Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

I’ll be frank and up front – I am not a collectable card game player.  Oh sure, I’ve played Magic: The Gathering and I’ve even taken a swat at playing Magic: The Gathering Online a few times, but overall I just really haven’t been bitten by the collectable card game bug.  Several people on our staff were raving about Sony’s new PS3 title, Eye of Judgment, so when it arrived without warning on my doorstep I figured I’d give it a shot. 

The storyline behind Eye of Judgment is a little bit complex, but also somewhat familiar.  It tells the story of creation and how the Supreme Being and his son Juno built the world and inhabited it with life.  Soon, the inhabitants of this world became petty and jealous and coveted the world of the gods, building giant mechanical monsters called Bioliths in their prideful bid for their own immortality and power.  Juno was dispatched to destroy the Bioliths and the first rebellion against the Supreme Being was put down.

Time passed and soon another rebellion was beginning.  Four Saints had descended from the tower of Juno, taking fire, water, stone, and grass as their elements.  These Saints became the progenitors of four races.  Now having four races to bicker amongst themselves, a new prideful war began, devastating the world in its carnage.  Distracted by their war, they had no chance against the Bioliths that had come back to life to wreak havoc on the inhabitants.  The Seer Vizak, seeing the imminent destruction of their world, called a cessation of hostilities and invited one lone wizard to the Tower of Juno to face each other to determine the fate of the world; one from fire, one from water, one from stone, and one from wood.  It is here that you will battle under the watchful Eye of Judgment.

Sony Entertainment of Japan and Wizards of the Coast set out to bring collectable card games to the masses by bringing the cards to life with the power of the Playstation 3.  To that end, Eye of Judgment is unlike any CCG in the past (with the exception of now-defunct Sanctum and Chron X – both made for the PC, meeting with limited success) in that the cards are graphically represented on-screen.  The characters and monsters you bring onto the field of battle come to life, inhabiting whichever square you’ve put them on, facing whatever direction you’ve pointed them.  Each creature is unique and animated with bright colors and a cartoon-flared look.  The ‘cool factor’ for each creature increases as their power increases.  The Skeleton Soldiers, Twin Goblins, and Elven Bezerker Maiden are a little over the top, but there is no doubt that monsters like the Infernal Sciandar Dragon are simply awesome.  Each deck can also contain one God card such as the Phaseus Biolith God.  These are difficult to place, but they are devastating when you can get them in play.  They have great animations and are often far larger than the other creatures.  While the textures may be a bit bland in some areas, there is no denying that the animations are a blast to watch. 

The mechanics of Eye of Judgment will be explained in greater detail when we talk about gameplay, but let’s get a look at the actual mechanical pieces of the game.  The actual Eye of Judgment is a newly designed EyeToy camera that is shipped in 8 pieces.  Assembling the stand where the camera rests is easy and despite the weight of the pieces, the camera is quite stable.  Placing a card on the grid allows the Eye to see it, bringing the creatures to life, and it is a good thing that the camera can see those cards clearly, because unfortunately you won’t be able to.  The Eye can see the whole board, but the resultant display is somewhat blurry.  You really don’t look at the cards on screen unless you toggle off the graphic overlay, so it isn’t a huge factor, but it does rear its head when you offer a card to the eye to get a better look at its properties.

Let me check the back of the box – yep, this game is from Japan.  This means that we’ll have Japanese Heavy Metal and overacted voice work.  Check and check – both are covered nicely by this title.  Most of the voice work is over the top, especially the hollow echo of the magic spells, but it does kinda match the look of the graphics and animation - somehow, it just works.  Having a few friends over to check the game out didn’t produce the same results though – it seems like the music and voice work is really a love it or hate it affair. 

Normally we’d be talking about what button makes your player jump, shoot, or whatever else, but the Eye of Judgment is all about the cards.  Wizards of the Coast and Sony Entertainment of Japan collaborated to make cards that are interesting enough to be visually represented on the screen. You’ll set up the game by placing the cloth grid on a flat table and positioning the Eye of Judgment on any side of 3x3 provided cloth grid map, and then adjust the settings in-game accordingly.  At this point the Eye of Judgment will ‘judge’ the cards that you’ve offered and bring them to life.  It does this by recognizing a set of symbols all along the edges of the cards.  These hieroglyphic-like runes are the key to the copy protection of the game as they prevent players from introducing cards that shouldn’t be allowed.  The cool part is, even if some player gets clever and makes a high resolution scan of the card and then prints it, it really won’t hurt you as a player – it is still confined by the rules of the game as dictated by the Playstation 3.  A counterfeit card might make it into the game, but an illegal card will not. 

The controls are pretty simple – you’ll use the PS3 SIXAXIS controller to navigate through some basic game type choices, including choosing your field of battle and the like, but after that you’ll use the Eye of Judgment almost exclusively to make your choices.  In fact, you have four cards dedicated exclusively to action choices including an Action card which signals a creature to attack or unleashes a special power other than a spell, a Status card which allows you to look at the status of any cards on the board, a Cancel card which cancels the current action, and an End Turn card which shockingly ends your turn.  All of these are played by either putting them on top of the object you’d like to active, or by simply ‘offering’ it to the Eye.  Holding the card in the center of the play field and allowing the Eye to see it makes the action happen.  This is where the wheels fell off for a bit…

In the last generation of consoles I had a great deal of difficulty getting EyeToy games to work.  Put simply, no matter how much light I brought into the room I simply couldn’t get the EyeToy to be a reliable camera to interpret motion.  The new Eye of Judgment camera is certainly a lot better but still required quite a bit of finesse to get working reliably.  As my rooms do not have overhead lighting (it is mostly lamps) the Eye either had too much light or not enough.  Since CCG titles are played at a relatively quick pace, it was frustrating to constantly be ‘playing’ the light instead of the game.  Eventually we drug over a lamp that had a neck that could be aimed directly over the board.  At this point the game worked pretty well, although sometimes we had to cover the light for a split second and then uncover it and allow it to bathe the card in light so as to allow the card to be recognized.  It is certainly an improvement over the previous generation, but be prepared to work for it if you don’t have overhead lighting.

If you are reading this review it is a pretty likely thing that you at least have a passing familiarity with how collectable card games work.  Each player gets 5 cards to play the game composed of a mixture of creature cards and magic spells.  The flow of play is simple; the player draws a card, then an automatic mana charge phase (there are no ‘land’ cards in Eye of Judgment, unlike Magic: The Gathering), an action phase, a creature summoning phase, and then a turn resolution phase.  If it sounds complicated, you’ll be happy to know that there is an extensive tutorial that’ll explain all of this in painful detail.  For the new players, I’ll say this – my wife has never played a CCG in her life and was able to pick up the game after just three games. With that out of the way, let’s talk strategy.

The 3x3 grid is split up by zones.  There are fire, wood, air, stone, and Biolith squares that you can occupy with creatures by simply paying the casting cost displayed on the card.  Each creature is aligned with a specific zone and gains an automatic +2 to their hit points if you place them onto that alignment, but will lose 2 hit points if you place them on their opposite element.  The summoned creature can only attack as indicated by the card, including their range and whether their attacks have any special attributes like knocking the defender back a square.  As creatures do not regain health, repeated attacks can wear down a creature, removing it from play.  Given that they take additional damage if they are hit from the rear, creature placement becomes increasingly important.  If if this wasn’t enough to keep track of, let’s talk about fieldquakes.  There are spells in the card arsenal that can flip a card over, thereby changing its element.  Obviously if one side is water and has a water creature on it, but is fieldquaked to the opposite side of fire, it’ll likely destroy the creature immediately. 

There is only one way that you can win in Eye of Judgment - get 5 creatures on the field simultaneously.  There are two ways that you can actually lose though.  If you are playing online and violate the maximum time limit (if you’ve set your game this way) three times, you’ll automatically lose.  Similarly, if you come to a point where you have exhausted all 30 cards in your deck, you’ll also immediately lose.  While it sounds simple, it can easily result in some fantastic battles over territory, especially the neutral Biolith areas.  There are several grid configurations to choose from, as well as a random mode that you can use once you’ve gotten used to the flow of battle. 

There area a few unique characters like the aforementioned Phaseus Biolith God that have chains around their summoning cost.  This means that a certain number of creatures have to be on the playing field before this ‘summon lock’ can be broken, allowing these powerful creatures to enter the field.   Given that most of these creatures have a high summoning cost, it’ll take a bit of planning to unleash them on your foes. 

There is one area that really sat odd with me as I played Eye of Judgment – the lack of real connection.  There is a fantastic CGI introduction to the world, showing off some of the great Bioliths you’ll encounter in the game, as well as a representation of the wizards that command them in their battle in the Tower of Juno, but there is actually no story mode or real connection with the creatures you’ll bring to battle.  There is no overarching story (think Puzzle Quest perhaps?) or flair text on the cards to make you particularly care about the fodder on the field. 

The only other issue is that the game is really not ‘complete’ until you get a wider variety of cards in your deck, and that means you’ll have to pony up real money for booster cards.  While this isn’t unexpected to collectable card game players, it may put off newer casual players. 

The AI in Eye of Judgment does pretty well in putting up a challenge without cheating – it follows its own rules very well.  Playing against another human player is really where the game shines.  Whether you are playing online (the game supports online play, as well as voice and text options for communications) or sitting across from another person, you’ll find that it is another human being that provides a real challenge. 

Using the included Deck Builder, you can go online by building your deck and then offering it to the Eye to register it for online play.  The game allows you to align yourself with a specific side of the battle, playing out in a similar fashion as the online war in Chromehounds.  Every win goes towards a total win percentage for your selected ‘Kingdom’.  No word yet on any rewards for a complete win but I can imagine a future support for PlayStation Home giving you a shiny nugget for your trophy room. 

There is one area that has me scratching my head – the four foot cord for the Eye of Judgment.  The USB cord for the Eye is far too short for most people with a larger TV.  I have a 72” Mitsubishi Diamond TV with my PS3 sitting about 2 feet away.  This means that I have to essentially position the Eye of Judgment directly in front of my TV on a card table, putting me up close and personal with the aforementioned sometimes-bland graphics.  This can be remedied by a USB-extender, but this seems pretty unnecessary for a system that touts the Bluetooth angle so highly. 

If you are playing the home game, you’ll notice that every score in this review hits at about an 80.  It really does demonstrate how I feel about Eye of Judgment as the game really does sit at a B- for a grade.  The game gets a great deal right and brings collectable card games to the casual player, but there are a few things that really hurt it, like the short USB cable and a finicky eye that relies heavily on overhead lighting.  Overall, I’m impressed with how Eye of Judgment turned out, and I'm saying that even as a non-card collector.

Gaming Trend Score

80

1. Graphics: 80
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 80
4. Gameplay: 80
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:80