Lambs to the Slaughter

Developer: Shiny
Publisher: Interplay
Sacrifice official page: http://www.sacrifice.net

More Sacrifice resources

It seems as though the lines separating different game genres gets more and more jumbled as time goes by. An amalgamation of no less than two genres, Sacrifice is masterfully blended together. With this game, Shiny has managed to mash together a standard third person game with copious amounts of real-time strategy. And from the looks of it, the use of some "alternative substances" may have been used with the usual developer staples of pizza and soda. How these guys came up with a game as cooky as this is beyond me. All I know is that I'm damn happy that they have the faculties to make something like this reek of (I have officially signed my death warrant) gaming goodness.

Story

Sacrifice has one of the more entertaining storylines that I have seen in a game. It all starts with the world being torn into five separate floating islands. (That part I have read in quite a few books) Where it gets interesting is when five different gods begin to rule over their respective islands. Essentially, you have most of the elements deified: earth, fire, and air. The other two gods are death and the last one seems to be like a healing mother or a Gaia of sorts.

Guarded Manalith

Keeping my distance

These gods are always bickering, their ramblings resembling a congregation of crotchety old men more so than that befitting of the divine. Suddenly, you show up in this sundered world, deciding that it would be beneficial to gain power. So begins your pandering to the various gods of this realm.

As the story pans out, doom is the only direction this world is headed to. Through the single missions, you choose which gods bidding you do. The ability to change what god you work for at almost any mission adds greatly to the replay factor. You get different powers, spells, and boons depending upon which god you decide to work for. I'm only in the fifth or sixth mission and I already have quite a few save games from prior missions, to see what would have happened if I had chosen a different deity. So far, it seems that the paths you can take are different, but they all lead to the same area, as the same scripted sequences occur no matter what god you work for.

Zoomed out

Ahh my pestilence.

Strategy you say?

Yes we did say the game is mainly strategy, and expect a large learning curve while you're at it. You might think that the interface is hard to get used to. But that is hardly the case. Controls are of the typical WASD configuration, along with hotkeys for most of the basic commands. Camera control and zooming are all handled on the mouse. Moving about and ordering your minions is about as easy as it gets.

Following my quick downward slope through the movement learning curve, the strategy aspect loomed high on a peak. Since most games in the third person are generally action-based, one has to stop thinking in those terms. You have to pick certain troops to attack defenses and others for offense. All your basic military strategy packed in this wacky shattered world. I think it was best put by the manual when they said you should play this game with "rock, paper, scissors" in mind. Every unit has another unit that can beat the tar out of it. Once you figure out what each unit does, you should get the ball rolling nicely. Now just try to incorporate battlefield movement while trying to command a group of creatures.

Man these landscapes are amazing

I have a face on my back.

To assist you in your task, the developers give you the ability to set waypoints, group select, and the joy of formations. You can make your troops form wedges, phalanxes, and lines just to name a few. This allows for easy positioning of range units behind cannon-fodder troops, or any other strategy you can dream up. The ability to make them guard any other unit makes moving them around that much easier.