[With Good Old Games' launch meaning that Sacrifice is once again available to buy, I thought I'd republish this old piece on RPS. A version of it originally appeared in PC Gamer as part of their Long Play series, but it's lived at my blog for a couple of years too. This version has a few tweaks to make more time-appropriate.]
Sacrifice makes me sad.
It’s not that it didn’t get a sequel. It’s not that it didn’t sell at all. It’s not that despite its critical appeal, it’s barely referenced today despite having innovated a number of mechanics and technologies. It’s not that now, years later, Shiny are a laughing stock among gamers’ for the various Matrix misadventures when once they were this good. Hell – it’s not even that due to gamers’ goldfish memories that Shiny’s entire history has been tarnished, with them being Stalinistically revised to always being hopeless.
Sacrifice makes me sad for even bigger reasons.
It’s is an action-strategy game, a sub-genre that often received highs-core plaudits only ever found an sizeable audience in its most-militaristic first-person shooter incarnations (Starting with Rainbow Six, in a road that lead to Brothers in Arms et al). Set in a bizarre fantasy world, with five miffed deities waging war against each other, you play a wizard. Not a floppy-hat wizard – but a childhood fever-dream nightmarishly warped wizard.
In the manner directly inspired by eight-bit Spectrum classic Chaos, you’re capable not only of zapping people with thaumatological attacks but summoning followers to war for you. Freshly created, you can order them in an RTS fashion, telling them to go attack distant places, protect things and so on. Its resource-management is built tightly into the skirmish. You war over mana-fonts, which provide the magical energy to power your abilities. The size of your armies is limited to the number of souls you have – your own which can be recycled from the bodies of the fallen or the enemies harvested from his corpses by a soul-doctor spell. It’s not much of a high-level strategy game, more about group tactics and the chaotic melees. Going in with your army arrayed around you, trying to make a difference inside the scrum, summoning the sort of soldiers who’d best take down the opposition…
And playing now, it’s amazing what you’ve forgotten. It’s a game which has kind of found itself in PC Gamer’s Top 100 every year through its reputation rather than an active familiarity with it. Last great Shiny game, looked really weird, blah-blah-blah. Except it’s painfully better than that. Take one obvious thing that never gets mentioned among the “Hieronymus Bosch does Command and Conquer”-isms: It’s funny. Really funny. While the similar period Giants gets remembered as being packed full of gags, the brilliantly-voice acted and sharply scripted Sacrifice gets no credit. “Of course I don’t want to destroy the world,” the Death God Charnel argues pointedly, “that’s where all the good slaughters happen”. “Haven’t we all had enough of war?” speaks James, the voice of reason in the heavens. “NO!” ripostes everyone else in perfectly-timed shouted chorus. Away from the world-play, it applies the highest calibre of slapstick. One of James’ highest level spells is an in-gag reference to Earthworm Jim, where the wizard fires a several hundred ton cow into the sky. Thirty seconds or so later it returns, a single target annihilated beneath this beef-missile.
The name of the spell? Bovine Intervention.
Technologically speaking, while it debuted in Messiah, it was the first time where Shiny managed to get their tessellation technology really working, radically scaling the level of detail in the graphics according to the distance. Absolutely standard now, but then an innovation – in fact, so well implemented that while obliviously ageing technology, on full whack is a highly acceptable visual experience.
But it’s the mechanics which throw you. Why do we credit Black & White with pushing its gesture control system when Sacrifice did a subtle, low-key version of it a year earlier? Here the pop-up menus being gradually forgotten about as you discover merely tracing a shape in the air is enough to cause the same effects, seamlessly ordering your followers into defensive positions. It’s an elegant control system, in that it supplements then supersedes rather than merely replacing a more traditional system.
With the mouse-tracing system, the mechanics of “souls” being the game’s economy, being a radical take on RTS-ideas and general timbre of unbridled creativity, the most obvious modern parallel to Sacrifice is Darwinia… and while there’s a mirror in their lack of their deserved commercial success, thinking about Sacrifice makes me sadder than Introversion’s game. Because Darwinia seems like a game with a future – that it’s going somewhere, is a role-model for a whole load of underground creators and another step in Introversion’s plan for whatever the hell it is Introversion want to do.
Sacrifice on the other hand had no future. It was an ending. It was the end of Shiny as a true creative force. It was the end of a certain period of PC games, where a budget to allow real production values was spent on something so self-evidently quirky. In other words, there’s the nagging sensation in the same was as they’ll never be another Nietzsche or Bowie or Amiga Power, we’ll never see its like again. The world which allowed its creation is simply gone forever… and the future that Sacrifice tried to foretell was a more interesting one than the one which we got.
Perversely, as the console-generation clock ticks around, a full eight years after its release it – at its best – feels more next generation than the majority of new games. The maximum level magic powers remain overwhelmingly impressive. A full active volcano erupting beneath you, ground swelling up like a boil of tectonic flesh before cracking open, shooting a hot steam of lava defiantly into the air, all and sundry running. Being snatched up by a whirlwind, spinning around in the ether while still stumblingly trying to control your forces. A towering embodiment of Death, striding the earth and killing indiscriminately. Spiked plants of death lashing out at all and sundry, impaling and lobbing them high into the sky. The bore circling away from its target, etching a spiral into the ground before the very soil itself falls away into the infinite void. We’ve seen things that have aspired to this sort of devastation in classical strategy games, but it’s completely different from the first person. Compared to this poetry of annihilation, a world where a G36 is the height of violence wrought is a little depressing. Seeing glass explode when they could use the same technology to rend mountainsides asunder… put simply, I seen scant things on the X360 that are even a fraction as impressive.
Sacrifice reminds me exactly how good, how imaginative, how brilliant it’s possible for a videogame to be and it’s clear that no-one’s going to spend serious money on making a game like it ever again.
That doesn’t just make me sad. It makes me suicidal.
[Sacrifice is available for $5.99 From Good Old Games]
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Beautiful game. 10/10
The game played just as a game should giving you power to do everything easily but not getting in the way. The scope felt brilliant and still had a brilliant narrative which made it such a more exciting experience than most RTS’ do.
The Black & White comparison is interesting as this game creates the curious kind of epic fantasy world that Peter Molyneux’s early games such as Populous did.
Sacrifice was GREAT! However, it had not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff.
I wonder if all my big grown-up skills will make it easy for me now.
Kek.
You could beat the ‘ultra hard’ last level by using all your souls right at the start to summon Bombard-type units(Charnel and Persepone used the Mutants) which you immediately Guard-tether to your first two manaliths. Rush forward and throw your strongest AoE spell at Marduk’s un-formationed zerg. Even if you don’t have Volcano, there will be significant enough damage for your heavy ranged Guarding units to kill his units fast. But you mainly want them to be killing Marduk so he can’t pick his souls back up. DO NOT use James’ uber-spell even if you have it; the permanent loss of souls will make taking Marduk’s Guarded manaliths will be too hard.
James does however have the BEST ground-denial defensive spells; his tactics mirror his nature. His spiked wall spell physically prevents passage and does damage if they try. Any heavy range units in the game will reduce Marduk’s zerg to nothing if James’ spells are keeping them back.
People simply never believed me when I said I completed it without cheats. Just use the friggin Guard spell.
Bollocks, I’m off to install it again.
Maybe it’s because I played it a year ago or so (long after Sacrifice originally came out), but I wasn’t all that impressed. It’s certainly a solid game, maybe 7.5 or 8/10, but not a standout.
Gorgeras> Yeah, James was great against Marduk (and a lot of others, really), got my first endgame with him. Jabberockys were real tether-killers.
I love this game, I still have my original CD with the Cd-Key written on an aged sticky note inside the jacket. One of my all-time favorites. I haven’t played it in a couple months, I’ll buy it from GOG as well just to support it. :)
I should emphasize that I’m not hating on this game. Along with Soul Reaver, I think it’s one of the first (and, indeed few) 3D games to match the artistry of 2D games.
First. To win the campaign easy you need 2 things. Deadeyes, snipers who block healing. And the raise dead spell, you can save the unique characters and they often carry over to later missions. Scirroco and nearly every named minion can be had at the end depending on the story thread you follow.
Charnel will give you both these toys but not too late for you to follow any god if you make the effort to stay in their good books.
But the most interesting units tend to be level one. And thus the most fragile.
For the last mission bore is great. Dont convert his souls, cast them into the void. Or instagib them with bovine intervention and quickly grab them. With few souls marduk is much less threatening.
I’ve played it, and it’s great. Think Spellforce with more action, quicker pace, more interesting enviroment, less management, and third person view.
No one mentioned Kevin Manthei’s splendid soundtrack so I’m here to correct this omission:
Kevin Manthei’s soundtrack is, well, splendid!
I got Sacrifice for free when i bought some other game many years ago, needless to say it was the best freebie i ever got and ended up playing it more than the game that i laid down cash for. Great game…
One of the best games ever.
I remember fondly playing through, having a wonderful time with creatures following me and causing havoc, however eventually I got to a stage where I and my minions were getting slaughtered horribly.
Dejected, I turned to the internet, and someone suggested that the solution lay in using the mana points for more than just mana, and left me to it.
I quickly figured out that I could use these mana points as protective fortresses. It was a revelation! I could now repel an attack, and then counter attack with my lovely minions still basically intact!
Years later, it seems stupid – and probably a painfully obvious solution for anyone who read the manual – but the unbridled joy that this game gave me was just immense.
I miss this game, it’s definitely coming out again when night shift finishes.
Lastly, for those with widescreen monitors, apparently there is a fix here: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11566
It involves registry fiddling, be brave.
@ supersheep
Yes, it was a bit of a learning cliff, but fortunately you started at the top, and if willing to take the plunge you learned to fly.
OK, another I shall have to purchase. RPS hates me eating :p
Great piece. The game still looks really nice now; I tried the demo back in the day but I wasn’t really into games more complicated than shooters, so it didn’t appeal to me much. Returning to it years later I saw how great it was.
nabeel
Have read this before and agree completely. One of my favorite games of all time, and I understand fully what you mean about it having been created in a time that no longer exists. Truly, there will never be another Sacrifice. I still have hope for good games that shake things up, but whether we’ll see it all come together in this same way ever again is doubtful.
There are so many good things to say about this game. Like, the fact that the resources and tech-tree favor someone who goes out and kicks ass, instead of someone who turtles. How the campaign actually plays out in the ways it does, with the decisions the player makes sending the plot off in any number of directions.
And the sheer depth of the humor. Sacrificing a Braniac on an enemy altar, and hearing, as the poor soldier is wracked with destructive energies, cries of “Oh. Ouch! That smarts!” I’d swear I once heard one of Pyro’s early units, upon dying, exclaim “I find my lack of health disturbing.” When spellcasting, Wizards will string together arcane words . . . which include “Klaata, viratu, niktu!,” “nostril,” and my personal favorite, “bulbous.” It’s not just a few joked thrown in here and there . . . the humor, from the personalities to the Gods to the slapstick violence of the combat to the lines the units themselves say . . . Sacrifice is a funny game.
And it’s pretty. I missed it when it came around the first time, and only picked it up within the last year, when I heard it mentioned here favorably. And it’s very, very pretty. Hell, it stands up to games made much more recently, in terms of prettiness; obviously more recent games have more detail, and better lighting, and such . . . but when I was playing Sacrifice I had to look for signs that it was a retro game.
. . .
It’s got flaws, of course. I thought the campaign started to get tedious after a while, because it would be clear that I’d won pretty quickly into the round. I’d have most of the souls, and could repel an assault without too much trouble, and I’d just spend the rest of the map laboriously mopping up. It was enough to offset the multi-pathedness of the campaign in making me not really want to play through it again.
I didn’t have too much trouble in the last mission, though. It’s difficult starting out, because you need to rout him, and then use a wall or a tornado to keep him away long enough for you to collect the souls of his strike force. Once you’ve done that, then it’s just a matter of mustering enough firepower to crack the heavily guardianed Manaliths. I was playing Stratos at the time, so I found that Silverbacks would keep the defenders immobile, and Yetis would deal the damage. Then, as I said before . . . a lot of mopping up.
. . .
But . . . I’m going on and on, but let me talk about the first few moments I had playing this game.
I started the tutorial. I found myself in control of this horrible, Lovecraftian, man-sized insect. But this monstrous being was waving her arms about happily, without a care in the world. And when she spoke, this humanoid insect monstrosity spoke with the voice of a little girl, telling her units that “You’re group two!” and ordering them to “Go there! Guard! Protect me!” It was then that I knew that I was going to love this game.
I was dreadfully disappointed when it turned out that you could only use Eldred for the campaign. And it almost broke my heart when I had to murder her.
. . .
Speaking of which, I could swear that the voice of Eldred is the same guy who did the Nameless One. It’s not, since I looked it up (Did you know that the voice of Mort also did Pinky from The Pinky and the Brain? It’s true.), but I still had a hard time stopping myself from exclaiming “I feel stronger,” every time I leveled up.
I’ll stop talking now.
I miss this era, I really do. Not only were graphics being pushed, but new concepts were too. (It doesn’t hurt that I had my first ever uber-spec computer around this time).
It felt like every couple of months you could play something really different.
I also miss the action/RTS hybrid. Bored to death of standard resource-grab-tech-tree RTS’, which are still(undeservingly, imo) going strong. Battlezone 2, Giants and of course sacrifice are a few awesome examples.
We can only hope that in the near future the indie games industry starts getting more attention/money. Now that games are such a massive industry, the mainstream stuff is going to largely be safe and formulaic. Hope I’m proved wrong.
Yes Sac does have skirmish v ai, and you can play multiplayer vs ai also.
I liked battlezone as well, despite its wonkyness. RTS games where you command your forces as a unit on the field are one of my favourite types of game that no-one makes anymore.
@eyemessiah: you should boot Battlezone up again, I did recently and found it had actually aged surprising well. The second one was pretty good too, despite the change of developer.
How popolous-y is it?
Picked this up last night. Both it and GoG.com are both excellent.
I never could get on with the demo of this, despite loving the aesthetic. At under a fiver I think I’ll give it another go.
“How popolous-y is it?”
Not much at all. A certain similarity to Populous: The Beginning, in that it centers around a single resurrecting powerful spell-casting unit with an army, but not much past that. It’s a 3rd person action/RTS rather than a god game.
Bought. Reading this was enough to convince me that i have missed out on a classic. Speaking of underrated classics: Is Terranova the answer to Sacred in FPS-terms?
I bought it around ‘04 I think, SoldOut version… a fine game, I jumped over it’s shortcomings quickly and just enjoyed the damn thing. Shiny is one of my favorite producers along with Bullfrog, largely due to the bitchin’ art direction both companies had along the years.
The rise and fall of these two studios should be studied in design schools anywhere, and I’m not talking about trendy game-design schools, but about serious product-design/graphic-design faculties. They are the perfect illustration of studios/companies that followed their own path even if it took them to the fucking gutter, and that’s precisely why I admire them so much…
Unfortunately, my experience of the level-of-detail technology in Sacrifice was that it sucked dog balls. While playing the demo, I’d be walking towards, say, a rock, and its surface would seem to periodically pop and undulate as new polygons got shoved in; seen in silhouette, it was fucking bizarre. Who knows, maybe they fixed it in a patch or something.
Sacrifice was one of those games that I played the demo for and really wanted to like, but just couldn’t get into for some reason. I bet I’d really enjoy watching someone else play it, though.
I’m pleased to say I bought this one new at release, and have periodically come back to it ever since. It’s a great little game.
I remember reading about this game in PC-Accelerator magazine(best mag. ever), the sky was touted as the best looking at that time. I tried the demo and loved it, but unfortunately my computer at the time wasn’t powerful enough(as usual).
“Group 1, Defend! Group 2, Attack!”
Man, I LOVE this game. It was just stunning visually, both technically and from a character design point of view.
For me it wasn’t just those huge steps on innovation that this game brought but also (if not mostly) those little things like your avatar actually shouting to your minions the orders you cast, THE SOUNDTRACK, and all the gags you found along the way that helped reinforce the atmosphere and tone of the game. That crazy alien chaotic tone.
Not to mention those shocking moments it threw to you. Like in my first run at the last level. All I remember is chaos, screaming walls shrieking, splatters of blood and gore, zaps all over the place and then… that damn huge reaper thing that appeared from nowhere (I didn’t go Charnel, so I had no idea what it was). And then the slaughter started. I almost shit my pants when that 4 meters tall black monster apperared in front of me, just when the POV of my camera was aligned with the horizon line, so I saw it as I’d had in real life. Huge and black. And scary. I felt a bit relieved when it started to slaughter enemy units. But then it started to approach. Killing my units also. Until it got me.
Oh, man. Now I feel sad. Shiny… what has happened to you?
With GOG reviving interest in Sacrifice, is there a place to actually play a few skirmishes online? I never got the opportunity to play in the past and would really like to rectify that.
As for those who played the game in the past and just could.. not.. get.. thru.. the.. campaign, I offer this:
I bought the game when it first came out (still have the box) and I just couldn’t get through the early/mid campaign missions.. I still have memories of the enemy wizard racing down the hill to collect the souls before I’m able to drag them away. It was demoralizing. I stopped playing.
Fast forward to a year ago. I re-installed the game on a whim and, being older and wiser, had no problems with the missions. Even the final mission (or really, the initial assault in it) required only a couple of tries to develop the winning tactic. And it was so much fun that I did it for all 5 gods without switching around to get different spells/units. Moral of the story: give the game another chance and play it. Everyone else is doing it!
I had a boxed copy of Sacrifice. Being 15 at the time, I don’t know how or why I decided to purchase it.
I remember it being interesting enough to play substantially, but frustrating and very much a game totally about attrition.
I don’t remember hating the game, but I do recall sort of fizzling out on it. That or I made awful choices in the order of gods to work for and thus had what I felt to be a crappy assortment of spells and creatures. I don’t recall.
In the Action/RTS department, I liked Battlezone way, way better.
Yes so true. Everything is a rehash of a copy of a tried and true franchise. Boring.
Sacrifice is awesome, I just wish I weren’t so terrible at strategy games. Eventually I had to stop playing it.
I still listen to the soundtrack. Great game.
Heh, it was bundled with one of my videocards back in the dark ages. I’ve still got the disc around, maybe I’ll give it another shot if I free up some time in my gaming schedule. I never really gave it much of a chance.
After reading this, I’m going to have to get this from GOG. I did buy it when it first came out, but between it seeming a bit overwhelming at first and my computer at the time not liking it, I never played it much.
What I do remember of it – probably tinged with nostalgia from reading this article, admittedly – was a game of the same ilk as Magic Carpet. As has been said, the feeling of manic power those games gave seems to have fallen by the wayside. I can remember playing both the Magic Carpet games to absolute death, simply because they fed my inner megalomaniac.
Being able to sweep around landscapes tearing the ground apart, dismissively annihilating minions between blasting a real big beastie was just special. That sort of game used to keep me up all night, provoking increasingly irate visits from my sleep-deprived parents, thanks to my joyous laughs of power.
Now I’m stuck herding enormous grazing cocks with my dozen or so underlings in Spore. That is probably the closest game I can think of playing in recent times. Most other games seem to have become more like the westernised film industry – all about set pieces and plot devices. Some great games follow that formula, but I miss the choice of something grander and more free-form.
I mean, how many million times better would Oblivion have been if you could unleash the kind of fury that Sacrifice or Magic Carpet allowed you to dish out as a matter of course? Many many, in my opinion.
Love sacrifice, got this game for Christmas, many, many freezes ago. Couldn’t really play it (I was very young), then came back to it about two years ago. Now I play it at least twice a year:)
@Doctor_Hellsturm. I would say TerraNova is the FPS to Sacrifice’s strategy; however I would also say that TerraNova has more strategic and tactical depth than most gamers realise. It’s not just the teamwork, but also the strategic use of weather, terrain and enemy location. Add to that the different weapon points and different team setup’s you could have and the game was more than just an FPS. Of course, being a game by Looking Glass, of course it was always going to be brilliant, like Sacrifice! :)
Can I also say that between DOSBox and GOG.com, retro PC gaming is in the ascendancy and you see people talking about 10 year old games all the time on all sorts of sites now! I also want to say how the gaming media has changed too, and how articles like the above, taken from PC Gamer, are just not written with that type of insight and skill any more!
I have Sacrifice sitting proudly next to Giants and Wargames. Once I finish Gabriel Knight again I am going to dig out Sacrifice and see if I can get beyond about level 4! Like others I egotistically believe I am a better player all these years later, but somehow I think we all get softened up by shallower, easier later games! :)
This is a great game. I played it many times following a different god everytime. I love the gameplay, the graphics, and especially the voice overs. If you really are a gamer, you should play this. You won’t regret it.
(sorry for the poor english, I’m french =/)
Well, I read the 2 articles about Sacrifice and now there’s a high probability I’m gonna play it.
Thank you for this great homage, I read wiki articles about AP and all the stuff, but I don’t feel so sad.
You know, I played Counter-Strike since first release (in LAN), Day Of Defeat first beta, Front Line Force (Half-Life 1 mod) and many other mods/games back in the days, there was a special feeling, a “natural” co-op game, some values, no griefer/cheater at all.
Now it’s dead, all these good players I “knew” seems to have disappear, CS became a huge joke, DoD is MoH copycat, FLF is a ghost (:’(), there’s no more the magic 50+ players servers on Vietcong 1 (omg that was so freaking awesome), today no one know Dungeon Keeper, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, …
But I don’t feel sad. I still have TIE Fighter/X-Wing CDs, people still developing things like DOSbox, and I can’t believe all these people who played such games died/travelled to another planet.
Finally, there was players for these games, why there won’t be players for such games, today ?
Don’t misinterpret actual situation : there’s more and more players, but there’s still many “good” “open-mind” players ; they were x% of total players, now they are y%, there’s just plenty of new gamer (ex. “casual” gaming).
Thanks again for the article :D
Klem – your English is excellent, I would not bother apologizing again for it! Very happy you still have X-Wing/Tie Fighter! You should check out http://www.gog.com for retro titles like Sacrifice, Fallout 1 and 2 and Redneck Rampage available for download,along with manula and other extra’s for cheap prices!
In any event, I will be get around to playing my copy of Sacrifice very soon and will post my renewed opinions on here when I have! :)
I loved the ending of Sacrifice, all the spoofs and out takes ect. That being said this was like the HARDEST freaking game I’ve ever played.
Sacrifice is simply great in a lot of ways. I´m actually just posting to share the eartflings (James lvl 1 ranged units) death sentence.
“My Pet Rock… will be… an orphan..”
It´s incredibly amusing and sad at the same time.
Sacrifice and Westwood’s Nox is my top 2 game of all time.
I’ve played a shit load of games. I’d like to think that I’ve played most PC games.
Sacrifice is that good.
Nox is that good.
I’ve played through them countless times, never got tired. Haven’t fallen in love with a game like that ever since.