Sacrifice

The Good
- amazing engine, well used and performed magnificently. Stable.
- well presented - graphics are quirky, colourful and original
- good level building tools - people made some great levels in Sac.
- the game was non-linear and had a high replayability. I finished it 3 times over, taking different paths.


The Bad
- multiplayer suffered from drop-outs and a lack of player base
- no SDK released for modding (great opportunity here)
- once you lose your mana fountains then you basically lose the game - it's really hard to recover
- the powerful creatures dominate to the point that it's not worth creating any other


The Bottom Line
Think "magic the gathering" in real time with fantastic spells and creatures. You are in the game as the wizard, so you can attack/be attacked yourself. Summon creatures to fight for you, and rain down death with powerful magicks.

An interesting story coupled with unique presentation and great technology makes for a fantastic experience.

It's a shame that they didn't sell well enough to warrant a sacrifice 2 or an SDK for sac. It was also a shame that the multiplayer was never that popular.

The Good
- the graphics are terrific, even ten years later. I've run this with an ATI Radeon 4650 with all the game graphics cranked up to max at widescreen monitor resolution. Not the world's most powerful GPU, it's still far beyond anything the designers had available to them. The game still looks gorgeous. Toward the end of any campaign, when the maps get huge, you can climb mountains and realize you can see for miles, and those tiny moving dots are really giant beasts that are so very, very far away...for the moment...

• all kinds of spells, and the biggest ones are really big. Those tiny moving dots are really giant beasts that have gotten caught up in huge tornado and dragged way up into the sky, aren't they? Say, aren't they MY beasts...? And yipes, now it's got me! What a fascinating view, looking down at the spinning world so very far below! Unfortunately we're all going to fall down in a minute...ouch!

• a variety of paths through the game (although some are definitely easier than others. Ya wanna make it easy on yourself? Always go with James. Play your cards right and you can even get a dragon companion).

• the missions have some variety. Some are scramble as fast as you can, others require settling in and having the patience to chip away at the enemy bit by bit

• a cult following has put lots of YouTube videos on this game revealing all kinds of things I didn't find the first time I completed it. So I can go back and do even better!
  
  The Bad
  - the first time I played it I gave up in frustration because the manual said "always secure your mana fountains" and then I ran into a mission where the opposing side began to blow up my mana fountains (and my creatures!) with a kind of volcano machine I couldn't figure out how to beat. Grrr! I hate games I can't win!

• some of the spells don't seem to be worth bothering with, and some of the creatures seem quite useless. Or maybe I just never figured out how to use them properly

• it's a bit disconcerting that the final level boss "doesn't play by the same rules" that govern the rest of the game. On the other hand, that makes it quite a challenge, doesn't it?
  
  The Bottom Line
  Technically amazing and fun to play, so it's frustrating that you don't appreciate as much as I do.

The Good
Well, what can I say? This is an amazing blend of elements. At its heart it's a RTS, but you control your avatar from a 3rd person perspective and do all your commanding from there. Every level you can choose which side you want to play on (there are 5 with varied abilities and units). These choices affect the storyline. The game itself is very actionny, with lots of summoning and moving around. The graphics are STILL lush and wonderful, 3 whole years after this game's release. The battles are frantic, with much bloodshed and powerful explosions. And the manual needs to be the size of a small novel to describe all the units!

The Bad
The soul-gathering for resources gets annoying after a while. Defeating the enemy is a major pain in the ass (you gotta destroy their altar), but it's not really a fault - I just really suck at RTS's. Some later maps start out instantly with no time to think - just summon lotsa units.

The Bottom Line
An action/RTS that should be on every gamer's hard-drive!