Sega just released a demo for Alien Vs Predator which allows players to enjoy an 8 player deathmatch on one of the ship maps.  Players can party up and join a room with up to 8 players.  You can choose from Alien, Space Marine or Predator (while there seems to be a limit to how many Predators can play).  There are also locked options to choose from the class of character you play as.  For now there is a generic Space Marine and a basic Alien.  What is extremely unique about this experience is that each character is truly different from the others.  For instance, the aliens generally crawl on the ground, whip their tails and thrash with claws while the marines have the basic gun load out and the predator has slashing and shooting abilities.  The aliens can crawl all over any surface which can be disorienting at times but can also add a lot of fun to the game.  I have yet to be a Predator but the Marine has a flash light, can’t see well in the dark but his gun is very powerful against all enemies.

From what I could tell the game seems semi-language free.  There is a lot of blood and gore and the kill animations are pretty realistic.  It is definitely creepy to play as a Marine when you are battling alien races and can’t see infront of you.  Bare in mind that this game doesn’t come off as being tactical at all.  It felt more in the realm of Quake or Unreal Tournament where you play fast and die a lot.  If that is your thing than you may really enjoy this game.  The demo is free and you can try it out for yourself.

Have you already played the demo?  Let us know your impressions in the comments.

…Playstation Network Demo scheduled for February 4th.

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 console demo and PC beta will feature Port Valdez, a new vehicle focused map where up to 24 players (32 on PC) will compete against each other as either the US or Russian armies in the game’s Rush multiplayer mode. Players will have access to five land and three air vehicles where the Russian side can use everything in their arsenal including Main Battle Tanks as well as the fast-moving Quad Bikes and Mobile Armored AA. The fight will also be packed with plenty of infantry combat fought alongside the waterline towards a great oil industrial landscape in the Alaskan mountains.
Have you played the demo?  What did you think about it?  Leave a comment.

Sega is giving away the chance to download the demo for their latest game Bayonetta on the Xbox 360 earlier than the general public.  All that is required is for you to go here and fill out some information for your chance to receive the free demo code.  Registration is from 9-13 November and those selected to receive will be notified by November 16th.  Sega has 40,000 codes to give away, so good luck.

The post-E3 scuttlebutt surrounding Microsoft’s Project Natal is mixed, at best. Some seem to think it’s equal to the Second Coming, while others are less than impressed. The truth of the technology’s potential is somewhere in between: great possibilities, but whether or not Natal can realize them remains to be seen.

While we don’t know precisely how well Natal will work, we already know one piece of software doesn’t quite work as advertised: Peter Molyneux’s “Milo” demo. According to Spike’s Vice President of Content (and Gametrailers’ editor-in-chief) Shane Satterfield, Milo was mostly — pardon my terminology — bull.

Satterfield had this to say about Milo in Gametrailers’ latest episode of Invisible Walls: “All I’m going to say about Milo is that it’s not legit. There were a lot of smoke and mirrors going on there — not the case with the ball demo [Ricochet] and the other stuff, but with Milo there was definitely a little bit of deception going on.”

Satterfield was part of a select group shown the Milo demo behind closed doors. Satterfield says a Microsoft employee was “controlling” Milo behind the scenes. He also says that Molyneux informed the press on hand that Milo’s voice recognition features aren’t as swell as they appear. Milo — and Natal in general, it seems — apparently does not recognize an individual’s voice, but rather his or her tone, and only uses rudimentary open-ended statements that will fit into any conversation a player can start.

It would be foolish to take Satterfield’s word as gospel, but bare in mind he isn’t the only one voicing his doubts about Natal’s true potential. And Satterfield isn’t saying that Natal is  a complete lie, but rather its motion detection works much better than its voice recognition. That isn’t terribly surprising, considering the current state of voice recognition software.

So, we’re forced to consider: if Natal’s technology isn’t as advanced as Microsoft would have us think, just how ground-breaking can it really be? Is this a true evolution of existing technology, or simply a new proof-of-concept? Only time will tell, as Project Natal isn’t anywhere near finished. Hopefully, once Natal is released into the wild, it will be more than ready to live up to the hype.

Sony announced the official release window for God of War III at their E3 press conference today. That window, in case you didn’t bother to read the article title, is March 2010. That keeps in line with the release dates for previous entries in the God of War franchise.

Sony also showed off a gameplay demo, featuring Kratos struggling against Helios, the young Greek god of the sun. I think it’s safe to say Helios’ days are numbered — as well as the entire Greek pantheon.

Said demo will be on-hand on the E3 show floor, so I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about how it plays in the near future. We’ll update as often as possible. Why the special attention? ‘Cause it’s friggin’ God of War III, that’s why!

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See, we’re not all Microsoft fanboys at HCG. Honest.

If you’re a Final Fantasy fan but not quite nutty enough to pay a month’s salary to import the Japanese Blu-Ray edition of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, don’t fret. The American version will be released June 2, 2009, and will run for roughly 39 bones. There’s a bevy of extras for fans to sink their nerdy teeth into; but sadly the U.S. edition of the Blu-Ray will be lacking the best one.

Yes, the Final Fantasy XIII demo, included in the Japanese edition of Advent Children Complete, will not be available in the American version. Yoshinori Kitase, producer for FFXIII, explains that due to the difficulties of developing for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the West, Square Enix cannot afford the time to work on an English-language demo for the Blu-Ray release. American fans will however receive a new trailer exclusive to the Advent Children Complete Blu-Ray.

Hopefully, we’ll still see a demo — on both PS3 and 360 — in the near future. Some time this century would be nice, eh?

Final Fantasy fans: start salivating. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete finally gets a release date in North America.  Extras include everything from trailers to featurettes.  But the most exciting extra could be the “Exclusive Sneek Peek of Final Fantasy XIII”.  In Japan this is a playable demo of Final Fantasy XIII.

Now this could be anything from an extended trailer to the aforementioned demo.  It would be awesome if it was the demo, but I will be getting this Blu-ray — even if only for the 1080p goodness.

We’ve all played the Resident Evil 5 Demo by now right? Right. I have been a gamer for more than half my life now, and I’ve never played a Resident Evil game. Mainly because I’ve never been much into zombies (although I love Left 4 Dead now). I have always had the understanding that when a new RE game comes out, it sells a ton of copies. I never really knew why but I knew it was a fact.

So RE5 popped on to the Marketplace not too long ago, and I gave it a whirl. It has had a ton of hype, I saw previews of it from E3 ‘08 and various gaming websites so I went in with really high hopes. Basically all that I knew was that the graphics were going to be stellar and that I was going to shoot some zombies.

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It was recently announced that Killzone 2 would be getting a timed demo for download to people who pre-order the game from Gamestop. Not only is the demo exclusive for pre-ordering consumers only, but it’s an exclusive to GameStop stores. Does no else see the insanity that this entails? It’s not a difficult thing to figure out. A demo is a demonstration of a product to try and rope in purchases. A taste which leaves me wanting more. I play the demo, I make up my mind and go from there. In typical short sighted Sony, the overall benefits of a readily available demo are being chopped up and traded for a small amount of pre-orders. It sure makes GameStop happy and it is nice to be comforted in high pre-order numbers, but something has been lost:  the entire point of making a demo.

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I played through F.E.A.R 1 when it first came out.  It was a direct port from the PC to the 360 which was obvious in a lot of aspects.  The shooting was off, the graphics seemed blocky, the hit detection was lacking and much more.  However the first F.E.A.R. wasn’t really that bad of a game at all and it certainly had it’s scary moments.  One of the best parts of F.E.A.R. was the bullet time sequences that you could use, where you would literally slow down time and take out your opponents before the time had elapsed.

So I played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo with high expectations, thinking that they would capitalize on what worked with the original and fix the things that didn’t.  The end result?  It worked!  The F.E.A.R. 2 demo is amazing and it truly looks like it will be head and shoulders above the original game.

The first things I noticed was the graphic upgrade.  Everything in this game looks better.  The backgrounds look real, the enemies are smooth and seemless, Alma (the creepy little girl) looks like an actual little girl-and creepy.  The shooting is spot on, the hit detection actually registered when you hit an enemy and the bullet time was stellar!

I am not completely sure on the plot line for this game aside from the fact that Alma is back and she is causing havok.  There were some very noticeably creepy parts in the demo, even one where I jumped from fright!  My kinda game.  Monolith does a great job making you feel like you are all alone in your environment, there are crazy things going on around you-lighting effects add such a scary mood.

I am very impressed with this demo and even more excited for the release of the game.  If you have not checked this game out yet you need to.  Be aware however that it is an M rated title.  There are lots of bloody moments and it can be pretty disturbing.