pouët.net

somehow does not deliver for both size and compo placement. cannot thumb down, though.

Random and cheesy, hence successful as an ASD-wannabe I suppose. Some good looking scenes, but no.

Some scenes are beautiful (the window scene reminds me of Flower, or The Last of Us), some are not so successful (e.g. the forest scene). Bombastic, but generally manages to get through with it, although it's uneven. Worthy winner.

I won't thumb it down because I'm sure it was a lot of work, but wow.. I'll say it -- this was pretty bad. The music was dull and uninspired, the 3D models had about half the required number of triangles, the animations were lackluster at best, and whatever the story was... very random.

I think I've forgotten this demo already, which is a shame.

Lovely transition from forest to city, the rest was ok.

A few beautiful scenes, but overall too messy and pretentious for my taste

way better than last years!

Pretty much what everyone else said. Piggy only for the effort, but I must say this ended up being really shallow to me.

Extremely derivative, mediocre, forgettable tune, boring.

I enjoyed the metal dragon model design, that's about it.

starts strong end becomes weak somehow. the train scene reminds me on asd. the thunders in the clouds were very nice. the neat tune makes piggie to thumbs up.

Not bad, but not too interesting either; I prefer the Adapt demo. The bird was cool.

what break said

190Mo, strict no.

That was quite bad in every way.

I actually like the music and the demo itself is quite OK even though it more or less goes nowhere.

Wasn't impressed in the compo, but in hindsight there are actually some nice scenes.

I saw it on the stream and didn't like it. But, just rewatched it and I must say that it looks quite good.

beautiful but too huge size

What on earth is taking 320Mb in there? 1080p video rip of this is smaller. This demo is a serious pain. Each of the aspects - music, visuals and ripped fx ideas/camera setups are just crap. To be honest this is the new low for Assembly demo compo winner at all. Sorry guys.

You should really work on your concept. You have some good ideas, some scenes were good, and I like what you did with the bird.
But there are many things to remove. Once you're confident with your story, remove everything that's not needed. Remove the credits part, remove the greetings part. Every single scene should be useful and should bring something to the concept. Otherwise, you end up with many random effects, and it looks messy.

It's a pity, because you have a couple of good things, you have a lot of potential, but it's kind of wasted.
At least, the opening and closing scenes are very good (and work well with the title). Also, thumb because of the amount of work.

lots of work involved, but simply on a personal level i did not like it, not the visuals nor the music sorry, keep on making demos though guys! :)

All the ingredients are there. Normally it's much harder to get an idea "what" to show. This is not your problem. Not make it beautiful. Slow down. Show important scenes long and surprising ones shortly. Use less camera angles but that are more refined. Tweak the colors and make them consistent through out your production. This could have been a true winner.

Average.

I mean, too big for nothing too impressive. Shouldn't have been the winner IMO.

Some scenes are beautiful and runs nice surprisingly in my old laptop. But file size too big :P

While on previous Pyrotech demos the ASD influence was more than obvious (and it's always flattering when someone is inspired by your style), I think that with Return, Pyrotech are actually venturing more into forming their own kind of style. Personally I liked this demo, though I can't put my finger on why it needs so much storage space. Loved the train's slipstream at the station and how it pushed things around, but overall I don't think this is the demo that has the wow factor that cries winnerdemo, but it's still a very decent one, and it marks progress in my book.

What pixtur said, and loose the aweful frame.

Nice demo

what the others said.

good example of a gamer-crowd pleasing demo that shouldnt have won...
its not utterly bad but there were clearly better ones in the compo.
have a thumb anyway

I enjoyed watching this on the bigscreen at home with the volume turned way up. The soundtrack is simple but effective and the scenes are very nice.

Inspired much by rove and rapture, eh? Well it's always good to find inspiration in something. Use your current success to create something truly amazing next time around and I'm sure it'll be even better :)

A train, some tracks, but no wheels, wtf?!?! :)

It's messy and really not that good looking. Music was a pain imo. A few nice ideas/scenes keep this from a thumb down. So piggie it is.

Oh dear. I really tried to like this one because it was trying to say something but I'm not sure if succeeded.

While the audio carries (kinda) on it's own, the visual detail is really uneven, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but this is not what things should look like in 2013: Specular/reflection/AO-maps should be obvious instead of just wrapping an envmap on everything, shadows are pretty much a de-facto requirement, the radial blur has massive visible rings, there's a lot of polygon clipping, and there's no visual contrast that separates matte from shiny, background from foreground.

It's very telling that even the loading screen has aliased edges, and no, I think 320MB for this is way too much.

what visy said, except that i hated the metal dragon too. it looked like a dog taking a dump

It lacked originality big time. Occasionally pleasing visuals. A piggie.

Well damn, I've not enjoyed watching a demo this much is a very long time. I loved this. Awesome music, the flow feels great and there are some really subtle and effect little touches that just make me smile.

Sure, it's a little rough around the edges in places but I came away from feeling like I'd connected with it in some way.

That's way too rough and derivative to enjoy for me.

fine

I liked it of course. It was a very good effort and not every demo is a nvidia demonstration. Good. Let's keep it that way.

Brilliant cloud effect.

No.

Watched it again and what strikes me most is the lack of passes in the radial blur. In a lot of places it feels somewhat unfinished. I mean, we don't have raytraced shadows either but when a scene needs it we just bake it&fake it till we make it. The lack of shadows was very notable in the train station-scene.
Oh and what is up with that odd form that appears on next to the teddy bear, sitting on the bench? It is not humanoid like the rest?
On the other hand, the dragon was nice, and although the railroad ties are lacking in polys, I liked the sudden psychedelic rock thing. It would be unfair to compare all demos with guitars to ASD, so I'm not going to. That part was really nice, and somewhat of a surprise.

I think it is very hard to thumb this down, and I see the time and effort you guys put into this. Also congrats on winning Assembly :)

Some of the cloud scenes were pretty ok, but all in all this was quite cringeworthy. Kinda like watching The Asylum's take on an ASD demo...

Would get more thumbs up if this got 3th place I am sure ;) keep wm coming. Pyrotech rules!

slave.

Hm, pretty average. So this really won? It is quite good, for sure. But the soundtrack doesnt convince me. The piano sounds fake, the drum sounds as well (kick, snare). Too synthetic. Nice job on the electric guitar solo though :) Graphics are nice (but not extraordinary), but what I really miss here is DRAMA! It just ripples along, and there is nothing memorable there. So, piggy.

2001 called. The clouds and the moon scene look very good, but that's about it.

The demo is somewhat uneven, but the parts I liked, I really liked.

The metal bird as a protagonist leading you through the demo was nice, but some of the stuff around it should have been cut, or at least brought more into line style-wise.

I somehow like the end result, even if it's not the best I've watched by a long shot.

hmmm lack of direction and some design. Pig

I really don't know what to think about this. On the other hand, it's kind of okay with all the assets and stuff that aspires to be high quality and sometimes manages that, on the other hand it's lacking in direction so bitterly that it hurts, especially compared to the demos it references (Rove and Rapture) that are stellar in every respect.

Still, this is improvement over the previous ones. Some parts almost feel like there's a meaning behind them, like the figures on the train station. Keep going...

I enjoyed this one. Sure it could be more polished, but the scenes work for me and the music ties them together.

Has some nice parts but overall it looks like a work-in-progress snapshot rather than a final release. And where did all those 200 MB go?

Having seen this a couple of times now, I still don't quite manage to get all that excited about it. There's definitely a ton of work behind it, and there's some pretty nice parts. I wouldn't care too much about people's "direction" comments. If a demo manage to entertain, fuck direction. But somehow this demo seem to land somewhere smack dap in the middle, between excellent entertainment and a good story/direction. With regards to the soundtrack, it does seem a bit safe or generic. I'm pretty much with jco on the quality of it, except that I find the leadguitar somewhat ruined by the lack of high frequencies. The solo is beautiful, but the lack of proper mastering is really a shame. It's as if there's a lowpass filter on top of the lead, and that's a bit of a shame. It does have some nice parts here and there, but in general, the composition seems a bit "safe" in lack of better words. Perhaps a few breaks apart from leaving the drums, only to reintroduce them in exactly the same way as before the break, could have worked wonders. All in all, I don't see any reason not to thumb this up. The fact that it was perhaps a bit overrated on the party's result-sheet shouldn't affect the ratings here. Thinking another demo probably should have won, doesn't make this demo any better or worse, and therefore, a well deserved thumb, for the shere amount of work, you must have put into this.

what las said. o.O

Have some good parts but suffers with some annoying details, so a weak thumb from me.

Individually, some scenes/elements are really cool & interesting.

But the whole is not memorable at all :/.

I really likde the station scene. Thre's a lot of work behind this, you can't thumb it down and it's rather coherent imo. Nice to watch once at least.

195 Mb is too much

So, this is the most ignored ASM winner since... 2008 or so, the last time these guys won. And oh boy, It's yet another mixed bag of potatoes, as they try to channel ASD yet again, only to come out as SDS, yet again. Why do they keep doing this? Maybe because it works, not artistically, but who can argue with the voters. ;)

It's not all that bad though, it runs very well on 4+ years old GPUs and there are some on-your-nose, but decently presented scenes that I like (f.e. the train station). But overall, it's the overwhelming feeling of genericness and artistic mediocrity that keeps it from being more than just forgettable.

very ASDish. well done (lot of work), music fits perfectly with visuals and it works nice even on old graphic cards. so big thumb up.

Haters gonna hate. I liked it.

Overall quite good, very nice music and quite a pack of nice scenes, idea with the bird was quite nice :D Thumb up as a whole :)

did this win at assembly 2013 !?

Good prod. Sure, it looks like pyrotech is trying to be ASD, but that's a good standard to shoot for, right? Loved the bird.

winner..yeah right. why is it if the music contains guitars the mixing is awful

Very nice, with somewhat calming soundtrack.

Forgotten thumb for the Pyrotech bird. I prefer it over the robot.

clearly the best demo this year. there was no competition

uneven

A solid demo.
10 years later nobody cares about the filesize.
And you can't blame it for its compo ranking.