Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Tim Wilson

Note: As a bonus for readers of our review, we've included a sneak peek at the 2010 line of Magic cards. Click on the screenshots section to check them out.

If you were a gaming geek like me back in the early ‘90s, chances are you played – or were at least aware of – a collectible card game craze called Magic: The Gathering. Magic was a perfect storm of addictive elements. It combined the fun of collecting and trading baseball cards with a D&D-like fantasy setting. The rules were so simple a child could pick a deck up and play, yet had enough depth  that full-blown tournaments started springing up all over the country. At the time of its launch, Magic was nothing short of a phenomenon in the world of gaming. It opened the doors to an entire industry built around collectible-card based gaming, which now encompasses everything from Call of Cthulhu to Dragonball Z.

It didn’t take too long for the game to start entering the electronic era. In 1997, Microprose released the first Magic: The Gathering videogame for the PC.   The game tied in RPG elements such as an overworld map, towns, and a loose storyline about defeating rival wizards. While it was fun for those who needed their Magic fix any way they could get it, it unfortunately didn’t offer a very good simulation of straight-up gameplay.

After a few ill-fated attempts at turning the world of Magic into real-time strategy and arcade games, Leaping Lizard created the first true simulation of the tabletop experience with Magic: The Gathering Online in 2002. It has remained the flagship Magic sim, and still enjoys a healthy following to this day.

It should be no surprise that Wizards of the Coast saw an opportunity to tap into the lucrative Xbox Live market with one of their most successful franchises. Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers brings the tabletop experience to 360 owners through the Xbox Live Arcade (a PC version is also available). While the gameplay sim aspect of the game may be redundant to those who already enjoy MtG: Online, Duels of the Planeswalkers offers some other new features that make it worth a look.

For those readers unfamiliar with the game, here’s a quick primer. Each player portrays a wizard (or planeswalker) with 20 hit points. Your deck of cards represents the mana (magic power)  and spells you can use, as well as the creatures that you can summon. Players take turns summoning creatures for combat and casting spells until the rival wizards are reduced to zero hitpoints and defeated.  Cards correspond to one of five different mana pools – red, blue, green, white, and black. Each color has particular strengths and weaknesses in terms of the types of creatures and spells it contains. Because creatures and spells usually require mana of one particular type, most players choose to construct decks consisting of one, or at most two, colors.

Each round of Magic is divided into phases. In the Main phase, players can play land cards, which generate mana. They can also summon creatures or cast spells by “tapping” (turning sideways) land cards and thus spending the mana they contain. In the Attack Phase, players can choose to attack with  their summoned creatures. In the Block phase, the opposing player can use his/her own summoned creatures to attempt to block incoming damage. Finally in the Damage phase, combat is resolved by assigning damage and clearing any killed creatures off the table. Play continues with the next player’s turn. This is Magic in a nutshell, and if you understand those basics you can play a game. Mastering the intricacies is where the fun truly lies.

Obviously there is more complexity under the surface – flying creatures (which can’t be blocked by non-flying creatures), creatures with special abilities, instant spells that can be cast out of turn, etc. The art of combat can also get very strategic – creatures who attacked on a turn and are tapped can’t block on the next turn, for instance, so timing becomes critical. Part of the addictive fun of Magic is the literally thousands of different creatures, spells, and abilities that could come into play at any time and change the course of the match. Luck obviously plays a role. While each player has a deck that they are free to construct as they wish, they do not know the order in which they will draw cards. This makes gameplay very dynamic, and underlies the importance of card selection when building a deck.

MtG:DotP is obviously designed to introduce new players to the game, as it contains a robust set of tools to teach new players. First is a tutorial, which walks players through a sample game. This tutorial provides a decent overview of the game rules, but more importantly teaches players the control scheme (which can be a bit unintuitive). In addition to the tutorial there is a text-based help system which serves to explain many of the finer points of gameplay. There is also a comprehensive glossary that provides easy lookup of unfamiliar game terms. Finally, there is a mentoring system built in to the online component that allows more experienced players to mentor rookies.

The absolute best way to learn Magic is to play a lot of it, and fortunately MtG:DotP gives you plenty of options. First up is a single player campaign, which has you battling a series of rival planeswalkers in order to win new cards or decks. The campaign is unforgiving to newcomers, and due to the luck element, it can be somewhat uneven in its difficulty. I handled my first foe with ease, but battled my second foe at least ten times before defeating her. One problem is that you start off with just two basic decks, a red and a green, and must battle with what you’re given. As you progress through the campaign and unlock new decks and cards,  your options start to open up and battles become more strategically tough and not so dumb-luck frustrating. If you just want a quick bout against the computer, you can choose a Custom Duel which will allow you to go one-on-one with any of the numerous AI opponents. One really nice surprise was the number of co-op options available. Not only can you play through the campaign with a (local) partner, you can also jump into a custom duel together.

There is another unique mode that is available called “Challenges.” This is essentially a set of puzzles, much like chess puzzles you may have seen in which the object is to demonstrate how to checkmate your opponent given a particular a board layout and number of moves. You are given a situation and are asked to demonstrate how to defeat your opponent given the cards in your hand. These challenges are very difficult (at least for me), but are great for learning how to “think outside the box.”
 
Any card game’s strength lies in playing against human opponents, however, so the multiplayer in MtG:DotP had to be solid. The game fortunately delivers in this department as well. Not only can you jump into a quick match or ranked match solo, there is support for four-player simultaneous play. If that’s too frantic, you can buddy up with a partner and play 2 on 2 matches in a mode called “Two Headed Giant.”  These 4-way multiplayer matches are a lot of fun, and something I never got to experience when playing the tabletop game.

Graphically the game looks good, thanks to the excellent card art that is used for loading screens. The cards themselves are rendered beautifully, looking exactly like their real world counterparts. Some simple effects are added to enhance the gameplay and make things clearer, such as arrows that appear to show an attacking creatures target, or slash marks to demonstrate hits in combat. There’s nothing overly spectacular to look at, but I preferred to concentrate on the game rather than bells and whistles. You also have the ability to change your background, but the choices are very limited. Hopefully more backgrounds and deck designs will become available later on.

One downside to the graphics is that cards can be difficult to make out when put on the table – particularly your opponent’s cards across the table. There is a zoom option using the right trigger that works very well, and you always have the ability to rotate the table to view your opponent’s layout from a closer view. However, this is one area in which going for the most realistic experience hampers gameplay a bit. I’d have liked the cards to be a bit larger or the layout to have been a bit clearer to read at a quick glance.
 
It’s hard to review audio in what is essentially a silent card game, but what’s there is good. There are some limited sound effects for battles and gameplay effects, but that’s about it. The score, however, is very nice and provides a great fantasy feel to the action on the table. I’ve sat down and played a dozen matches at a time and it never really got repetitive or annoying.

I mentioned earlier that the control scheme can be a bit unintuitive. This is largely due to the fact that both the A and Y buttons can be used to continue the flow of action, depending on the circumstances. The game helpfully labels each button, and your available options are always visible on the game screen. So while there is nothing to memorize, I still found myself occasionally hitting the wrong button and having nothing happen – or worse, hitting the wrong button and making a mistake that cost me the match. Unfortunately as in real life, there are no “do-overs.” There are some other nitpicks – I don’t particularly like the D-Pad rotating the table, as I intuitively wanted to use it to flip through my cards. While none of these are deal breakers, they do serve to make the game flow a little less smoothly than it might otherwise.

MtG:DotP retails for 800 Microsoft points, or $10. The solid multiplayer component alone would make that a great deal. Add in a single-player campaign and challenge mode that adds a few hours of fun, as well as a terrific set of learning tools, and this becomes a package that is very hard to pass up. There is great potential here for a thriving downloadable content market, which could keep gameplay fresh and exciting for a long time to come. 

Duels of the Planeswalkers isn’t a perfect interpretation of sitting down and playing a few rounds with friends at the kitchen table, but it’s remarkably good all the same. Veterans will enjoy being able to find players over Xbox Live any time they want, though they may feel limited in the current cards/decks available. Newcomers to the game will find a bit of a learning curve before they’re ready to face experienced opponents, but have plenty of tools to help them get to that point. Just be careful if you’re a recovering Magic addict like myself – you just may find yourself pulled back into a hobby you haven’t bothered with in a decade.

Gaming Trend Score

82

1. Graphics: 75
2. Audio: 70
3. Controls: 75
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:82