I decided to download and give this game demo a shot, based on the fact that it is written by Jane Jensen.  She wrote the acclaimed Gabriel Knight series of adventure games.  I have never played them, but they seem to be held in high regard.  I purposefully avoided any additional information or marketing about this game in order to see how well the story comes across to the player.  I am, unfortunately, generally unimpressed with this game so far.  The initial cut scene starts with a well worn cliche - a dark and stormy night.  How many times have we seen that before?  Anyway, a woman is riding a motorcycle, and appears to be misdirected to Oxford.  She inexplicably arrives at some mysterious mansion.  We then see some other woman knocking on the door of the mansion and abruptly disappear for no apparent reason.  The biker woman then approaches the mansion and is let in.  The cut scene ends here, and we're introduced to the game proper with a tutorial.  You are tasked with finding the biker woman's rabbit (the fact that she suddenly has a rabbit is not explained, but I will forgive that, given that this is a demo) and to feed and water it.  Once this is accomplished, control is transferred to what appears to be the owner of the mansion.  He looks like what I can only describe as a Phantom of the Opera wannabe, as he wears a half mask across his face.  I realise that because this is a demo, that context can be limited, but we are given absolutely no direction whatsoever for this second character.  The only thing you can think to do is randomly explore the grounds hoping to happen upon your objectives.  Amusingly, I spent more time trying to figure out what this character's objectives were than the objectives themselves.  As you progress with this character, you learn that his beloved wife has died.  He likes to constantly remind us of this, when you are examining objects etc.  I found this to be tiresome after a while, and as a result found it difficult to sympathise with this character.  This is rather worrying, considering the fact that if you can't sympathise with the characters you are controlling, then why bother at all.  The 2-D backgrounds are colourful and detailed.  All the characters appear to be 3-D polygonal models, but their animations can be stilted and limited at times.  The point-and-click interface seems to be suitably intuitive, and I appreciated that a double-click of an exit would quickly load the next location without waiting for the character to walk there.  I feel like this demo's main purpose was to show off the graphics and gameplay, and that the story was secondary to the proceedings, as it was very difficult to figure out what was going on out of context.  Obviously, I am not making a final judgement on this game, based purely on the demo.  But it would seem I will need to wait for a full review at the very least before I decide on whether to buy it or not.

One more thing.  Are the Gabriel Knight adventure games that good?  I've been toying with the idea of perhaps buying them from gog.com.  So far, the only thing that makes me hesitate, is the fact that the second game uses FMV.  This obviously can lead to horrible acting etc, which really puts me off.  Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.