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Demigod Gameplay Performance and IQ

Demigod arrived ahead of schedule amid uproarious approval of its graphical splendor and downcast horror of its networking abomination. Focusing in on its graphical splendor, we will find out which video card best fits your needs in this game, testing no less than seven cards in performance and image quality.

Introduction

Stardock Corporation is a software publishing company that rose to prominence on the back of its WindowBlinds software. Somewhere along the way, they decided to be a game developer and publisher as well, producing such gems as Galactic Civilizations (and its sequel), and Sins of a Solar Empire.

Led by the always outspoken Brad Wardell, President and CEO, Stardock has made a name for itself as the PC gamer’s ally with its "Gamer’s Bill of Rights" and launched Impulse, which some believe is one of the most viable competitors to Steam.

Demigod

Demigod comes to us from Gas Powered Games, the people behind such favorites as Supreme Commander and the Dungeon Siege series of games. In fact, Chris Taylor, the creative mind behind Supreme Commander and the venerable Wing Commander series, is also behind Demigod.

For Demigod, Stardock Games acts as a distributor. The tinfoil-hat brigade will be glad to know that Demigod ships free of any kind of intrusive DRM like SecuROM. But those same people may be disappointed to know that it requires Stardock’s Impulse to register and update the game.

Demigod is a hybrid real-time tactical strategy game, or RTS. As it lacks a direct resource harvesting mechanic, it is not what some strategy gamers refer to as a "dirt-farmer" game. All necessary resources are granted automatically by accomplishing certain tasks, such as capturing a flag which controls a goldmine, an artifact shop, or a health crystal. Demigod successfully hybridizes rudimentary RPG systems of experience points, character levels, and skill trees within a 3rd-person tactical environment.

This is a multi-player only game. There is a single-player component, but it consists merely of skirmishes against computer-controlled AI opponents and a tournament system. The tournament system itself is really nothing more than a series of scored skirmishes. The true nature of Demigod is as a multiplayer tactical strategy game against human opponents on a LAN or over the Internet. Demigod varies from the standard RTS formula in that you don’t actually have any control over the individual units, or minions. The little guys manage themselves (mostly, they die.) The player’s job is to kill enemy demigods, take down enemy structures, and kill the opposing team’s minions.

There are four game modes. Conquest mode requires that players destroy the opposing team’s citadel, which is a central structure for which players can purchase upgrades which give certain battlefield benefits. The Dominate mode requires players hold control flags in order to gain points. In Slaughter mode, victory is achieved by killing a certain number of opposing demigods. Finally, Fortress mode requires that players destroy the small fortresses belonging to the opposing team. All of these modes are available in the single-player skirmishes, and a single-player tournament consists of matches made up of all of these modes.

Technology and Reception

Not very much is known about the technology engine behind Demigod. It appears to be related at least to Supreme Commander’s graphics engine, but that is based solely on the graphical appearance of the game. The graphics options in-game are slim, and there is no marking on the retail box which indicate licensing for a graphics engine. This, combined with a lack of documentation on the graphics engine leads us to believe that it is an engine developed by Gas Powered Games, which probably has its origins in Supreme Commander. We do know that AMD was at least peripherally involved in the production of Demigod, since this splash screen below appears before the game starts, after the Stardock and Gas Powered Games logos:

So, it seems that this game had some help from the red team. The big question is: Will NVIDIA video cards suffer for it? We'll see.

GameStop, whether inadvertently or purposefully, started selling Demigod five days ahead of the projected release date. As a result, Stardock activated all Impulse pre-orders a few days later, and the game officially launched one day before the official date. Since then, it has been both praised for its graphical good graces, and lambasted for its inefficient and apparently badly designed networking component. Speaking on the official forums of the game’s networking problems, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell (AKA "Frogboy") has this to say:

The game deserves a bad rep IMO. My frustration is too great for words with some of the stuff I've seen.

That's one of the reasons I took people off the Elemental project and put them onto this is to help address problems / fix issues on this game. In my opinion, too much "stuff" was licensed and not vetted.

If the Stardock/GPG teams can't address these things soon, the game deserves to go down in flames.

I know it's a lot lot LOT better now. But still, I just played a pantheon game tonight and first, it took like 3 or 4 minutes to find a game, then one of the players got dropped so I ended up in a 2 on 1 match. It's just ridiculously frustrating.

I recorded a video of it and sent it to the teams at GPG and Stardock along with my logs so that they can see exactly what I saw. It's gonna get addressed but I just can't believe after 6 weeks we still have this.

So, Stardock and GPG are definitely aware of the issues, and they are working on it. In the meantime, the game is playable, but delays are inevitable if you want to play online. And given that this is primarily a multiplayer game, online play is the key component.

The Video Cards

This evaluation will see seven video cards compared. From NVIDIA, we have the GeForce GTX 295, the GeForce GTX 285, the GeForce GTX 275, and the GeForce GTX 260, representing all of NVIDIA’s products. From AMD-ATI, we have the Radeon HD 4870 X2, the Radeon HD 4890, and the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. These seven video cards cover a wide variety of price ranges and will give us a good cross-section of GPU performance for Demigod.