Demos available on WiiWare

Famously demo-averse Nintendo is now serving up demos for three third-party games on its WiiWare service. Available free from the Wii Shop channel are demos of NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits, Bit.Trip: Beat, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord. Warning screens indicate that you can’t save any progress, and that the demos may “not support every feature of the full version.” The demos are supposed to only be available for a limited time, but we’ll take advantage of the opportunity to bring you our first demo review of a Wii game!

Nintendo’s US website claims five trials should be available, the additions being demos for Pokemon Rumble (not yet out in Europe) and World of Goo (we reviewed the PC demo here).

Left 4 Dead 2 demo 4 a short time?

The demo for Valve’s upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 is now available to everyone on Steam, after a while spent restricted to pre-order customers only. After the original Left 4 Dead demo’s limited run of availability it seems likely that the demo will go down when the game launches on November 18th, although Valve haven’t yet made an official statement. Shutting off the Left 4 Dead 1 demo didn’t seem to negatively affect the popularity of the multi-million-selling shooter, positive word of mouth recommendations apparently counting for more than a chance to sample the game and make sure it runs well.

In an unprecedented case of actual journalism, GDR have contacted Valve for comment. The Left 4 Dead 2 demo can be downloaded from Steam.

Left 4 Dead demo – for a limited time only

Valve have released the demo for their upcoming co-operative zombie survival FPS Left 4 Dead to pre-order customers, and according to 1UP will be opening it to everyone from the 11th November. Unusually, the demo’s multiplayer mode will be shut off when the game releases on the 18th, giving most players just one week to try it out. We’ll see if this experiment to prevent people sticking with the demo indefinitely causes grief or goes by without complaint; the reaction to the absence of multiplayer in the Multiwinia demo recently caused developers Introversion to relent and release a new online-enabled edition. It’s worth remembering that Valve typically have occasional free weekends for their multiplayer shooters, so other opportunities to evaluate the game should come up.

The Left 4 Dead demo is available on Steam, and the new Multiwinia demo can be downloaded from Introversion. We reviewed the original demo earlier, and found it interesting if not very deep.

Sins of a Solar Empire UK demo: any differences?

Aside from a new publisher splash video, no. Same three maps, same race, same tech and time limitations. It doesn’t appear to be based on the latest patch either. Evidently the UK demo release is purely so the UK publisher could put their fingerprints on it, and there’s no absolutely no reason for anyone who has the previous version to get it. Of course, if you haven’t played the demo before, we found that it’s well worth a look.

New site for demo downloads

Demo fans! There’s a new site for downloads allowing fast, free, no sign-up direct http downloads of demos (so you can easily use a download accelerator). A trial 600 MB download averaged at 700 kB/s for me. This probably won’t last past them getting their first monthly bandwidth bill, but for now bigdownload.com is worth a look next time you want to grab a new demo.