(Demi) God is Dead.


Role-playing survival game is willing to take risks

Right now I’m working on a massive entry which could be my biggest one yet, but in the meantime I would like to share my thoughts on Demigod and how even a patient man like myself can finally snap.

For those that don’t know when Demigod was released the network for online games was flooded by pirates bringing it to a stand still. Since then StarDock and Gas Powered Games (Publisher and Developer respectively) have been working on trying to fix this so that people can play online. However it seems that there are more things wrong with Demigod then just the network.

Over the last week of me playing I’ve encountered numerous bugs from game crippling sound issues that slow the game down, to stats not being saved after a game ends. Just now when someone left the lobby I was forming the entire game crashed. The straw that broke me just now was when I finally got a 3on3 multiplayer to work to only have it bring my system to a crawl, which is so completely beyond the requirements that I’m sure one of the many bugs in the game is the cause. Add in a complete lack of a manual or tutorial and even my inner Stardock fanboy is on life support. Now I hate to say bad things about designers especially those that I like but at this point Stardock and GPG have screwed up way beyond the network issue.

From reading reports of the bugs and issues in the beta I’ve reached the conclusion that this game was released at a buggy state on purpose. Not an evil purpose but a necessary purpose, I think they needed to get the game out now for whatever reason and were planning on fixing them fast. However the whole network debacle has thrown their plans out of whack and now they’re playing catch-up. I don’t have any solid evidence of this of course but from seeing the kind of bugs left in this game are those that should have been snuffed out weeks ago, they’re just that obvious.

For now I’m putting Demigod aside and focusing back on Left 4 Dead and hoping that this beta period will be over soon. This is one of the many examples of the problem with digital distribution, releasing a game early and just patching away the problems instead of releasing a solid program first.

P.S For those that have zero problems playing Demigod and wondering what the hell is wrong with me, that is good that you are able to play this as the game is good. However even I have a limit to the number of BS problems I can put up with in a game. I really want to play Demigod but the obstacles standing in my way are too great for me.

P.P.S Just tried the “fix” people have been mentioning about playing the game with no sound, which worked great until the game crashed to desktop on its own. I’m sorry but I wash my hands of the game until they fix it.