You’re bored, you’ve managed to sift through your entire gaming library and you want something new to play. Not a problem! You’ve got a credit card and access to several gaming distribution channels, a marvel of digital engineering so magnificent that it’s worth building a time machine just so that you can travel back into the past and roundhouse kick yourself for complaining about there being no jetpacks in the future.
What do you grab though? Most games cost the prettiest of pennies, and you know you can’t trust your local game journalist to give you an unbiased answer, as they’re all in the pocket of Big Pharma Simulator. A claim I refute, from high on top of my yacht the S.S 11/10 Annual Call of Duty Score. That’s where demos come in, and while most games only offer limited slices of beta action with which to gauge the effectiveness of their own hype, there are those games which are more than ready to tempt you with a chunk of playable content!
Two such games are worth mentioning, thanks to recent announcements of their own demo status. First up is Nightdive’s System Shock remake, which you can grab on GOG and Steam right now. Go on and indulge in some classic gaming that helped shape a genre.
You’re a renowned hacker, the most notorious cyberspace thief in the corporate world. Caught during a risky break-in, you become indentured to a greedy TriOptimum executive. After six months in a healing coma, you awaken to the twisted aftermath of a terrible disaster. Where are the surgeons? Why is the station in such disrepair?
Slowly, the chilling realization that something is very wrong creeps over you. Once a prime corporate research facility, Citadel Station now teems with mindless cyborgs, robots, and terribly mutated beings, all programmed to serve SHODAN, a ruthless A.I. There’s scarcely time to think before it unleashes the first terror.
Second on the list is Desperados 3, whose recent preview content I sampled and really REALLY enjoyed. It’s isometric yeehaaaw fun, it looks gorgeous and it plays like a cowboy version of Hitman. It’s pretty much a good amount of what I’ve already played and raved about, so you can see if all my recent rootin’ and tootin’ about the game was baldercrap or I was right on the money. You can find that demo right here on GOG.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a more visceral western then good news! Ubisoft’s cult of personality stab at going west with Far Cry 5, will be free to play this weekend on Uplay. It’ll unlock from Friday and run until Sunday, May 31, with pre-loading available from 7PM CET. I highly doubt you’ll clock it in a single weekend in case you’re thinking of pulling a fast one on Ubisoft, but if you do play it and you do enjoy it, then purchasing the full game (which has a 75% discount until June 2) will allow you to resume from where you left off.
Here’s my review of it, in which I raved about the right bear harm:
Choice is the driving theme in Far Cry 5, a game which opts to venture out of its comfort zone while fine-tuning every aspect of what makes the series so great. It’s incredibly relevant, Montana is a gorgeous slice of new terrain that is fraught with peril and the road ahead that Far Cry Arcade represents is exciting to say the least. Simply put, the fifth numbered chapter in Ubisoft’s series of madness, freedom and exploration is Far Cry perfected.
So there you go, some fantastic and varied options for having a digital blast this weekend. Enjoy!
Last Updated: May 28, 2020
