Sacrifice (video Game) - Reception

Reception

Sacrifice was developed and released during a period of growth for the video games market; the amount United States consumers spent on video games increased from US$3.2 billion in 1995 to $6.0 billion in 2000. "Solid" real-time strategy games could sell more than 100,000 copies, and those that sold less than 75,000 copies were considered commercial failures by the publishers. Many real-time strategy game developers concentrated on enhancing their game's visuals without concern for innovations in gameplay. Shiny was recognized by the industry for its unconventional games, which exhibited humorous content and unique artistic designs. When it became known that the company was developing Sacrifice as its first real-time strategy game, several industry observers were keen to see whether it could deliver a quality product.

Initial reactions were favorable. Sacrifice's art was a point of focus for reviewers: the fantasy creatures' novel designs made deep impressions on the industry. The designs were so unconventional that gaming journalist Michael Eilers remarked, "It is as if Salvador Dalí and H. R. Giger got together and played around with 3D Studio Max for a few weeks with a cooler full of Bass Ale between them." To fellow journalist Kieron Gillen, Sacrifice resembled a version of the strategy game Command and Conquer as designed by Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch. Aside from being impressed by the details in the graphics, GameSpy's Lee Haumersen found the creatures' movements fluid and believable, remarking, "flying dragons heave their bodies through the air reminiscent of Draco in the movie Dragonheart." Journalist Tom Chick summed up the weird experience of seeing his wizard at the head of "a troop of flapping, crawling, loping, whirling, hopping things" as the essence of "what gaming is all about."

The game's spell effects also elicited positive reactions. Next Generation magazine's Samuel Bass called them "awe-inspiring", while it was "positively breathtaking" for Eurogamer's John Bye to see "flaming missiles raining down on the battlefield, tornados lifting men up into the sky, or the ground swelling up beneath feet". Although such effects were implemented in other games, as Gillen pointed out, it was a vastly different experience to watch them from the first person perspective. Reviewers of FiringSquad and PC Gamer were equally overwhelmed by the stunning visual effects. Despite filling the screen with "winged, fully animated demons" and "multiple gigantic twisters spiraling gorgeously into the clouds", Sacrifice performed smoothly on the reviewers' machines, impressing the staff of Edge magazine.

Aside from the visuals, the game's audio attracted comments. GameSpot's staff enjoyed listening to the story unfold through the recorded voices. They found that the voice actors did not overact their roles despite the extravagant appearances of the characters. Instead, the actors' performance conveyed an extra depth to the personalities of these characters. Haumersen noted a few flaws in the game's vocal presentation: the character models' lip movements did not match their speech, and they had a limited number of gestures to accompany the words. Michael House of Allgame was not altogether impressed, finding the voice acting to be "spotty ... ranging from hilarious to obnoxious."

To several reviewers, Sacrifice was flawed in its handling of combat. They found that the game's interface—which presented a viewpoint that looked over the wizard from behind—hindered them from having a clear picture of their characters' surroundings. The game's fast-paced combat ensured that fights tended to be messy affairs, where aside from picking out their units from a chaotic mass to issue commands, players had to see to their wizards' safety, and cast spells to support their army. Reviewers commented that once a player had lost a number of early battles, his or her army could never recover from its losses to win the match. Sacrifice's multiplayer games, as GameSpot's Sam Parker observed, tended to be long-drawn stalemates until the wizards obtained more powerful spells. PC Zone's Keith Pullin was disappointed that the game was not designed to reward tactics; in his experience, he achieved victory by continually summoning groups of creatures to attack the enemy. Bass agreed that the game was lacking in tactical play, but other aspects impressed him enough to downplay this failing in his assessment.

The intensity and excitement generated by the frenetic gameplay pleased IGN's Dan Adams, but Bye was so frustrated by his experience that he claimed to have suffered a massive increase in blood pressure. The game's heavy demand for micromanagement convinced Maximum PC to name Sacrifice the "best argument for gamers a third hand", an opinion in line with Chick's comment that the interface " to have been designed for one of the game's 13-fingered beasts". Sacrifice's gameplay had its supporters; the staff at Edge, impressed with the game's controls and visual perspective, named it one of the "few titles strategy into the third dimension and convincingly used the extra plane for more than a dazzling 3D makeover".

No sales figures were released for Sacrifice, but several members of the video game industry acknowledged the game did not sell well. James Bell, Infogrames's Senior Vice President of Creative Development, said that Sacrifice, although an excellent game, suffered poor sales because it was badly marketed and released at the wrong time. Another reason, offered by Gillen, for Sacrifice's commercial failure was the small size of its development team. Based mostly on the efforts of four people, the game was built around their gaming preferences, failing to take into account the opinions of a wider variety; hence, the game became a niche product.