Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!

Yesterday, I took part in Kirby Air Riders‘ “Global Test Ride.” It’s a demo to both promote the game and give Nintendo and Bandai Namco an idea of how the online works. Because while we tend to view demos as just “a way to try the game for free,” that’s actually their real goal: building on a hype cycle before release. You, player of the demo, are a marketer, whether you know it or not. This is especially true of online games, like Riders, as you aren’t just playing but playing alongside other people. That gives you an idea of what the communal experience is like and might become. Some demos even create new areas in order to best show what the main game will be like, instead of only keeping you in a simple early level.

Of course, the main thing you’re getting is an understanding about the basic experience. For me, I found Riders to be exhilarating, exciting, and also just really goddamn hard. At least in this form, it feels like Sakurai has tugged the game a little bit too far towards the hardcore. Everything is moving constantly and at really high speed, corners can be super tight, and even the relatively simple first course was hard. And while I can definitely see myself getting better over time, it’s way too overstimulating to binge. Unfortunately, because the demo only lasted for three six hour periods (and because the last was the only one where I wasn’t working), I only had an hour with binging as my only option. Fortunately, Nintendo’ll have a second series of demos available later, and I’ll try a more casual series of plays then to get a better idea. I really like the original Air Ride and have written volumes on Sakurai, so it’d be nice to have a better second impression. It’d be pretty sad to be disappointed by this one.

So with that said—and I should note that demos can be pretty hard to make, especially for smaller studios with fewer resources, and I don’t want to dismiss that—today’s prompt is all about demos, pre-release tests, and other playable promotions. Which have you played, which have you liked, and which convinced you to get or skip a game? Because for me, I actually don’t play many demos. Usually I just roll on vibes or reviews. Right off the top of my head, the ones I played include Splatoon‘s pre-release “Testfires,” Just Cause 2‘s demo that I played for way too long before buying the game outright, Puyo Puyo Tetris‘ demo that convinced me to just play Puyo Puyo Tetris, and the surprisingly robust free version of Vampire Survivors on the PC.

And, of course, what did you play this weekend?