TheCheese33: Ok, I'll give a run-down on exactly what happened in the demo, to give people a feel for how the game goes. I will be saying everything that happens in the demo, so there's probably no spoilers to worry about, but in case you want to go into the experience without any knowledge, skip this.
It starts out by giving you a basic tutorial on how to control your character. While the instructions were perfectly clear, it took me a good minute to get used to the way you walk. As he comes to a barrier, a prompt pops up near a small opening I can squeeze through. As I hold the button, another button pops up, and I have to continue holding the button I held before. The game chains these together to make it feel like a real effort you're exerting to get through obstacles like this. Near the end of the tutorial, my character, a private investigator, grabs his chest in pain and slams himself onto the wall. A prompt comes up telling me he has asthma, and a little window shows up next to his pocket without being in the way of the action, telling me how I should swing my right stick. The icon shakes to make it more tense. Following the on-screen suggestions, I frantically search my pockets, shake the inhaler using the sixaxis (This game is one of the only games that uses the sixaxis in a meaningful way), and use the device with a few rapid presses of R1. He recovers, I walk him out of the alley, and the tutorial is over.
I once again play this private investigator, and walk through the doors of a nasty hotel. I ask the front desk if they know who this certain woman is, and they shrug me off. A prompt comes up, and I lay a $5 on the desk. The guy perks up at once and tells me where her room is (what a cheap bastard!). I walk up the stairs, head to the door, and give it a knock. She comes to the door and tells me she only sees clients on appointment. As she is about to close the door, a radial icon with something like a timer pops up near the bottom, suggesting a shove of the right stick. I push my way in, and she tells me to leave my money on the table, going into how long she can be with me. Instead of doing that, I walk up to her and tell her I'm a private investigator, who wants to ask a few questions about her son's death. She gets very defensive, After one prompt, I make a dumb move and suggest that I could pay her for information. She gets extremely angry, says her boy isn't for sale, and tells me to fuck off.
As I leave her room and walk towards the stairs, I'm hit with an asthma attack again. This time it's a little more complicated, as I have three pockets to search through. As I go through this tense challenge, I notice a bald man walking to the woman's door out of the corner of the camera. When I've collected myself, he knocks, telling her to let him in. She refuses, and he kicks open the door, locks it behind him. I can hear a thud inside and her muffled screams through the hallway. I run to the door and knock forcefully on it. No response. I knock again, and the guy comes to the door. He's not happy that I've interrupted him, and through the door I see the woman on the ground, clearly in pain. I ask if she's all right, and the guy gets fed up with me being here and slams the door on me. Three different suggestions come up, in the form of icons, on what I can do to the door. I shake the sixaxis and bust through the door.
At this point the guy gets very angry, and begins to fight me. what follows is a rapid succession of button commands, each positioned so I can still watch the awesome fight, but I know what button it's asking for. When I make a mistake, the fight doesn't end; I just take a hit or two. This is, by far, one of the most vicious fights I've ever seen in a game. We're slamming each other onto walls and surfaces, he breaks a bottle and tries to cut me with it, I try to through him off my back, and so on. This goes on for a bit, but not too long. I end it by giving him a few very strong punches to the face. He falls to the ground, gets up rapidly, threatens that we'll meet again, and rushes out. Both of us are pretty messed up from that fight. As I leave her apartment again, the woman looks at me in an appreciative way, something I've never seen done in a game so well, and thanks me. I walk out the door, limping a little, and making noises the way a man does if he has to use the limbs that were just punched a bunch.
The final segment of the demo, the crime scene, appears as I watch someone I'm controlling drive through a strong downpour, come to a stop, and clutch a vial. His hands begin to shake (and the controller with it) before he puts the vial back in his pocket. He is much younger and thin than the private investigator, and appears to be a much more important person, judging by his black suit and tie. As I walk up to the crime scene and tell the policemen nearby that I'm part of the CIA, I find out my name is Jayden. I whip out my ID and the cops let me through. I duck under the police tape, and work my way to a grassy field known as the Wasteland. The controls are temporarily taken from me as my character puts on a set of shades and a glove. Through the glasses, it looks like Batman's cowl vision, except you don't see skeletons. Instead, you see things like footprints, icons that have things like DNA sequences over them, and a little REC. symbol to the right of the screen. As I regain control, I find that pressing R1 makes me make a motion with my gloved hand, which creates a large circular wavelength around me, revealing footprints and more of those circular icons strewn across the scene. I ask a nearby officer where the man in charge of the investigation is, and he points me in the right direction. I talk with him, and as he's walking around the scene, I walk with him, asking things like time of death, leads, location, and all those important details. Eventually he tells me he has other things to check on, and leaves me to my investigating.
When I walk up to one of those circular icons, a prompt tells me to kneel down and have a look at it with the right stick. Information bubbles pop up, apparently through the network my glasses are connected to, and I give a detailed description of the item. I turn to the white tent, open it up, and examine the body. I find an orchid on his jacket, an origami figure in his hand (of course, because the killer is the Origami Killer), and other items on him. As I pop my head out of the tent, I see what looks like a vapor trail leading from the tent to a spot on the ground. It turns out that the location is where the orchid on his jacket came from. I explore near the train tracks of the area, and find blood matching the victims. I also see footprints nearby the tracks, leading up an incline to the freeway. The detective in charge of the scene approaches me and tells me he's heading out, asking if I'll be doing the same. I choose to tell him I want to explore more, and off he goes.
As I approach the incline, button presses pop up like in the tutorial, when I had to squeeze through an object. I mess up the holding sequence a few times, falling down the slope and getting my suit all muddy. Eventually I reach the top,and find both blood patterns and tire tracks that must belong to the killer. My character's voice pops up and says he feels he's done here, an indicator the game's creators must have built in to tell you you've found everything. I make my way down the slope, falling a few times, walk out of the crime scene, into my car, and drive away. The demo ends.
Overall, I had a blast, and can't wait to play the full thing.
Sounds great and intense. I wonder what other things you can do in those "levels".
