One of the great things about having Tom Chick as a friend, is that it compels me to read everything he writes. Which means that I read his final word on Demigod, summing up what a lot of us are thinking.
Reviews of Demigod should concern themselves primarily with the game and not the launch. And now that the launch has passed and the game is well into its second week, the problems that remain can no longer be attributed to the launch. They are, pure and simple, egregious missteps on the part of developer Gas Powered Games and publisher Stardock.
I was part of that eight person connection fiasco he describes, and if not for my Skype teammates to talk to during that ninety minute rodeo of hook-ups, drops, wrong rooms, crashes to desktops and reminders that the game does not Alt-Tab well, I would have gone nuts.
I do hope we can arrange to do the 4 v 4, though, since Demigod is an outstanding multiplayer game. When you can get it working.
Could not agree more with Tom’s stance, especially concerning other reviews:
http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2009/04/demigod-review.html
How long ago did you arrange that 4v4?
The botched 4v4 was earlier this week, after we had talked to Wardell.
It’s getting better, especially with the addition of a new NAT server yesterday. I suspect by next week things will be almost smooth.
I stand by what I’ve said before, really – I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, for now. As a game, it’s sublime, and I still believe the connection issues are temporary and are being fixed, judging by how rapidly it’s being patched and how aware the developers are of the issues.
The lack of documentation and tutorial, on the other hand… well, I didn’t find the lack of a tutorial that disconcerting, but I’m happy enough to lose a single-player game while I’m working out how the game goes. That rather depends on the person in question, I suspect, but I can’t imagine anyone who’s played an RTS before and plays a game or two of this will have that much difficulty picking it up, particularly with the AI running around doing things. I was actually fairly thrilled to have a game that seemed like it wanted me to discover things for myself, and I got a lot of fun out of realising that if I combined Power A with Power B, then I’d get a rather spectacular result – moreso if my teammate used Power C at the same time.
I wouldn’t say no to a pdf with an annotated skill tree for each Demigod, though.
Agreed on a skill tree document, Tim. A major oversight, I think.
Eurogamer.net decided to wait on their official review of Demigod, until the European release hits the shelves.. so after all the initial chaos, here is there review (7/10)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/demigod-review