ArcaniA: Gothic 4 Demo out on PC, Xbox 360

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Fans of the fantasy RPG series Gothic eager to see how ArcaniA: Gothic 4 turned out, given that it's the first entry in the series developed by Spellbound Entertainment rather than creator Piranha Bytes, can now find out with the PC and Xbox 360 demo.

The 1.71GB PC demo is available from your friendly neighbourhood FileShack while the 872MB Xbox 360 demo is, naturally, over on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

The demo "comprises the first two hours of the game and shows the beginning tutorial level on Feshyr Island featuring selected quests," says publisher DreamCatcher.

ArcaniA: Gothic 4 is slated for release on PC and Xbox 360 in North America come October 12. The PlayStation 3 edition has been delayed into the first half of 2011.

From The Chatty
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    September 24, 2010 7:43 AM

    Had a fantastic bug with this demo; something went awry with the animation meshes, and every time a character spoke their face jumped around, inverted and generally freaked the hell out. Even with the settings on Low detail there are graphics glitches everywhere, like shadows from the trees that stay on the screen after you turn away from the tree... Gothic 3 bugginess redux. Combat is better, but it was so awful in 3 that this just brings it back to baseline rather than to something interesting.

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      September 24, 2010 7:45 AM

      and this is a demo?

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        September 24, 2010 8:21 AM

        A demo is meant to promote the full game. He may not choose to buy the full game because of his experience.

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          September 24, 2010 8:48 AM

          I think you misunderstood. He (she?) is simply expressing surprise that even the demo section of a game could be so poorly polished, when demos are effectively hand-picked bits of a game that are intended to show off its best traits. If a demo is this buggy, the full game can only be more so.

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            September 24, 2010 12:37 PM

            I tend to be pretty easy on demos; after all, they are made when the game is usually 3/4 towards shipping, rather than from finished code. I'm just chuckling about this one because Gothic 3 was so buggy that the game's FANS kept making their own patches for the game even after the developer/Jowood gave up on the game and moved on to the next one; in fact, as I remember, the fan-made patches made it out before the developer-released patches...

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      September 24, 2010 7:49 AM

      Makes me wonder if the bugs and crashes reported are only on the PC and not the 360. If so, brace for PC gamer rage in 5..4...3...2..

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        September 24, 2010 8:28 AM

        I did not have any bugs, it ran incredibly well maxed out and I'm looking forward to it.

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      September 24, 2010 8:14 AM

      Funny I had no issues what so ever?

      People go try it for your self(the demo) that is the best advise I can give, for I had no issues and I am sure you will not either.

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        September 24, 2010 11:03 AM

        I had no issues at all either.

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        September 24, 2010 12:41 PM

        Yes, because you had no issues no one else will either.

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      September 24, 2010 8:23 AM

      What kind of graphics card do you have, and what driver version are you using?

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        September 24, 2010 11:05 AM

        I'm using 2 NVIDIA 8800 GTS cards in SLI, and the very latest drivers on 64-bit Windows 7. The face-jumping bug is reproducible; just change the graphics details settings but do NOT re-start the game like it warns you that you need to do. I'll see if I can capture some of it and put it up on youtube, it is pretty awesome - you can see the "teeth" and "eyeballs" models under the face mesh when it jumps around, super creepy!

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          September 24, 2010 12:28 PM

          So you didn't re-start like it told you to, and you call that a bug?

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            September 24, 2010 12:34 PM

            Let's all hope and pray that you never get a job in Q/A testing or support....

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              September 24, 2010 6:01 PM

              wtf, it asks you to restarted and you don't?

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