A Very Short Preview/Look

by Dave "Marauder" Kratky

June 13/2000

Hmmmmmmmmmmm... Sacrifice. Imagine journeying through a world in the service of a mighty god. A world filled with vistas unseen before in the world of computer gaming. This is the world of Sacrifice.

From what I've seen so far, this is going to be quite a game. Along with Ground Control, we may finally have two new games that put a dent in Total Annihilation's more than 2 year run as king of the RTSs. And this game is looking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwweet! If anyone has a chance to pull of such an ambitious and different project, it's Shiny. They've been the force behind such games as MDK, MDK II & Messiah. Messiah I didn't really like, but you had to admit it was different. The MDK games are damned cool. Sacrifice is basically a new take on the RTS, and it'll be a tough one to pull off. You can't appeal to everyone, but Shiny hopes to appeal to a wide range of gamers from a wide range of genres with this one.

You play a Great Wizard trying to get into your patron God's good books by annihilating the followers and Great Wizard of the God's competitors, three other mighty deities. You summon huge armies and go into battle. Fairly simple, eh? Simple is indeed what Shiny is aiming for with this game. No where near as much building and resource management as you get in your standard RTS, thank the Gods. The dev team is trying to make an RTS where you are into the game & are the best part of an RTS: massive battles within a few minutes of starting the game. Excellent! Should appeal to the shooter crowd (You play the game in third person and get to kill LOTS of stuff, which is good.) as well as the RTS crowd. (There is unit management and ordering etc.)

The game so far from the movie and screenshots Kingpin got at E3 is looking amazing. Huge, lush worlds. Dozens of different monsters to summon. Amazing looking spells to lay the smack down on your enemies. I mean. Wow. You can summon a TORNADO!

And not a panzy-ass little twister like in Simcity.

I mean a big omygodwe'reallgonnadiewhatthefuckisthatthingaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! type twister. Oh yeah baby. Elemental beatdown. Just check out the movie and the screenshots. The movie is huge, but well worth the download. I'm not even going to go into more detail, it's been done and better than I could do it. :) Just check out the sites, read what they have to say and buy the game as soon as it comes out. As long as Shiny doesn't screw it up this is going to be, in my opinion one of, if not the top game of 2000.

Related sites

Official Sacrifice Web Site

Incite magazine's Sacrifice Movie & Interview - Huge but worth the download

Gamers Central Preview

ign.pc's Preview

Fan Sites