Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The demo stands alone. In all of entertainment, with the possible and fairly rare exception of novel samplers, there’s nothing quite like it – it may be based on the same principles as a movie trailer or a single, but the execution and the eventual effect is entirely different. A movie trailer is a mash-up of the film’s best moments – often to the point that the film itself simply can’t measure up to that ninety seconds of concentrated bombast. A single is, in theory at least, the most immediate track from an album, the song that demonstrates that artist at the height of their abilities.

A demo? It’s got to do so much more than simply look cool or sound catchy. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, due to the cheery activity of clever internet bods, they’ve managed to drag the Bioshock demo from the hands of Fileplanet before release. This caused the preloading to be cancelled and… oh, all manner of stuff. In other words, yes, it’s a cheery clusterfuck.

But that’s not really our problem. What matters is it’s available. You can get it via a direct download via Softpedia (Which claims to be a torrent, but actually isn’t) or torrent via Mininova (Which claims to be a torrent and- strike a light! – actually is). Be sure to update your drivers and stuff – in fact, the reason for the delay in the release is meant to be there’s some new drivers for Bioshock coming out today, so it may actually be (er) a bit quirky.

Meer and Walker are currently excitedly downloading it, and expect some screens in the feature we’re lobbing up later today.