over the past week i had found my way into a bunch of ps2 demo discs, one i found at a local thrift store as part of a buy 5 for £1 deal, the rest i had found while clearing out a closet, i'm not really sure where i got those, but i decided it might be fun to take a look at some of them, i picked out 2 to start with. the febuary 2005 disc 56 from the PS2 official magazine and volume 15 from PSW magazine!

so the first of these demos had no playable games, it's a very early disc and not one from the official magazine like the other, but that doesn't mean its not interesting. the main crux of this one is the previews and a big thing about final fantasy: the spirits within. the first area is the newsreeel, which you'll find after an amazingly Y2K menu, it's a lot like a ps1 demo menu. this has some previews with voiceover for spiderman, nascar, medal of honor: frontline, monsters inc and woody woodpecker, the woman doing the VO is a bit flat but it works, the writing isn't bad either, they do a good job of hyping up the games! 4 of them look really fun, woody woodpecker and monsters inc went on my list for sure, and i don't even like the movie one is based on, i do own spiderman and MOh though, but i will play them, this makes them look fun.the nascar game doesn't do a good job on selling me though, it's just not for me. after this is the previews segment, which is a cool song accompanying it, here you can find some things like preview gameplay for favourites like maximo and vampire knight with the same VO as before, this is very similarly styled to a review but without a real score after it, which is fine, i imagine this was great for getting people hype at the time, it feels very like a games tv show from the time, like blister or pulse. the vampire knight one is especially cool, if just because i love that game and the music they use is really cool, but they were far too critical of it i think, their coverage of run like hell was good too, a game i wasn't very familiar with but it's on my list after this, it seems like a very different take on that era of horror! centre court tennis gives me some simple 2000 vibes from their coverage and it's also went on the list, even has a great OST from what they show and the other sports game they show off looks great too, with ESPN winter 2002, a very cool looking snowboarding game from konami. they even made an olympic game look good with their coverage of salt lake 2002. the last one though is very cool, showing some early deus ex ps2 gameplay, a port that seems very impressive and is super high on my to play list.

you also have some video reviews and a large archive of old scores. some of the review games interested me, like the review for moto GP 2, a game i was interested in because of the other demo disc i covered but the review made it also look cool, showing off its ridge racer-like mascot and its really good ost and some impressive weather effects, i picked this one up after the review, state of emergency which looked super fun and chaotic, almost musou like, rayman M which seems like a very experimental platformer to me, a lot like mad dash racing for the xbox, wipeout fusion which looks really fast and impressive for the time, great aesthetics too, headhunter looks great too, but i have it on the dreamcast not the ps2, seems impressive for its time though! ace combat 4 was also covered and it blew me away that it was an early ps2 game, it looks much later than that and the story seems neat. the rez review is also a lot better than i expected, for a UK magazine covering a game this artsy, one of these days i really need to cave on a dreamcast copy... ecco on dreamcast also looks cool as its shown off here and i will pick it up ASAP and bass strike ends the cool games with a cozy looking fishing game. there are also games here that look less than interesting, like a motocross game that seems very boring and some football, i just, i just don't care i'm sorry. one interesting thing is the reviews here, at least the video reviews don't have scores attached, which i respect a lot since it's something i don't do either (see my article on objectivity for why) also here are some movie stuff, some dvd trailers for fox movies and a spirits within feature, this feature has things like trailers, a full scene of aki's dream and a little bio for aki herself, something the movie would hope cought on, aki as a big thing and her as a digital actress. you have a reviews section full of text reviews and screenshots, sadly with review scores, an imports segment with coverage for police 24/7 and superhero (both of which i MUST import) a soulcalibur 2 trailer, a small MGS2 documentory video, a codemasters game lineup and lastly a showreel combining all the videos into one, it's a very solid demo disc with a bunch of games i now need to get added to my list because of it, the review list is also very useful, it has some nice screenshots!

the other demo is much more substantive, this one has games to play, quite a few of them but is much lessened on the actual video count, which is a shame, you still have some like a really cool 6 mins of enthusia racing, which feels less like a trailer and more like a huge AMV of gameplay set to the games soundtrack, it's neat if you're into the game, it's one i havent played but i own it and it seems neat, this did help make me want to play it, you also have in this small section called "monitor" where it's located 2 other vids, one is a trailer for the beat em up/survival horror hybrid tekken spinoff "death by degrees" starring nina willaims, it's just the games opening, cutscenes spiced with gameplay but it looks really cool and did well to sell me on the game, which i do own and may play sometime this year, it looks really cool! lastly is a video OP for battlestations midway, a fairly standard looking RTS game, but it looks cool and it's a game i may look more into, it's from eidos and i liked eidos a lot. also in the video sections was the "spy" section, now what makes this different from the other bit? i'm not sure, these are still just trailers with nothing added but they're seperate from the others for some reason. first off is a trailer for the third person horror shooter constantine, this looked great! it was a game that was already on my to get list because it reminded me of a horror styled game like stranglehold or WET and it always looked very fun but this really sold me, the trailer had a very solid atmosphere to it and it felt actually scary! i picked this one up right after i was done with the disc, it looked that good! i hope the game can live up to that, but i imagine it will, i have seen the movie its based on many years ago, it had keanu in it but i don't remember much else, maybe i'll refresh myself on it before i play the game. after this was a trailer for the eyetoy game "monkey mania", an ape escape spinoff minigame collection, the trailer didn't do a good job of showing it off since it was just a montage of people playing the game and it didn't show off much beyond just the people, it does look fun though, if anything was going to make good use of eyetoy gimmicks, it would be ape escape so i trust it's a fun time for the eyetoy, this was also one i went and picked up since it was cheap and the bits it did show off inbetween badly lit FMV of people did look really fun! lastly in this section was the game "project snowblind" this was a deus ex spinoff that was more focused on the FPS aspects and it looks great! i'm not usually into shooters but i love deus ex and this trailer did a really good job of showcasing its strengths, the cool body mods and really out there weapons that felt almost more like a resistance game than deus ex, i already owned this one but it made sure i will play it soon! as far as trailers go that's about it, because this is a UK magazine you have some PES trailer and a "goal of the week" segment set to some cheesy brit-rock, this is really not for me so i won't pass judgment, but i can't say i understand at all, the last menu option is just for a trailer for a san andreas prequel DVD thingy, didn't know that existed so that's neat, even if it's not a game i have any interest in.

so onto the actual demos, the selection here was really great! almost all of these games were hits and i even found a few games i wanted to add to my list, but i'll start with the demos one low note, athens 2004. this is a game i'd usually be pretty into but this one felt very overcomplicated and not fun, it looked very good, had authentic commentating and didn't seem like a bad game, but i just couldn't get a hang of the controls and had a bad time, this wasn't one i wanted to pick up. after this was metal slug 3, probably the game i'm the most familiar with on here and maybe my favourite? metal slug 3 is one of the best run and gun games ever made, you could even argue it's the best, here you get the first level and its various branches, it's a short demo but with the 4 or 5 branches you have replay value, it's also just a great game, it's fun, has some of the best spritework on the system and it's challanging if you like that, it's a must play game on any system and a real standout for the demo, i have this game on vita and on the anthology on wii, which is where i'd reccomend playing it since you get a ton more games on there too. after this was the biggest surprise of the pack, moto GP 3, i fully expected this to be the most boring game on the disc and one i'd not really want to play, but what i found was really special. the game opens up with the namco logo, which was a good sign but i figured maybe it was just a publishing deal, then it hit me with a reiko nagase looking character and some ridge racer as heck music and it clicked that what i thought would be a boring gran turismo style game, was actually a fun namco racer and i got very hype. it wasn't reiko, but rather hitomi yoshino, namcos sports girl who was meant to be reikos heir and showed up in a bunch of other games starting from moto gp 2! but you do have some other namco chacters here too, like mr driller and jack slate from dead to rights, it's a fairly standard bike game but if you play on the easy mode it's very arcady and has a killer OST here, you only get 3 tracks (which aren't super interesting, much like the ones in gran turismo sport they're just boring realistic ones from real locals, but because they're more colourful and low poly here i think they look better) of varying difficulty in the demo and i could only place well in the easy mode since i played the best, but i had a good time and i went ahead and picked up both this one with its amazing cover art and i picked up the first game too which has klonoa! after this was the demo for a game i also was not very familiar with from a series i know next to nothing about other than a platnum game that's on my list, transformers for ps2! this was also surprisingly good, it was colourful and it played a lot like a personal favourite of mine, metal arms: glitch in the system, it was a shooter with cooldown abilities and a car you can transform into, you only had one small level here but it was big and fun enough to fight and explore in with big trees and a cool ruin to find, this is one i may pick up someday because it seems very enjoyable, even if i don't find the IP very appealing.

next up was a game i've played and beat with time splitters future perfect, this is one of the best shooters ever made, very little contest there, it's not my fav game in the series as that would be timesplitters 2, but this is very close behind, it's a very fun shooter by many of the same people behind perfect dark and it plays much like an evolution of that, with amazing music and it's very fun going and exploring the different time periods and using tons of weapons, this demo admittedly isn't the best representation since you only get one of the more bland future levels and no access to its amazing multiplayer, but it's still a great time and a must play, this was a great get for the demo! after this was a series i wasn't super familiar with ace combat: squadrun leader, a friend of mine (hi brilliant i know you read these) has always sold the series to me in a big way but i had never quite gotten around to playing them but this convinced me to do it ASAP, it starts out with an amazing cutscene that would feel right at home in an MGS game and the story it presents is really interesting, you even have namcos reiko in a role here! the demo gives you a few missions from the games various modes, two arcade and two story and it plays like a very fast arcade flight sim, it took me a while to get the hang of it across the two missions, but once i did i had a great time and it made me really want to try and play this, but mostly for the story, i was hooked by what it set up, thankfully i own this one so i can try it later in the year, maybe soon if i can! next we had a demo for prince of persia: the sands of time, this was the most interesting demo on the disc, not for the game itself, which plays and looks great and is a game i will need to try in full for myself as i love the 2008 reboot, but for its structure. it takes 3 verticle slices and places them into a story like structure showing you all the games mechanics, from its combat, to its puzzles and its platforming but frames it in a way that tells its own mini story, it's very unique and i've never seen a demo done this way before, despite being levels pulled from the game it almost feels like original content! this was worth experiancing alone and it was a nice surprise, a fantastic demo! lastly on the disc is a game i'm very familiar with but had never beat, nanobreaker, or nanobreakers as the demo menu mis-spells it is a hack and slash game by konami, playing a lot like the earlier castlevania ps2 games but with an emphasis on robot gore ( it frames it as oil but its red lol) and customisable combos, you get a chunk of the game from around an hour in and sent foreward with very little direction, i'd finished this segment before but i got lost very quickly, only really stumbling into the end of the demo by mistake, but it's a good showcase of the games really cool style and fun combat, if i didn't own this it's probably have sold me on it pretty well, although its maybe a bad choice of a level. and that's it really, this demo disc was even better than the first, but i wish it had the review archive the other did.