Cities XL is an online multiplayer city-building strategy game, which, in The Demoman's mind, means it's probably sort of like playing SimCity while being called a fag by a bunch of strangers. One of the first things I see when I log in is someone explaining in chat how to get around the profanity filter by capitalizing every other letter. We're off to a fUcKiNg good start! I decide to name my city Columnville, as I am simply using it to crank out this column, but an administrative error (common in public works projects) occurs and my city's name is entered as Columnvilleq. This was due to me hitting the Q button, which I've mapped to take screenshots, at the wrong moment. Well, no matter, I'll just put some PR spin on it with a catchy city motto. "Columnvilleq: The Q is for Quality!"... Read more

As the Demoman, it's eerie just how much in common I have with Batman, even beyond the fact that both our names end in "man." Batman is a vigilante, operating outside the law to bring criminals to justice. The Demoman doesn't play by society's rules either: when installing a new game I often accept the terms of the license agreements without even reading them.... Read more

The tutorial for the Demigod demo is refreshingly brief: it consists of a button labeled "Join game." Turns out, Demigod is an online multiplayer RTS with RPG features, such as the ability to gain new skills, acquire beneficial items, and die repeatedly while being called a n00b by the other players because you don't know what the hell is going on because there's no friggin' tutorial. As you may have gathered, my first match didn't go very well. The demo gives you one map and game mode, which revolves around capturing checkpoints, destroying enemy structures, and staring mystified as dozens of little figures run around in different directions. I was excited to be able to play the giant building monster I've seen screenshots of, and I assumed I could just march him into battle... Read more

The Hunter bills itself as "The Most Realistic Hunting Game Online," and who better to judge than The Demoman, who has never actually hunted, played a hunting game, or even held a real gun, and who is so concerned with the welfare of wildlife that when he finds a spider in his house he carefully carries it outside, finds it a nice bush to live in, and gives it a gentle kiss on the forehead. After downloading the free-to-play game and registering on the free-to-register website, I carefully choose my avatar from the list. What name would strike fear into the rapidly beating hearts of woodland creatures? Drake Killslay? Pelt Gutstab? Killdeer Deerkiller? I eventually go with "Colette Goldstein."

I'm armed with a rifle, a deer call, a digital camera, and a HunterMate, which is like an iPhone that helps you identify deer poop. It also contains a map... Read more

THIS IS MY DEMOMAN COLUMN! THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT! (Many, many like it.) BUT THIS ONE IS MINE!

Hooah! This week I'm being deployed to America's Army 3, which I'll admit isn't actually a demo, but instead a full, free-to-play, first-person shooter created as a recruitment tool by the United States Army. I'm still going to treat it like a demo, however, and my rule with demos is that if I give them an eight sticky-bomb rating, I buy the full game. So, if I give this game an eight rating, I guess I will have to join the Army. Boy, I really I hope I don't like this game.

Luckily for me, I'm off to a good start in hating the crap out of it, after spending hours just trying to get the damn training missions to run. I won't go into detail on all the technical problems I had, but let's just say I spent a great deal of time stationed... Read more

With over a million people buying The Sims 3 in its first week in release, I'm feeling a little left out. Is there no free demo in which The Demoman can take control of computerized people and ruin their lives? The demo of Virtual Families, a casual family simulator by Last Day of Work, may be just the ticket, as its first words promise, or perhaps warn: "There are so many needy little people living in your computer."

The demo offers me a selection of needy, randomly generated characters, and I finally settle on a tiny woman who seems suitable for having her life destroyed. I name her Bambi and move her into a house, where I learn to "train" her, a fairly simple procedure involving two colored gloves. If she's doing something I don't approve of, I can whack her with a red glove as punishment. If I'm satisfied with what she's doing, I can hit her with a green glove as a reward. Either way, it's a slap-based interface, same as... Read more

This week the Demoman turns his steely, one-eyed gaze on the demo of The Path, the indie art-horror game based on fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Your goal is to reach grandmother's house, and the instructions are simple: stay on the path. Naturally, no one is going to stay on the path, since no one wants to visit their grandmother, because she's boring, she smells kind of funny, and she doesn't even have an Xbox. It's simple to play: just steer a young woman around, and if you see something you'd like to interact with, stop controlling her and see what she does. For instance, as I start wandering around, a bird lands near me. I lay off the controls and a moment later the young woman chases the bird, which flies away. Another example of interaction comes some two hours later when I turn the game off in anger because that bird is about the only goddamn thing there is in the demo to interact with. ... Read more

Were you eying that demo of Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper, but weren't sure whether it was worth the bandwidth? The Demoman is here to help, getting to the bottom of the sleuthy adventure sequel based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle classics:

The demo throws a number of puzzles in your path, and in the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I chose to treat each puzzle as a case. The first: The Case of the Missing Map. It seems Holmes, brilliant as he is, doesn't know his way around his home city of London without a map, and doesn't remember where he left it. Luckily, the case is busted wide open when I, controlling Watson, immediately find the map on a desk a few feet away. That leads to a second case: The Case of Locating Whitechapel on a Map. Read more..

As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Frankly, I don't know jack about history, but I imagine the saying works for pop-culture as well. I've learned a lot from all the years spent sitting on my ass watching movies and playing video games, lessons like: don't read from a flesh-bound Book of the Dead, don't conduct experiments in an effort to open a gateway to another dimension, don't dig up an ancient relic on a alien planet, and, of course, don't open Pandora's Box. The demo of Legendary, a first-person shooter developed by Spark Unlimited, demonstrates the dangers of ignoring this last lesson, which, as it turns out, are the same dangers as ignoring any of the lessons above: if you mess around with science or magic or alien stuff, a bunch of horrible monsters will spill forth from some shadowy netherworld and a badass commando will have to shoot them all with a bunch of weapons that happen to be lying around unattended. ... Read more

The great thing about Tomb Raider games is that they give you an outlet for the inevitable rage that builds up from playing Tomb Raider games. That outlet is Lara Croft herself: she's just so enjoyable to punish when you're pissed off. You can run her into walls, drown her in the surf, or make her fall to her death from clifftops--and as gracefully as she springs around in the demo of Tomb Raider: Underworld, man, she falls like a fucking brick when you want her to. Arms pinwheeling, legs kicking, she plummets face-first into the ground with a satisfying thud. Much in the same way World of Warcraft now lets you play Peggle to stave off the boredom of playing World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider lets you terrorize Lara to relieve the frustration of playing Tomb Raider.

When Lara isn't dying accidentally or being killed on purpose, she's hunting through ruins in Thailand, extinguishing whatever wildlife she comes across, and kicking priceless ancient urns into pieces to find out what's in them. The demo begins with Lara in a boat offshore, where after a short swim through shark-infested waters... Read more

[Christopher Livingston is a freelance writer with plenty of time for games but not enough money to buy them. Thus was born The Demoman; a shadowy yet helpful figure dedicated not to helping you decide which expensive games to buy, but which free game demos to play.]

I enjoy some elements of mixed martial arts, like the kind you see on Ultimate Fighting Champion: the punching, the kicking, and the throwing of knees and elbows. Where it sort of loses me is when the matches inevitably wind up with both guys on the ground, legs wrapped around each other's waists, crotches pressed tightly together. I guess I can see that part of it being appealing to a certain demographic, but that's when I tend to tune out.

If you decide to play the World of Mixed Martial Arts 2 demo, you won't personally be ramming your fist into your opponents face or your groin into your opponents groin: WMMA2 is a management sim. You'll be in the office, reading e-mails, sending e-mails, responding to e-mails, and waiting for e-mails. If that doesn't sound particularly engaging, read on: I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it.... Read more

[Christopher Livingston is a freelance writer with a plenty of time for games but not enough money to buy them. Thus was born The Demoman; a shadowy yet helpful figure dedicated not to helping you decide which expensive games to buy, but which free game demos to play.]

The mafia, much like a heroin habit or a romantic relationship with a gay cowboy, is hard to quit. "Mob Ties Tokyo" puts you in the shoes of a hitman employed by a Japanese businessman who is trying to go legit and sever his mob ties. Various gangs are not taking news of his departure well, and they're not willing to let him go without a fight. Luckily for you, their definition of "fight" involves a lot of running sideways into walls or simply standing motionless.

I didn't learn the back-story by playing the demo, which is very light on plot, but from perusing the game's website--which also has a FAQ page that includes the question, "Can I save my games for play later?" The answer is a resounding yes. When you sit down to play Mob Ties Tokyo, the developers have thoughtfully seen to it that you don't have to play the entire game in one sitting. What an age we live in.... Read more

Today we are pleased to announce the addition of a new weekly columnist to the Shacknews arsenal of wordsmiths.

Shack readers probably know Christopher Livingston best from his long-running Half-Life 2 comic, Concerned. But Livingston is also an accomplished writer outside of comic form, making his mark on blogs such as Living in Oblivion, 1Fort, and most recently, First-Person Shouter.

Livingston comes to Shacknews in the guise of The Demoman, a series that sees the writer reviewing the best, and often the worst, of gaming demos. We now present his debut effort, an amusing examination of the demo for GRIN's movie-turned-action game, Wanted: Weapons of Fate:

As we begin playing the demo, we are repeatedly insulted by this extremely unpleasant and sarcastic kid. We're even forced to choose the lowest difficulty setting ("Pussy"). Okay. This is a demo that clearly does not like us. Read more..