Back last August, I got off my fat lazy ass and went to Gencon, where they had a Warhammer 40K style game called Demigod. I had a lot of fun playing, and so did the bloke I brought, who you could tell found it hilarious when his fucking snow troll annihilated half my Spartans in all of one hit. This game is nothing like the taple top game. This is... Demigod for the PC.

Now while I don't OWN Demigod, I was able to play it for a few hours at the LAN center, which is a twenty minute bike ride from my place of residence. First thing I noticed in it was the story. What is the story, you ask? Here's the short version. God is dead. The long version is "God is dead, and now you wish to take his place as... God." Badass, I know.

Its an RTS, but its different then most other RTS games. In, let's say Warcraft III, you build units, send them to rape your opponents, and then throw a tea party. In Demigod, you control one unit. One. You control your demigod, who you can outfit with fancy little trinkets and armor. Every so often (by which I mean every 10 seconds), a group of little mongrel children soldier things pour out of a portal gate and proceed to fuck your enemies shit up. You can get different creatures, like priests (healers), minotaurs (big damage output), giants (excellent siege weapons), angels (assholes), and catapultasaurs. Yes, they have dinosaurs that throw rocks with their tails. By capturing flags and killing enemies, you up your war rank and increase your XP, which you then procced to use to rape your opponents.

But even catapult dinosaurs pale in comparision to the eight demigods they have. Pure creatures of unadulterated badass, each character is both highly original, but slightly familliar. The demigods are divided into two classes, generals and assassins. Assassins are easier to play and are more about direct damage, which they do very, very well. Generals are more about core RTS, summoning units to help them in their crusade to be the very best, like no one ever w- I'm going to stop myself before I start singing the Pokemon theme.

Each demigod has its strengths and weaknesses, and each one has a very complicated and very cool backstory. Rook, the cover creature on the box, is a tower. No, literally, he is a dead guy possessing a tower wielding a giant hammer. The Unclean Beast is the product of a book and a greedy dude's wife, and he... well he's kinda ugly. Like how the Atlantic Ocean is damp.

It's got a face only a mother could love. A drunk mother. With low expectations.

On the general side of the equation, who have that girl from The Golden Compass and a vampire wearing a suit made of syringes. Yes, you read correctly. Lord Erebus is so hungry that he has to wear a suit that stabs him with a syringe every time he moves, or else he'd be running around massacring villages and drinking every last drop of blood. He killed his goddamn mother by draining her of all her blood until she was an empty plastic bag. He raised himself in a cave filled with cattle, that he drained one of every day. That's just how cool he is. And he summons bats or something, I don't really know.

Grahically, this game makes... something pretty look like something ugly. Its beautiful, and its reminding me just how far we've come from the Atari...

Oh no, the purple thing shot me or something...


HELL YEAH OAK AND ROOK, KICK THEIR MINOTAUR ASSES!

Oh, and because I probably didn't mention it before, it's team based. A solely team based RTS is new ground, and I think Demigod did it very well.

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