameplay.
Just because you couldn\'t figure out that a demo with a button to change the weather and lightning effects was a tech demo, doesn\'t mean other people can\'t.
It sounds that you were so ready to hate on the game that you didn\'t think about what it was you were playing. And now you\'re covering for your mistake by acting as though it\'s somehow Square Enix fault for _tricking you_. I mean why do you decide to review a demo in the first place?
This is free! It\'s a neat little doodad given away to spark some interest in the game and th eery make it clear in the blurb of the demo and the demo itself that it\'s not a demo of the actual game.
You write lots of good and interesting reviews, this just wasn\'t one of them.
Sorry, I think on reflection I\'m too harsh to you there, I regret that. My ultimate point is that, since this was a free demo-thing, I don\'t really understand why you should take it as anything more than it is. If its 3 minutes of the first level of a game (like some other PS4 demos) then play 3 minutes of the first level. If its a handful of environments showing off a bunch of graphical effects, then it\'s a toy to play around with and check out the falshy lights.
But that doesn\'t give me any reason to make assumptions about how you felt or why you had the negative reactions you did and it was insulting and arrogant of me to say stuff like that.
I do mean the part about you writing interesting reviews though! I don\'t always (often? :p) agree but I\'m always happy to have read them!
Sorry, I think on reflection I\'m too harsh to you there,
Not at all, I assume others, like me, were about to reply something along the same lines but you beat us to it. Bastard got called out and instead of having a moment of humbelness, decided to go with Never My Fault. As GKG said, that\'s not what \"false advertisement\" is, they would had to have said it \"wasn\'t\" a tech demo (either implicitly or explicitly) for that, in this case.
The entire \'Uncovered\' event shows that they are taking every step (and then some) to make sure that FFXV lives up to the hype - that\'s not the act of a company that\'s stopped caring about pulling fans in. But in either case, the issue isn\'t that you had no previous knowledge or interest.
The facts are you still had all the time in the world to look this up, to know what you were getting into before you played it, lack of interest aside. Or in the case of playing it first, you still could have waited on your reactions, looking up the demo to see what others thought about it, get information + viewpoints you otherwise missed, etc etc to otherwise get the full picture. Obviously, you did neither, and that by itself is more-or-less fine since it was your choice...
...yet rather than admit you made a mistake, going into this without pre-hand knowledge, or waiting on your assumptions to get to the truth of the matter \'before\' you made this review, you blame SE for a free demo that you made premature (and mainly inaccurate) assumptions + accusations for. That reflects upon you, quite frankly, not them.
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Platinum Demo: An Electroplated Elegy of Emptiness
As You Know, I'm not really coming from a good place here to begin with. Final Fantasy and me... well, let's just say, our best days together are gone, daddy, gone. But, hey, I'm not a guy to turn down a free demo! Hell, they may've even learned a thing or two from their copious mistakes over the last decade! Ain't no healer like time and all that... Hell, I'm convinced! Let's go! Let the legend come back to life...!
Nope.
Nopera.
Nopega.
27 minutes later, it was all over. The overused phrase "What the fuck did I just play?" was invented for situations like these. So I spent less than half an hour—less than it took to download the fucker (3.8 GBs for this?)—following a weird power animal dream guide thing communicating via text messages, like Alice through a particularly shiny-looking rabbit hole, with no explanation as to what the hell is going on.
The last thing you do is walk down a literal hallway! Exactly one of the major sticking points of its direct predecessor (as usual, the MMORPGs don't count), mentioned by name, and used literally. Like something out of a snarky Decline of Video Gaming style online parody video. Hell, I'd take it as Square Enix poking fun at themselves... if they didn't have less of a sense of self-irony than Morrissey.
It plays like, and exudes all the firsthand gameplay enjoyment associated with, a proof-of-concept video for a potential Kickstarter campaign, at best. And the visuals aren't even that good. They might've been revolutionary some two-three years ago, but by contemporary standards, they're nothing special. Not a year ago, MGSV did them one better, and at a rock-solid 60fps no less. Oh, and while on the subject, anyone who thinks Ground Zeroes was a short, unsatisfying teaser that had trouble justifying its own existence has got another thing coming. This'll give you perspective, if nothing else (and you know there isn't)!
Actually... you know what's a much better point of comparison? Those fanmade "remake" videos made with some new-fangled high-end graphics engine that make the game look shitloads better, but always fail to capture what made the game unique in the first place. There's always something off about them. In this case, the demo's tepid, clunky and repetitive Kingdom Hearts-ish real-time RPG gameplay doesn't feel like it was made by real game developers.
The final straw are the in-game objects you can use to make time pass faster, or change the weather. Shameless, ostentatious Scenery Porn of the most condescending kind. And at the end, the game has the balls to ask you outright whether you'd like to buy it now. Like, literally, in the game itself. Square Enix and their usual pre-emptive attempts at creating a mini-franchise deserve nothing more to crash and burn if this pointless waste of time is the sum of their efforts.
When will I ever learn? Hell, when will they?!?