If you're anything like me, and you probably are in that sense that you own a computer and read things that your monitor displays, you've either heard of or chomped down on one of the delicious morsels recently dropped into the internets in the form of demos. A good number of demos have appeared recently, no doubt in an attempt to sway that pile of cash you had planned to use to buy your mother that nice set of earrings she wanted but have instead decided to frivolously spend on yourself in the form of the glut of high-quality games coming this year.

Seriously. This year it's ridiculous. I can hardly keep track of all the good stuff.

But I'd like to run down a recent list of (mostly) PC game demos I downloaded and give you my horribly biased opinions on. I have no agenda aside from that whole "I hate multiplayer" thing. I'm also going to forego the drool part of graphics, because everything looks pretty damn good nowadays. Gameplay and story rule the roost for me.

Quake Wars:I guess this game's already out. Whatever. The demo level I played did not impress me at all. It involved driving a large vehicle made apparently out of kindling and gas through a thin stretch of road. In the ten minutes of this section, the vehicle was blown up about 9 times by the opposing team, while I ran around killing enemies by the truckful. This did no good as the vehicle just seemed to go up in flames at random times. Also it reminded me of Battlefront without the Star Wars edge, which kills it.

Hellgate: London: This one was decent, and kept me playing through to the end. It certainly reminded me of Diablo II which I'm sure it will to a lot of people, but the secret behind Diablo was the story and lore around it. The Hellgate demo yanked the story out completely and simply had me running through sewers fulfilling quests given to me by people I actively try to avoid in regular life. I hope, given some good backstory and an actual reason why I'm doing what I'm doing, the game could turn out okay.

Unreal Tournament 3: I played one round and deleted the demo. The game was better when it was called UT2004, and the vehicle levels just don't work. Can someone do a proper version of Battlefield for once? Even DICE, who made the original?

Crysis: Just got this one and ran through it. Surprisingly, it ran on my machine pretty decently without too many hiccups. Unsurprisingly, it's another bland shooter with some implants built into it. The player can choose to improve armor, speed, strength, etc. whenever he wants. That's a cool idea. But in the end you're still just running through a forest shooting North Koreans. Good in theory. Poor implementation. And the driving sucks.

Call of Duty 4: This one stood out for me. I'm not entirely sure why. I usually hate on basic shooters, but seriously, the game has so much going on all the time that it's hard to focus. In the demo the entire nation of Whateverstan has come out to shoot you, and you feel it all around with people yelling and gunblasts and mortars and everyone's crazy. There's just something charming about this title, and Infinity Ward has refined the scripted shooter really well here.

Mario Galaxy: Not a PC game obviously, but I happened upon a GameStop today to play a few minutes, and I ended up playing for almost half an hour. Immediately I got that wonderful old Mario 64 feeling, but with a lot more tricks and weirdness. The gravity is really goofy on the little planetoids, and I felt right at home figuring out the little puzzles stuck into the various star-fetching levels. If you haven't tried it, waggle the Wii-mote to fire Mario out of the stars.

That should cover it for now. Tune in next time when I actually figure out how to rip on Spore. Probably something about too many choices in character creation.