9 Video Game Demos That Totally Lied To You

8. Bioshock Infinite (E3 2011)

The E3 2011 gameplay demo for Bioshock Infinite remains one of the most impressive E3 demos of all time...at least until the game shipped and it became clear it wasn't at all representative of what players would actually get.

The 15-minute demo, which saw players fighting their way through a sprawling, wide-open area against fleets of enemies, was later admitted to be a scripted sequence rather than a legitimate slice of gameplay.

Irrational Games spent months creating the demo even as the game itself was struggling to come together, and Infinite's level designer Shawn Elliott later referred to it as "like a piece of cinema."

AI systems hadn't yet been completed, so the NPC enemies were being precisely programmed when to attack the player and not, and while the final game only allowed six enemies on screen at once, the demo showed up to sixteen, allowing for a far more chaotic and intense experience.

The demo suggested Infinite would be a dynamic sandbox in which the player must use their wide-open environment to fend off hordes of attackers, but because Irrational couldn't get the demo running on PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware, the final game released almost two years later was scaled back significantly.

Though Infinite ended up one of 2013's best-reviewed games, it's clear that without the technical constraints of consoles, the end product would've been even better. And as enjoyable as it was, it's nevertheless incredibly poor form to over-promise so blatantly.