Demigod Review

Gas Powered Games has a decent history of developing RTS games that are huge in both size and scope. Founded by former Cave Dog members, the same team behind the classic Total Annihilation series, Gas Powered Games has since been responsible for both the Dungeon Siege series and 2007’s Supreme Commander. Now Chris Taylor and company have released their latest RTS game, Demigod, which features distinctly different playable characters, a persistent online tournament mode, and takes a few cues from the Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III.

In Demigod, you play the role of one of 8 potential candidates for godhood who are competing in a tournament held by the Ancients to see who will ascend to role of omnipotent being. The story in Demigod is pretty light on material; one of the current gods has committed a sin in way of sharing too much knowledge with a mortal, therefore forfeiting his role in the world. Cast down, and all his worshippers and kin destroyed, the Ancients have begun seeking a new god to fill the hole left behind. As this predates monster.com by a few hundred thousand years, the next logical step is to pit Demigods in a tournament of succession, where the winner will be granted power over men and animals and take their rightful place next to the all powerful Ancients.

The story in Demigod is pretty much an excuse to get these all powerful beings into combat with each other. There are no cutscenes or exposition, other than a small background description for each character in the demigod selection screen. Single player consists of skirmish mode and tournament mode, where you can try to earn enough favor points to gain ascension. Skirmish mode features a huge selection of options for playing a single match and customizing it to your tastes, from starting gold and XP levels, to how quickly NPC units spawn.




The single player campaign is best represented in the tournament mode however, where you pick a Demigod to start with and play through 8 rounds of team-based matches with the ultimate goal of destroying your enemies. As we said previously, there’s no real story progression between rounds and once you’ve ascended, you’re only real reward is a final tally count while a narration describes the type of god you will represent. We were kind of hoping for some plotline or development though, as each of the Demigods is interesting in their own right and a proper story might’ve pulled us into the game a little more. But Demigod, for the most part, is almost entirely focused on the multiplayer aspect of the game.