An Alternative To Demos

The current state of my graphics card is that it works pretty well on most games, especially if I forsake a texture or model quality here or there. On newer games, like Dark Messiah, it's a little more hit or miss. And the physics in that game must hit the CPU a lot, because it's the only game I saw a significant frame dip.

I was disappointed to find out there's no Oblivion demo. I get it, though. Just with the whole current debate about how much games should be examined before their ready. My personal take on that is it should be up to the developers. Let them decide if they want public feedback or not. It shouldn't necessarily be marketing.

I propose a compromise. I don't need to play your game. I just want to see if it works on my hardware. I'm betting there are other PC gamers out there in that boat as well.

So give us a non-interactive demo that puts the game through some paces without being indicative of gameplay. It doesn't even need to be proper gameplay, just a quick run down some path to show how hard the game is going to push. Let us adjust things like resolution, aliasing, etc.

This doesn't need to be released any sooner than the game itself.

I don't need to play your game - but I will return it if it doesn't work on my open box card running experimental drivers.