What do you do with a new Xbox 360? I had played plenty of games on the 360, but I had never been able to fully explore Xbox Live. I had just read about a new demo of Beautiful Katamari released earlier that morning, which inspired me to download 10 other demos. It was Demo Day.

Once downloading was complete, I couldn't wait to check out Katamari in HD. The manager of an EB Games had told me that the HDMI connection would make a noticeable difference in quality from the component HD cables. He was right – the HD was as clean as any computer monitor. The colors were more vibrant and the text was the sharpest I’ve seen.

I was expecting the Beautiful Katamari demo to begin with a nice little movie of more of the random animals and colors that can make anyone wonder if they’re on some sort of hallucinogenic drug. Sadly, it was just a three-minute level that I easily failed. I am no stranger to Katamari, and I was slightly disappointed by the lack of content. The gameplay itself felt pretty natural. The move from the symmetric PS2 analog sticks to the offset 360 sticks was surprisingly easy. The vibrant world did look even better in HD, but I did feel that three minutes was way too short for me to get addicted again.

The next demo I played was for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. I had heard earlier that the game had captured Johnny Depp’s signature Jack Sparrow walk and I was curious to see what it was like to play as a pirate. The walk itself did look great, as did some of the other movements that obviously used motion capture technology.

However, the walk was highly impractical when most of the demo required running, if not sprinting. The sets and costumes seemed to fit the setting very well, but the camera angles made the game difficult to appreciate. I had to continually adjust my camera, especially to see the highlights on the floor of enemies preparing to attack (necessary to execute counterattacks). The battle system itself felt spontaneous and slightly simplistic, but I felt that it suited the pirate theme. One of the most frustrating aspects was the fact that different voice actors were used than the actors from the movies and the story lay slightly outside the movie. I didn’t quite understand what was going on and the demo seemed to end suddenly.

I then moved on to another movie game: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I am a fan of the Harry Potter series, but I have never played any of the games due to their typically mediocre reviews. I never wanted to ruin the magic of the series, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try a demo.

The world of Harry Potter looked very accurately represented in the game – visually, it was practically a digital version of the movie sets, props, and characters. Many of the voice actors seemed different, which bothered me immediately, but I was still willing to look past it if the gameplay was strong. I began in a courtyard and could talk to many people. Unfortunately, the first person I chose to talk to happened to initiate a game of gobstones from which I had no escape. I played the game for several minutes and lost. It was a close match, but I had no desire to play again when there were so many other things to explore.

I wandered around the courtyard, trying out a couple of spells and talking to a few people. The spell mechanics felt slightly clumsy compared to the apparent elegance of using a wand. Also, I found that talking to people became a bit disturbing – the faces were so similar to the actors in HD that they had begun to cross into the uncanny valley. About two minutes after finishing my game of gobstones, the game flashed a one minute demo ending warning. I raced around, trying to do something so I could figure out what this game was all about. I had just learned about another area of the school when my demo ended. If the game is at all like the demo, it seems like you just walk around and talk to people most of the time. That has never been my favorite part of games. Although this game seemed to faithfully recreate much of the book, I felt that it failed to capture the same sense of fun.

Three demos later, I was not sold on any game. Beautiful Katamari is probably the only game I would consider buying, but I should probably finish the original game first. Despite the disappointment I felt while playing some of these games, I feel that playing demos is hardly a waste of time. I can learn so much so quickly about a game by being immersed in it and playing through several minutes. I was glad to experience three games from series I enjoy without the pressure or expense of a rental.