Sacrifice
Publisher: Shiny Entertainment
Info: sacrifice.net

There are many games which line the shelves at various retail stores; the vast majority fall into a certain genre, copy the framework, graphics, and innovations of genuinely refreshing titles and ultimately appear bland, repetitive, boring, or just plain unbearable. However, true gamers know that, once in a while, a game appears on the shelves that is unlike any other--it revolutionizes the entire meaning of gameplay, design, and intuitiveness. Our zany and creative friends at Shiny Entertainment, producers of off-the-wall titles such as Messiah, MDK, and Earthworm Jim offer a particularly unique and strange title, Sacrifice, in hopes of bedazzling and inspiring gamers across the board. Let's see whether this game is worthy of our time and monetary investment, or is simply another failure relegated to languishing in the lonely bargain bin bucket.

The premise of Sacrifice is particularly noteworthy and proves integral to the core aspects of the game itself. You are a lone survivor of a horrible past, dominated by gods and wizards that wielded men's lives as mere pawns in a destructive game which plunged the world into chaos and destroyed your kind. After having survived the last great war, you offer your services to five distinct, warring gods. These gods, like those before them, also use their creatures as servants who carry out whatever orders they see fit to declare. This is where you come in. The gods use wizards, superior beings capable of magic spells and regenerative powers, to organize and command armies of their servants to wage battle. As you progress through the plot, you discover the feuds and alliances among the Gods and choose which ones to fight for.

The gameplay of Sacrifice is very intricate and detailed, and therefore requires a good deal of explanation. As a wizard in the single-player campaign, you can serve any of the five gods, and you are not forced to stick with one ruler for the duration of the game, although certain gods may become angry with your actions and tell you to go away when you seek out a mission from them on occasion. This aspect allows for an extremely dynamic, non-linear progression through the campaign, as each god's units differ--and not in mere superficial shapes and colors. For example, the God of Nature, Persephone's, provides you with many healing spells and allows you to summon humanoid and ogre-like creatures. Her domain is a peaceful Elysium, with lush vegetation. In contrast, the more crude and aggressive God of Fire, Pyro, employs fire- breathing, hideous creatures and operates in a hellish, volcanic landscape. Once you offer your services to a god, you become a commander of the battlefield, as in most real time strategy games. However, this is not all: you are also the commander on the battlefield, directly playing a tactical and strategic role in the success or failure of your forces.