No it isn’t. A demo is a perfectly valid way of assessing a game’s worth. True it doesn’t show you the full experience in most cases, but it’s usually more than enough to tell you exactly what the full game will play like. If they were as useless for basing an opinion on as you’re implying, then people who decide not to buy a game based on a demo(Which a lot of people do this) are idiots, and articles giving ‘demo impressions’ or ‘hands on’ reports would be totally irrelevant.

Forgive me if I seem to take this swipe a tad personally, but after the shit I got for saying I didn’t think Forza 3 was the best racing game ever after playing the demo, it’s hard not to. I don’t dispute that it could be the best racing SIM ever, as it’s been called, I only said it wasn’t the best racing game ever, in my opinion(A qualifier I was careful to include you’ll note). I wasn’t trying to “discredit” anyone else’s opinion, though it could be argued the quoted line is you trying to do the same, no?

I don’t want an argument over something so petty, but I felt I kind of needed to put my view forward here. Forgive me if that seems a tad self-important.

An interesting read. As the article says, a review’s score is just the opinion of the writer of the review, which is why I check out several reviews before making my final decision on whether to buy a game or not.