Demigod Hits PC This Week-Demigod Hands on Review and Developer Walkthrough

Enter Demigod, a genre-bending title where you play as an incarnation of a deity, waging war against human armies and their respective godly leaders. I recently went hands-on with the game and got a taste of what it's like to wield the power of a god.

Demigod isn't what you might expect. The latest game from Gas Powered Games doesn't follow the classic real-time strategy formula like Supreme Commander did. And while Demigod is a real-time strategy game, it's also more of an arena-based combat game. In it, players control giant, powerful figures called demigods in the quest to destroy the opposing team's fortress while at the same time defending their own. It's a game of momentum, where you press the attack to its limits and then fall back at the right moment to recover. As such, Demigod has an ebb-and-flow to it, not unlike a battle for field position in a football game.

while godly avatars play a big role, they only make up a small portion of the on-field forces. Enemy and friendly soldiers are almost constantly flowing out of portals on the map, creating skirmishes all over the battlefield. During my hands-on time, I'd often follow my forces into battle, either helping them -- or perhaps using them as a diversion -- when we finally clashed with the enemy. Such are the decisions a god must make.

Even the length of a Demigod match alludes to the almost sports-like nature of it, as Gas Powered Games head Chris Taylor told us that it takes about 35 or 40 minutes to play a match. He then proceeded to show us just that, launching into a multiplayer game where the other players were controlled by the computer. So what he showed off was basically a bot match, but there is a single-player campaign that sounds like something like Unreal Tournament. The plot is that there's an opening in the pantheon of the gods, and the head god is having the many demigods (half human, half god beings) battle it out in matches to see who gets the big promotion.

Not all demigods are created equal. From what I've seen so far, none of them are, actually. That's not to say they aren't balanced, but they all certainly look and play differently. One diminutive demigod, the Torchbearer, acts primarily as a caster, wielding a combination of fire and ice spells -- seemingly best used in an assisting role to your army's A.I.-controlled forces rather than as a shock trooper. The other, the Rook -- the towering behemoth who's ostensibly become the poster child for the game -- is suited for aggressive players who like to wade into the thick of battle and just crush things under their heel. And while these demigods differ in their playstyles, both left me feeling disappointed, as they can't control their minions. Then again, both are classified as Assassin demigods -- meaning they play like typical action-RPG characters. In other words, you control a singular main character and use a variety of special abilities in combat to best an army of foes. Another demigod type, the General, can direct troops on the battlefield, but I didn't get a chance to check them out in my hands-on time. To me, though, Assassins feel a little shallow; their fates are too tied to the whims of A.I.-controlled soldiers.

The gameplay revolves on you controlling your demigod and going forth to attack the enemy forces and defenses in the goal of destroying the enemy fortress. To assist you, there are portals that spew out a stream of minions known as creeps. You can't directly control the creeps, but they surge forward and attack enemy forces and fortifications on sight. The enemy has its own creeps, too, so the battlefield is crawling with creatures and demigods.

As your demigod kills creeps, inflicts damage on enemy defensive towers, and attacks opposing demigods, it generates gold and experience. This is critical, because the entire point of a match is that demigods become more powerful the longer the battle rages. It basically escalates into an epic brawl, and even the creeps will evolve to become larger and tougher.

The challenge will be to know how far to press an attack. You must surge forward, inflict damage, then fall back to heal back at your fortress. Falling back also gives you the benefit of using that hard-won gold to purchase items and upgrades that make your demigod more formidable; healing potions will let you stay up front longer, armor can make your demigod more durable, and so on. You can also level up and acquire new powers and abilities for your demigod, like attack spells. When you're rested and ready, it's time to press forward and attack. If you die, you're penalized a number of ways; you can drop valuable items that the enemy can pick up and use, but more importantly, you have to wait to respawn. The designers are still balancing things, but let's say the battle is at a critical moment and you're killed and have to wait 20 seconds to get back into the fray. Those 20 seconds could spell the difference.

Get The Game's Look And Feel By Watching These Review and Gameplay Videos