There’s also Sonic The Hedgehog, Meet The Robinsons, and Karaoke Revolution:American Idle Encore. This post isn’t about quality, though, someone will like just about anything even if my job is to tell people not too. It’s about price.

Rockstar Table Tennis, a solid retail buy and very fun game is $29.99 (yes, still). Why retail? The game debuted with the Xbox 360 for $19.99, retail, and can easily be found from $5-10 new or used now. Just about anyone serious about gaming knows this, and most 360 owners have the game, particularly casual players, due to price alone. But for the privilege of downloading? 30 bucks is too damn much.  I love digital distribution, but part of the idea is that you pay LESS than retail for the lack of packaging, not more.

And then, there’s also the avatar items that are horribly overpriced. Granted most of us didn’t expect things on the cheap, but this is gouging for as little use as avatars see. It’s a nice idea, game themed clothing, but, just as an example, Clone Trooper Armor and a Helmet, bought separately, cost a total of seven dollars. A lightsaber? Five bucks. Doesn’t even look that good, frankly. Would I be tempted at two dollars? Sure. Seven? Fuck no. COG armor and helmet? 6 bucks. Full Fable 2 highwayman gear? $11.50.

Adidas t-shirts for two dollars, Monkey Island shirts for one. This feels like Microsoft’s attempt at creating Playstation Home except that, minus 1 v 100, nobody will be seeing your avatar, unless your friends tend to visit the dashboard friends tab often and scroll. So it’s a lot of money to spend for you to look at it yourself, without much benefit even in terms of standing out. Most of the items would be reasonable at one dollar, or even fifty cents for most t-shirts. Fancier items, like full armor sets or big accessories could be worth two. But five and up is way too much for an avatar people have so little investment in, as demonstrated by people dressing them once and never touching them again, mentioned in the Avatar Marketplace introduction video.

Fix it, Microsoft.

For what it’s worth, Brad Wardell put up an informative post about it, available here.

Now, on with the show.

Demigod is somewhere between Diablo, Dynasty Warriors, and Warcraft. Action RPG, musou, and real time strategy are all smashed together in a team-based competitive game expected to last between 30 and 60 minutes a round. The goal is 30, and it does happen sometimes, but only when one gets painfully steamrolled (perhaps I could say when you steamroll someone else, but alas, that’s yet to happen to me).

Players are given control of a hero unit, one of eight currently, amidst a constantly moving battlefield littered with grunts of all sorts, defensive emplacements, and the occasional other demigod. Essentially you’re dropped with another demigod or two into a prebuilt battlefield, taking on the opposing demigods, generally with the goal of crushing their citadel. In some ways, it’s not unlike jumping into the middle of an RTS game. The bases are established, units are spawning, and defenses are up. It’s up to players to break the stalemate, through their own power or by adding to the team’s strengths. Upgrades are bought for demigods and minions (which half of them get, the generals, while the assasins are one man armies) in the form of armor and items from the shop. Team upgrades, such as reduced death penalties, stronger and different types of reinforcement waves (which come on a constant basis), stronger buildings, etc., are bought from the citadel as the war rank goes up (basically the team level, determined by…all sorts of things!).

Gold is the primary resource of the game, critical for upgrades and items, which lend those oh so important advantages in combat between demigods and grunts, and even against fortifications and citadels, though there are plenty of resource controlling flags around the levels, and control to them is key to winning. Some provide experience bonuses, some regeneration, some more gold, some faster cooldowns on abilities, but all are extremely useful, and tend to be the centers of direct demigod on demigod conflicts.

Otherwise, players spend their time crushing grunts for experience, trying to move their own forward so that they can push through enemy defenses, which means more experience, more flags, and another step closer to destroying the citadel (the most common game mode, and really, the most fun). The game has a very subtle ebb and flow at first, but once someone breaks through the wall, there’s often a real snowball effect and the team on the losing side has to rally hard to end the push fast, lest the momentum become too great (which it most certainly does, and big pushes tend to be the game winners rather than small movements).

It’s a unique experience, and with a decent variety of maps and characters to control, as well quite diverse skill trees and upgrade options, there’s a lot to experience. Dynamic is definitely the word, especially as more demigods are on the way, and likely more maps. I’ve yet to play a game that went like the last one, and while the balance isn’t quite perfect yet, daily patches are making improvements constantly, and, excepting for when you get a clueless partner and an experienced enemy team, it’s a lot of fun.

And it’s pretty! Really, really pretty. The combination of Stardock’s technical trickery (they have a way of loading massive textures and assets into a small space and running it brilliantly) plus GPG’s artistic style works splendidly. The normally sci-fi oriented teams have taken a more fantasy oriented approach, creating fantastic levels, backgrounds, and models. The smallest grunts are all fantastically rendered, and the level of detail added to the individual demigods can be absolutely amazing, particularly The Rook. A living tower that stands far, far above everything else and can be upgraded to have smaller units on him working independantly. Archers, for example, can be seen in the turret on his shoulder when players zoom in, once the upgrade it purchased at least.

Excellent effects and animation bring the battles to life, with clear, recognizable sounds helping players sort out a bit of the chaos in the battle thanks to the unique sounds most abilities have, and several buildings. Throw in some beautiful musical scoring, and the presentation hits AAA levels on a game that’s close to budget priced (considering current owners are getting half-off coupons, it really is budget priced for some). And yet, it manages to not tax the system for the most part. A few frame stutters here and there, but it’s mostly a very smooth experience. I should note, however, some people ARE having issues with audio reverb and horrible framerates. The reason isn’t known yet, but it’s currently being worked on after more network patching (right this second, there’s testing going on for proxy servers to resolve lingering connection issues).

Occasionally, though, the chaos of crowded battlefields can make it tricky to get an ability fired off on the right target, and there really should be more documentation. Basic things like attack-move go unmentioned, for example. The first few games are a trial by fire and best played with the single-player AI (which, it should be noted, is a lot of fun and hard provides a good challenge without cheating like AI tends to in an RTS), but after some warm-up, it’s easy to jump in. Demigod could very likely pick up casual players. There’s depth, but it’s reasonably easy to jump in and won’t take hours of your time to finish a game. Frustration is generally low, though there’s always some initial confusion and challenge in learning a very unique game. Still, those complaints move aside quickly in favor of a lot of fun.

Demigod gets 4.5 out of 5 stars. The base game is excellent but there’s still some lingering technical issues making it hard to connect to other players and causing the occasional crash or stutter for a small amount of players. If the game continues to get the polish and up to twice daily patches, it’s going to be a full five stars. For now, though, it’s falling a little short of that.

Demigod touts itself as an RTS, the kind you can pick up and play a whole game of in 30 minutes (at least that’s the expectation, the game is being balanced and refined until launch, and knowing Stardock, beyond). It’s a hero based RTS, in some ways. Players control areas, destroy buildings, there’s lots and lots of doods in pre-built bases. But there’s very little reinforcing of what’s already there, or building really. A few characters can lay mines or summon temporary fortifications, but mostly once it’s gone, it’s gone.

But in other ways it’s an action RPG, with players controlling a hero unit and attacking the hordes and other heroes with special powers they gain through experience, earned by killing doods, taking flags, and destroying other hero units. Spells and swords, hacking through hordes.

And to top it off, it’s a musou game (think Dynasty warriors). Players control a massively powerful hero unit that runs around to help the AI doods who do their own things and can turn the tide of battle for them. They use special powers and raw offensive ability (or the ability to reinforce troops or weaken enemy morale), destroy massive groups at once, and are mostly unthreatened by non-hero units unless they’re in large groups.

Gameplay in Demigod is fairly simple to get into, but has plenty of depth and strategy once the matches get going, which doesn’t take long at all. Units start pouring out of spawn portals, demigods rush out toward flags after maybe spending a little money on an upgrade, clashes begin immediately and things get nasty. Demigod is action from the get-go, with only occasional breaks to catch an unwatched flag or retreat to heal. There’s a back and forth feel at points, and it’s easy to get caught in bottlenecks or for a battle to get stuck at a point, but that’s when demigods make the difference. Smart players will flank, use skills properly, and open up new paths by helping to destroy local enemies and allow their forces to push ahead.

Ultimately that’s Demigod‘s current state, a constant back and forth push, and once someone has momentum it can be very hard to stop them, but once it’s lost, breaking that stalemate becomes the challenge again. Since every demigod plays differently, how that’s done is going to be different most of the time and rarely an easy proposition. The maps are well balanced (essentially symmetrical), the game is based on getting 4-12 players together for team matches, and the community, at this point, is pretty friendly. The fact the game is based on teamwork doesn’t hurt, and that it’s only expected to take 30 minutes for a full match seems to cut off rage quits surprisingly well.

So far, I love it. I’m learning new things with each game, and everyone has a style of their own. By putting the focus so specifically on the main units the game plays much smoother than others in the genre. Don’t get me wrong, I love building up a huge base, holding off attacks and facing epic battles, but sometimes I just want to kick some ass. Demigod respects that, and encourages me to do it. It doesn’t have the intellectual satisfaction of pulling off major gambits, winning drawn out tactical battles, but it does have a visceral joy of wrecking tons of enemies, being the epic hero and doing battle with other epic heroes, leading your forces to victory.

While there’s still refinements to be made since the game is in beta, I think it’s going to be well worth the $40 price, especially with the meta-tourmanent for people to participate in, and likely long term rewards like favor items.

To put it simply, if this was the final version, I’d recommend it fully.

Obviously Dark Athena is a new Riddick game, which sounds great, AND it contains a remake of Escape From Butcher Bay. Considering was one of the best games of the generation we’re stupidly eager, but have to note the character models look a bit odd to us. The textures seem to lack detail, and Riddick looks a bit wide. Is there a bit of aspect ratio shenanigans here, perhaps? Things do look a little stretched toward the video sides as well, though that might me the new FOV. Of course, if the game itself is as good as the last time around, those complaints will be forgotten rapidly.