Topic: Sacrifice - a game everyone should own, without exception.

[Quemaqua]

Sy linked to this review in IRC earlier, and it reminded me that I wanted to grab another copy of this from GOG.com, even though I was pretty sure my old copy worked fine.  So I grabbed it, and man... I honestly can't believe how great this game still is.  It's just as fun as it used to be, it's just as unique as it used to be, and it still looks absolutely fantastic despite its age.

If you never played this, you fucking have to.  It's visually unique in an extreme sense, and like many of Shiny's old games used to be, it's funny as hell.  Great voice acting plays a big part in that.  But what it also has, something that I think is sometimes overlooked, is an awesome story.  It's quite dark but intriguing and very well executed, and the excessive humor doesn't dampen the interest there.  The main character is really quite great, and one I consider iconic though he's been mostly forgotten by the gaming populace at large, much like the game itself.

The value of grabbing it from GOG.com now is great.  Six bucks and you get pretty decently replayable game with a lot of bonus features, like the level editor it shipped with, which even allows you to create campaigns or mess with the original content.  The game had legs for me since with every "round" of missions you could do, you could choose which of the game's five gods to serve, which would in turn grant you some kind of boon upon completion of the round or a new unit and/or spell.  But since you could bounce around serving different gods (within certain boundaries, at least... don't expect them to give you jobs if you piss them off), you could get a custom list of units and spells that were unique to you as you went, and it can greatly change your tactics in the single player game.  Too, in one of the greatest patches to ever come out for any game, Shiny's third patch for the game (already taken care of in the GOG version) added a bunch of cool stuff like custom multiplayer spellbooks, so you could tweak which spells and units you wanted to use from which gods.  Sweet!

Anyway, if you never tried this, you really should.  I was just going to boot it up for a couple minutes to check it out, and I've been playing for about 3 and a half hours and it's now almost 2 in the morning.

EDIT - Trailer at Gametrailers, and another one that's so cool I wish it was higher res.  And here's a nice little guide from IGN, just for the hell of it.  Also, an article on the making of the game which is mostly just some fun commentary from one of the devs.

And I'd be remiss to not include a direct link to the GOG.com page.

[Pugnate]

The art style was too unique to sell enough units --- which is sad. We had some really cool and unique PC games during that really late 90s period. Everything is so mainstream now.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah.  Poor Shiny.  They used to be a true wonder, even if they were a little more quirky and a little less reliable.  But damn it, such a roster of good stuff.  Earthworm Jim, MDK, Sacrifice and even the debatable Messiah... it was good times with Shiny before The Matrix swallowed them.

[Pugnate]

haha I had fun with Messiah in doses. It was actually such a cool concept.

Even games like Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and American McGee's Alice... you just aren't seeing titles like that anymore. Sure, you can still find games with unique/quirky art styles from smaller developers, but Kabuto and Alice were big budget games with some fine production values too.

The funny thing was that all that development money wasn't spent on making those games stand out in terms of gameplay -- which was actually somewhat simplistic -- but rather on what made those worlds so damn unique.

As for ETM, I had found Shiny to be a bit of a strange choice even at the time. I actually didn't mind the game too much, but it wasn't just playing to Shiny's strength.

edit:

Man, those screenies bring back memories. That game looked so badass upon release. It also made me feel very weird and even a touch nauseous. The creatures looked genuinely alien and not just in terms of character design, but in terms of animation as well; some of those creatures moved in a somewhat haunting rhythmic manner, that was strangely addictive to stare out. Maybe I am overhyping it... I am going to have to reinstall it now.

How is it running on XP?

[Quemaqua]

Runs like a dream.  Of course this is the GOG version, though Sy said he reinstalled it from his CD and it ran just fine with no problems.  Multiplayer is even still going via Gamespy if you download a patch.  Sign on and a helperbot thing will give you the Megaupload URL, and once you install that, the game will redirect to the right server or whatever.

[Cobra951]

Sacrifice.  There's a "new" game my PC can run.  I still have it installed.  I think I got it as a $20 double release, with Messiah as the other title in the box.  I may have to fire it up.  I remember it being very pretty and running very smoothly, even before upgrading my PC about 3 years ago.

[Quemaqua]

It was one of the first games to really get the dynamic LOD thing right.  It worked like a charm back in the day, and now that the game is newer, you don't even see it happening because computers can run it so well.  But if you happen to be on aging hardware, you'll be able to see that technology in action, and it actually did work quite well, much better than some titles that tried it afterward.

[Cobra951]

Actually level-of-detail management will never be obsolete.  The system's power is irrelevant, unless it becomes infinite.  I like to explain it by weight.  Can you lift everything you see right now?  If you're inside a room with the monitor in your face, yes.  The desk and the back wall may take a few guys, but it's manageable.  But now, turn around.  A crane, maybe?  Then look out a window.  Even that crane would be useless.  Something always needs to reduce the level of complexity progressively into the distance, or any system will be brought down to its knees.

[Pugnate]

Some games still can't get it right.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, but I'm not talking distance LOD.  Sacrifice would drop the polys of all the characters onscreen and stuff like that to keep frames up (and it had a slider asking what general FPS you were aiming for, so it was dynamic to your preferences as well), so things would be quite pretty when you were standing around doing more mundane stuff like army building and capturing a mana fount, but during pitched battles where special effects were flying everywhere and it was completely insane, individual models would drop in quality to make up for how much your hardware was suffering, but you generally wouldn't notice so much because you were too busy trying not to die.

[gpw11]

Sacrifice.  There's a "new" game my PC can run.  I still have it installed.  I think I got it as a $20 double release, with Messiah as the other title in the box.  I may have to fire it up.  I remember it being very pretty and running very smoothly, even before upgrading my PC about 3 years ago.

I also bought this game a few years ago right after getting into PC gaming.  It came in a double jewel case I believe but I don't think the version I bought had Messiah as the other game, as I was recently thinking about how I never played it but was interested in it when it was previewed for the DC.  Either way, I played Sacrifice for a bit, got either distracted or overwhelmed and never got very far.  Perhaps I should look into this $6 release.

[Quemaqua]

It's very easy to get overwhelmed or intimidated by the game because it's so different, and the gameplay is very... tug of war.  You're basically fighting over resources that are intrinsically linked to the units you and your enemies command (or control points which need to be fought over), so you aren't going out and mining stuff to stock up on resources, you're going out to decimate your opponent and take all the stuff he's got.  But it isn't as easy as that since you can't simply take it by killing his units: you have to kill him so that he can't just scoop up his resources again, run away, summon his army again, and come back at you.  But if you spend all your time trying to kill him and he doesn't go down, chances are good that your own units are getting picked off by his units, leaving you screwed.  So it's a fine balance, and the average session tends to boil down to a war of attrition where you gradually steal a few of his units, gradually press on his positions over control points, then eventually simply mass more resources than he can defend against and wipe him out.  It actually sounds formulaic if you think about it, but the game never really feels that way despite it all.  It's always so urgent and as you progress through the story you get so many crazy units to try and spells to figure out uses for.

I just got done with another big session.  This is easily one of my favorites of all time, but even knowing that it surprises me whenever I go back to it.  I just can't believe how much fun I'm having with a game I've already played and beaten multiple times, and how fresh and new it feels even after 8 years.  There's really nothing else like it.

And did I mention that the story is awesome?

[Pugnate]

Damn you. Now I will have to replay it.

[Quemaqua]

And read this while you're at it (little making-of interview with one of the devs... nice read!).