Sacrifice (PC and Mac)

 

In another world there was once a man, a wizard named Eldred. He was not a hero, he was more a villain in truth. Wanting to destroy his enemies he summoned a creature that had a hard time differentiating enemies from everything — perhaps it was a cruel bit of irony as Eldred saw enemies everywhere. In any event Eldred fled across the astral void to another world. This world had five gods vying for power and would appreciate the service of a capable wizard. But… history has a nasty way of repeating itself. Run, cast spells, endure death, and choose your deity wisely in this third person Real Time Strategy game.

History

Sacrifice was made by Shiny Entertainment, the makers of Earthworm Jim and MDK. David Perry directed the project with music by Kevin Manthei and creature design and modelling by Joby-Rome Otero. The total team was around 25 people. Sacrifice also had stellar voice acting. With performances by Brad Garret, Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale, Tony Jay, and Paul Eiding — this game has got a near dream team of talent voicing it.

Sacrifice used the same engine as their previous game, Messiah which drew a lot of fire from expectant fans and people who opposed its religious connotations. These attitudes lead Shiny’s director, Perry, to make Sacrifice in total silence only breaking it months before release to advertise the game.

Sacrifice was released on November 17th, 2000. It’s competition was Megaman Legends 2 (PS1), Banjo Tooie (Nintendo 64). and Tomb Raider Chronicles (PS1 and Dreamcast).

Experiences

When I played through the game I was a goody-lil’-two-shoes 12 year old so naturally I chose to follow Persephone, the goddess of justice– justice spelled in all caps while decapitating something–, because I’m a good guy and that’s what good guys do. I played through the game and beat the big bad and felt accomplished because I saved the day but then I wondered what happens when I play someone else. As it turns out, the story is exactly the same but there’s so much more going on than any individual god is aware of. Playing through every campaign is the only way to get the full story. Some of the events and betrayals and backstabbing blew my mind.

Gameplay

Sacrifice is an odd game. It’s a third person real time strategy game and it’s just as weird as it sounds. Instead of playing an omniscient commander who has full knowledge of the battlefield who orders things around, you play as a spell casting ground commander with no combat capabilities — soooo you’re Gandalf without the swordplay. Every wizard serves one of the five gods of the realm except for a few who are freelancers or mercenaries.

The wizards have such interesting designs and the altars are so spooky.

Wizards can summon creatures, cast spells, and order troops.. A wizard can only produce as many troops as it — and there are some wizards that are ‘its’ and not ‘whos’– has souls. Wizards can purify souls captured from enemies in order to add more souls to their supply and some creatures are worth more souls than others. Contrary to popular adage wizards do not die when they are killed, they are merely rendered incorporeal and incapable of casting spells until they get enough mana shoved back into them. As such the goal of most missions is to desecrate your opponents altar which banishes them from the realm.

The Gush

It should come as no surprise that the voice acting in this game is super good. Tim Curry’s voice is delightfully sleazy while Tony Jay’s is appropriately wise and yet off in some way. Everyone delivers an absolutely amazing performance — except some bit parts and peasants which sound like they were recorded from across the room.

The Good Old Games version of this game comes with a digital version of the manual and each of the sections concerning the gods is written in that deity’s voice. It also includes an abridged history of the world which sheds some light on situations in the game. If you get the game get it through Good Old Games.

The creature design is really great. Even the palette swapped creatures look incredibly different from their counterparts and it’s explained that all the palette swapped creatures are the same creature but raised in a different environment — nice save developers, nice save.

The way the textures slide over things makes everything look alike but not the same.

Everything in this game is oozing with character. From the gods and the wizards with their taunts and incidental dialogue to the creatures and their descriptions and actions in the game.

The Kvetch

There are some situations where I wish so dearly that the wizard had a melee attack. No matter how weak or useless or utterly crappy it would be I wish they could do something besides getting punched in the face. Naturally, wizards have attack spells but the cooldown on them is so long that there’s usually not enough attack spells to go around. What really irks me is that some wizards even have weapons — the Hachimen have a sword — and they make no use of them.

SWING IT! SWING THE SWORD! IT’S RIGHT THERE!

Melee attacking creatures are typically not very good. It stands to reason that they’re meant to take out weaker ranged attackers but enemies can move out of the way and sometimes they do so seemingly out of reflex. The only thing Melee units are really good at is destroying structures but if they’re something guarding it then they’ll usually die before they can rush the gap.

The main mechanic of a real time strategy game is selecting units and ordering them around but the 3D environment makes this really difficult. It’s usually best or easiest to order a unit to guard you or a structure and let them make their own decisions.

This game has got multiplayer but I’ve never been able to get in a game. The community’s probably too small to support a multiplayer atmosphere. So it’s just this bizarre vestigial limb or redundant organ that no longer serves a purpose.

The AI is really predictable and gets easy to counter.

It’s really difficult to select and order units without using control groups. If you don’t keep on top of what creature is where then it’s really difficult to get things in order. The minimap is useless for controlling multiple units because everything on it is just a colored square. Are those my melee guys or my ranged guys? I don’t fucking know they’re all just white dots! This game demanded that I be more organized than ever and it was a real chore.

The Verdict

This game is rock solid. It’s well worth the ten dollar price tag. It’s an experience that wasn’t recreated until Brutal Legend did something similar. It’s got a compelling story and just enough character to keep me wishing there was a sequel.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War — Soulstorm (PC)

Introduction

“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war,” is the motto of Warhammer 40k and it’s a little misleading– I mean, there are plenty of hiveworlds filled with paper pushing Imperials who’s only real civil risk is the occasional food riot. That being said, you are not on this rather boring world. You’re in the Kaurava system and shit’s gone whack every since a Warp Storm showed up and started wreaking havoc across the system. The nine factions on the four planets of the system are embroiled in an all out brawl to take it once and for a little while. Choose whichever faction you like most and kick some Xenos and or Heretic ass in this fast paced Real Time Strategy game.

This is the campaign map. That pink thing would be the Warp Storm and it’s causing a mess of trouble for everyone involved.

History

Warhammer 40k is a table top tactical miniature game in which each player has a series of painted miniature figurines and use a series of rules to destroy each others. Warhammer 40k is based on the Warhammer series which are both produced by Games Workshop and both basically work the same way.

Pictured: Space Marines (in blue) deploying via drop pod to get rid of some troublesome Space orks (In the greenest of greens.)

It should be no surprise that this game isn’t the first in the Dawn of War series– considering all those subtitles. Each game in the series unlocks playable race and some additional units and buildings. Unfortunately this meant that back in the day if you wanted to play Dawn of War — Soulstorm with your friends and play Tau, for example, then you’d have to have Dawn of War — Dark Crusade as well as Soulstorm. This disgruntled many because it made the previous games nearly mandatory to play who they wanted.

This was also the fourth game in a series and it’s largely unchanged from the previous installments. The only thing that Soulstorm added were flying units, which were hardly game impacting from my casual point of view.

Dawn of War — Soulstorm was realeased on March 4th, 2008. It’s competition was Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii), Silent Hill: Origins (PS2), and Condemned 2: Bloodshot (PS3, XBox 360).

Experiences

Despite being released in 2008 this game’s graphics are surprisingly adaptable to a crappy computer. Particularly the crappy computer I was using in 2008– it’s great when a plan comes together. Even though I was graphically challenged I was still able to play with my friends.

I remember one match that ended in a figurative draw. His base was across a narrow bridge and was so well defended that I couldn’t get enough men into it. I controlled the rest of the map and it still wasn’t enough to force my way inside. I was playing my favorite faction, the Orks — I mean they’re the only beings in this grimdark future who are having any fun. They were numberless, they were deadly, they were too dumb figure out how a choke point works. We like to think that they’re still fighting to this very day.

Gameplay

The game is real time strategy with an emphasis on base building– there are no gold mines or trees to chop this time though. In a Company of Heroes style the map is covered in strategic points, critical locations, relic points, and slag dumps. Strategic points, critical locations, and relics provide the player with requisition which they can use to build mostly infantry units whereas slag dumps and power generators create well… power. Power is used to make vehicles.

It’s less of a “base building game” and more of a “get into your opponents head and build a better set of units” game. It’s really hard to turtle because you can only build a limited number of base defense turret and they’ve typically got low health. This promotes focusing on making units and more aggressive tactics.

Behold, the chaos of war. BTW, Sisters of Battle love fire.

The defining difference between a single match and the campaign is that the player starts with a rather powerful commander unit. These commanders can be decked out with sweet battlegear by taking territory and performing other impressive tasks like defeating 3 times as many enemies as you lost. This battlegear can turn your commander into a one soldier army and it gives the campaign a real sense of progression.

The Gush

The battlegear is a really cool system for upgrading the commander. Besides their mechanical benefit they also usually look badass.

Behold the Tau Commander in all of his decked out glory.

The campaign also offers the player honor guard units for capturing territory. These units seem really small and not useful but they’re actually really powerful despite being single units sometimes. They’re deceptively valuable.

Each of the factions has a pinnacle unit that’s unleashed when if you claim a relic. These units are extremely powerful and just cool to look at. It’s always satisfying to finally create one and then crush your enemies — even if they get totally destroyed in 20 seconds by a huge wandering army.

Fun fact, this Living Saint is nearly the size of a tank. I see the Imperium has some new steroids.

The Kvetch

The story element of the campaign is really barebone and shoehorned in to ensure that everyone is fighting everyone at the same time. I know it’s really hard to put nine different giant factions in the same sandbox and make them all have a good reason to fight but it would have helped this a lot.

The only way to see how to get awarded wargear is to catch the awarding messages and bring up their tooltip. It would be nice to know what I was aiming for to turn my Big Ork Warboss into an unstoppable behemoth.

This is your only opportunity to see the criteria for getting awarded wargear.

The game can be really rushed based. My friends used to call this game “Hell-Hound Rush Extravaganza” it was so popular. I like a short game as much as the next guy but 5 minutes is a little too short for me.

The Verdict

I really like this one but it’s age a little poorly for me. I like playing it but I don’t really get anything out of it. Each campaign’s missions are the same so it feels really repetitive to play through each of them to see the minute changes in story. I’ll give it a play every once and awhile but it’s just for nostalgia’s sake. If you love 40K and want to stomp your friends with you Space Marines then give it a shot. If you’re looking for a great RTS then maybe you should look elsewhere.

Next Week: Bastion

Netstorm: Islands at War (PC)

I guess this is a game about… lightning. Great box, team.

In a world above the clouds people live on the scarce islands of land that float among the winds. This world is ruled by a cruel emperor and you are part of the revolution to depose him. You’ve been captured and imprisoned but you’ve freed your priest of the Furies and are ready to fight for freedom here and across the skies. Use your tactical acumen to place buildings, gather resources, and crush your enemies!

Did I say tactical acumen? I meant floating islands and buildings.

History

Netstorm was developed by Titanic Entertainment which, as far as I can tell, is comprised of 8 people and was published by Activision. A demo was released a month before it released proper and a simple exploit allowed users to unlock the full game with it. The game itself had bugs within, particularly in the multiplayer game mode. It was possible for players to force opponents to crash the game, securing easy victory. Both of these exploits significantly hurt sales. Activision kept the servers up until 2002 and now fans maintain enough servers to play online for diehard players.

The game is considered abandonware so downloading it is just a click away (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/216/NetStorm+-+Islands+at+War.html).

Netstorm was released on October 31st, 1997. It’s competition was Curse of Monkey Island (PC), Colony Wars (PS1), and Age of Empires (PC)

There are also some 3D remake projects rolling around the web.

Nostalgia

Have you ever had to stop playing a game, or at least stop progressing, because there was one level you couldn’t beat? TV tropes refers to something like this as “That one level,” and Netstorm has one helluva “That one level.” It’s called The Noose and it’s a level with a big gimmick. The player’s starting island is surrounded by a special unbreakable bridge. The bridge has a few breakable segments but the rest can’t. The player can’t build bridges to the enemy island or nearby resource clusters so… how do get out? I didn’t figure it out for years. Apparently when a building is destroyed next to a bridge it breaks the bridge segments around it. So what you have to do is build a building next to the breakable parts of the noose and destroy those buildings yourself. But this is something that’s never explained in the game, it’s something that’s not even incidentally noticeable. I had to cheat to level select to skip it when I was a kid. It’s super annoying and it’s the first level of the second chapter.

Look at this nonsense! How is someone supposed to figure this out?

Gameplay

The game is about building buildings, building bridges, and building units to gather resources. Some buildings attack other buildings, other buildings absorb damage, and other buildings have other strange uses (Did building stop being a word?).  You can build bridges off of your island in order to reach resource nodes (Storm Geysers) and buildings.

The buildings and units you can build are limited by your knowledge. Then you need to build a workshop that correlates to the element of knowledge your building for and select it as one of the buildings that workshop is producing. If you don’t have the knowledge to build something then you’ll have to beat the level without it.

It’s less of a tech tree and more of a tech pile.

The four elements are Sun, Rain, Wind, and Thunder. Each element has a unique quality and theme. Sun buildings are simple but competent, Wind are quick and cheap but lack durability, Rain buildings are a little weird but useful, and Thunder buildings are incredibly powerful but are expensive and difficult to use.

Some advanced mechanics: Every building you destroy gives you a portion of its cost to you in storm power and the explosion can damage nearby buildings (Note: Defensive buildings don’t generate damaging explosions.) It’s cheaper to build more workshops of lower levels but that’ll hog your island space.

Space management can get a little crazy.

You claim victory over your opponent by immobilizing their priest, capturing him, bringing him to an altar, and sacrificing him to the Furies. It’s sort of interesting how you can be victorious without destroying your opponent’s stuff. It’s all about this one little vulnerable guy.

The sacrificial ritual has its own music and dialogue that all players can hear so everyone knows it’s going on.

The Gush

The 3D art for the encyclopedia’s models look really good. And each entry has a bit of flavor text that fleshes out the world. The humor in that flavor is dark but still hilarious.

The Nimbians are a people with a fully developed culture. Their art, government, and religion all serve the war they fight and their fighting serves their art, government, and religion.

I’m not sure if the soundtrack is dynamic but it certainly seems it. The beginning of each match has tranquil music that picks up as the buildings start going up, the lightning start arcing, and the whirligigs start their bombing runs.

The first two chapters of this game have a really great difficulty curve. They’re not too hard but not too easy either.

The opening cutscene for this game is surprisingly good.

GRAPHICS!

Every element has the same types of units but it’s incredible to see how little tweaks to their design can make them feel so different and unique.

This game can get incredibly chaotic, and it’s meant to. An enemy can sneak bridges behind your island and unload a pile of hurt on your workshops or other valuable structures. It’ll keep you on your toes to make sure nothing fishy is going on. The AI isn’t that bad but high level multiplayer can get dizzying.

I mean, what part of this seems difficult to follow?

The Kvetch

It’s sort of impossible to play the multiplayer anymore. Maybe I just couldn’t find a good server but there was never anyone else online. The multiplayer was supposed to be the big draw and it’s disappointing that it’s impossible to get a game going.

The Noose. (I’m still mad)

Some units and buildings just aren’t good… well… one is. The Arc Spire. It says it does 50 damage, more than anything else in the game! But it just creates a damaging wall between it and another Arc Spire, so an enemy has to be dumb enough to move into it or maybe it damages things structures between it too… I dunno. It just seems pointless.

The last chapter is ungodly levels of hard. It’s really unfun.

Dust Devils are generated by Dust Devil Generators. The generators can be destroyed, the Devils themselves cannot. I’ve played this game for years and still don’t know how to counter them effectively.

The Verdict

For the low price of FREE it’s simple to see why this game is worth playing. It’s got solid mechanics, fun flavor, challenging gameplay, and’ll entertain for a few hours at the least. I recommend this game without nostalgic interference. But when you get to The Noose, give it hell for me.

Next Week: Mount and Blade