First impressions are everything. However with so few developers releasing demos nowadays it can be hard to judge whether or not a game will be worth buying. First Impressions is a series of demo reviews by Urby, focusing on demo released from Steam or elsewhere, in order to decide whether or not a game is worth buying once it is released.

In this Article, Urby takes a look at the demo for DiRT SHOWDOWN, a racing game due for release later this month.

In this video playthrough, I checked out the new Sniper Elite V2 Demo on Steam. Largely based around sniping, this game really should have struck a chord with me. However the shooting has an overly arcadey feel to it and everything in between is just running to the next yellow marker and maybe pressing the action key once or twice. Check out the video to hear my thoughts throughout the demo.

As requested on YouTube and by the guys over at TWHL, this weeks terrible mod is MISSION MCPOKER. The thing about this mod however is that is a troll mod that is intentionally bad and as such doesn't really belong here. It doesn't really belong anywhere. It's the kind of mod that needs to be fired into the sun. It's dull, boring and so unfunny that it hurts. The general feel of this video sums up why I won't be taking on any troll mods in future. Please only suggest genuine mods that had serious goals during development but which fell on it's arse.

Valve love nothing more than to use their hugely popular online shooter Team Fortress 2 as a platform for experimenting with ways to interact with the community that has grown around the recently made free-to-play game. For the most part this is a wonderful thing from a gamer’s perspective. Constant updates to the game have kept it fresh over the years and there’s a surprisingly rich back story starting to emerge behind the nine iconic mercenaries who make up the teams.

After watching the recently released "Stranded" trailer I have mixed feelings about Far Cry 3. The game looks stunning in the graphics sense but the game-play and now the trailer make it look like another game released in 2011 which didn't do so well.
Personally, I was blown away by the gameplay presentation at E3 in 2011. It look like an intense mix of stealth and gunplay, letting the player choose how they approach a certain situation. However, isn't that what Ubisoft promised with Far Cry 2? A game which turned out to be buggy, had some of the dumbest AI and the same rinse and repeat gameplay over and over? The Far Cry series seems to have a nasty way of looking stunning but having utter piss poor gameplay...

Urby checks out planet phillip, selects a terribly rated mod at random, downloads and plays. No reading of descriptions, guides or reviews, just jumping right in with both feet hoping that the mod will tell him everything he needs to know.

Level Cap Gaming is dedicated to Battlefield 3 in a BIG way. Not only does he take the time to review each of the games weapons with a run down of each ones use, he also accepts challenges based on comments from his viewers.

In this video, he and his squad single handedly win a rush game in under 9 minutes. Obsessive gaming at its finest.

ModDB and a great many other mod sites include hundreds if not thousands custom mods for Half-Life and Half-Life 2 and every other title under the sun. Some of these are pretty good, few are excellent. However, more recently I have started to notice a series of patterns in some of the mods in development. Here is my list of mods that people really need to stop making.

It's 5 o'clock in the morning and I, Bob, have just awoken in a dank alleyway somewhere in Solitude. I am dressed in a tattered tunic and my feet are wrapped in rags. I have no gold to my name, no experience in the art of combat and no arcane talents of which to speak. I am, for want of a better term, a beggar.

Urby plays Skyrim as a lowly beggar, trying to earn his fortune by any means necessary... Well, any SAFE means necessary.