Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 – Review
Magic Casts Quite the Spell
Let's start off with some full disclosure: I'm not a Magic: the Gathering player. I had never played Magic before playing Duels of the Planeswalkers, and, in fact, I've still never touched a single one of its colorful and beautiful cards. Taking all of this into consideration, however, I come to the game with an open mind and a complete lack of understanding with the fleeting hope that I might discover (as millions of others already have) a deep and intriguing strategy card game experience. Let's just say that I was not disappointed.
For those out there who are as in the dark now as I was then, Magic: the Gathering is a collectable card game, one of the first, released in 1993 and competitively played in the nearly 20 years since. Notable not only for its longevity, Magic is known for its level of complex strategy and for its innovations in the then new market of collectible trading card games. I vaguely remember a dim awareness of Magic when I was dabbling with derivative and inferior games, years ago, but I had no formal introduction to the game until a day or two ago, when I discovered Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. Magic has been adapted into a number of video games in the past, Duels 2012 is a follow up to a similarly named 2009 game.
Cards in Magic: the Gathering are divided into 5 colors: White, Black, Red, Blue, and Green. These distinctions are vitally important because blue spells may only be cast if you have played blue land cards. Land cards limit the number of other cards you can play, so it's very important to have the right amount and right type of land cards in your deck. Starting off, with no knowledge of these mechanics, I was grateful that building a deck wasn't required to start off with. The game provides you with a variety of different sets of cards, mostly based off of one or two types of land. When you become more familiar with the game, though, you can tweak certain elements of each deck, adding and removing cards, including the 16 unlockable cards that every deck has to offer. This isn't an amazing level of customization, granted, but it at least gives you some control over how your deck will play.
The game's interface is smooth, and the card designs are, without exception, beautiful. It would be a bit of a stretch to call the game a graphical wonder: the animations are limited and there's certainly nothing here to stress out your graphics card, but the game is nonetheless appealing. I'm a bit of a sucker for high fantasy, and if that's your thing too, the game's artwork certainly won't disappoint. While the motifs may tred the well-worn and familiar grounds of dragons, knights, and mages, it's all high quality and there's nothing appreciably out of place in the nicely drawn menus and loading screens.
The game provides several gameplay modes with just about any combination of team sizes you could reasonably hope for. The campaign mode features a host of opponents and battles, and even if you've beaten every battle with each deck, there are countless hours to be had in the fully featured online multiplayer. There's certainly enough here, if you enjoy playing the game, there's a lot here to keep you busy. After working your way up through the three levels of AI difficulty, there's a world full of challengers out there on the internet, and while it's impossible to tell how many people are going to continue to play the game for long periods after its release, there are currently thousands of players online.
If I were to make one serious complaint against Duels 2012, it would have to be the game's difficulty. Granted, once you learn how to play, you're probably safe against most of the challengers, but whether you win or lose often seems to be determined mainly by chance. All the powerful cards in the world aren't going to help you if you can't get the land cards out to power them. Most decks have a handful of really powerful cards that whose attack and defense values are increased exponentially, but you're pretty much sunk if you can't get those cards into play while an opponent can. Additionally, the 3 vs 1 “Archenemy Mode” introduces scheme cards that drastically change the way the game is played. A scheme may allow a player to destroy cards, steal cards, and perform a litany of other moves that completely imbalance the game.
All things considered, though, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 is a solid virtual card game, and can easily support hours and hours of repeated play. If you're a fan of Magic, it's an obvious choice, but even if you're not familiar with the game, Duels can still be enjoyed. The game is available on Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and PC (via Steam). A demo is also available for download on Steam, and if you're not quite sure about whether you should purchase or not, the demo is very nicely featured. I heartily recommend that you take a look.
--Tom
Images courtesy of Valve.
