Well, I usually rely heavily on demos to make up my mind, but you are right to say this type of gameplay can't be bottled up in a demo. As I haven't tried the full game, I'll have to bow to your arguments; I don't doubt that there's 'more' after several hours playing it.

In any case, it's still a good initiative from Valve; coop has a lot of unexplored potential and comes in several flavors; may everyone find a good fit.

Even if that was the thinking, it's still un-natural; if you want the player to have less of this powerful weapon, you just spawn less of them!

But let's consider it's mainly/only about team work:
- You can't pass equipment from one player to the other,
- You can't develop strategies such as "ok, this guy's going to pack all the medkit" or "this one's going to get all the explosive and will cover us" as you can only carry one of each,
- You don't get different styles by choosing different characters...

Well anyway. I don't doubt there are people out there who enjoy it; I just think the gameplay (even if you're down with the action-oriented direction they chose) could have used some more depth.

Yeah, this game is absolutely awesome. What's crazy is how it integrates the bits inspired from other games/movies with the innovative bits to deliver a very coherent universe and game. I think I'd be ready to stamp it game of the year, in account of 1) How great it is, 2) The fact that this is a brand new IP (and not the nth installment of the same concept).

@ Dogstar060763: I have to say that when I talked about this game to friends and coworkers, the Doom 3 inspiration wasn't at the top of my list. When you look at it, almost everything you listed is related to the story/backstory, and these are fairly common scifi themes. But when you look at gameplay, there's not much in common between Doom 3 and Dead Space; only the log system - which is now a very classical way to naturally unfold narrative - and the manipulator - which is also a classic nowadays (wait, you mean the time-slowing thing or the Grabber? Not that it really matters actually, as both have been done before and haven't been invented by id software in the 1st place).

I understand your reaction, but I think there's the same lack of coherence on the developer side: tons of bullets but only one piece of explosive equipment? It's too much of a 'mathematical' decision: "We're going to compel the player to make a choice" is probably what they told themselves. But then again it's also what they thought they'd do at id when deciding "Ok, it's flashlight OR weapon" and I know a lot of people weren't down with this.

It's a conscious gameplay decision, but with a complete disregard to credibility. Then you know you're in a game, with a game designer above your head making decisions for you and this somewhat hurts immersion.

I strongly agree with you. The demo could be so much more than just the 1st level of a game. I didn't think of it as a reward though (unlocking an item), but this is a pretty good idea, too.

What I thought was, the demo could be more like a prequel or an intro to the game (to pursue the analogy with movies, where you get the intro sequence, then the main credits roll, and then the movie starts). Maybe even play the demo from a different point of view or in a different time frame. Of course, this is a significant workload (compared to just re-packaging the 1st level) but gaming's an ecosystem: everyone's starting to get the importance of the community that surrounds a game. It's the same here - as the demo is a communication tool mainly aimed at the community - and the community is always eager for more backstory, more info, more items, etc.