Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 - Review

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.

Why Mirror's Edge is in fact, the best thing since sliced bread.

Just take a deep breath...

Mirror's Edge is DICE's 2008 foray into the unkown. Mirror's Edge is a First Person Shooter, but it breaks the mould, it extends beyond the constraints that the genre has created. In your everyday FPS, you are "soldier" trying to get from point "A" to point "B" to win a war. You'll be shooting some enemies along the way, and testing out various weapons throughout. Thats fine, i mean, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? So the easiest way to explain Mirror's Edge is... They broke it.

You are Faith, a "runner" in this game. A "runner" is a profession in which someone will deliver something to another person discretely. Why does this need to be done? Is Faith just a glorified drug runner? No, this is a PC gone mad world where the book "1984" really caught on. Big Brother will in fact, be watching you in Mirror's Edge land. The aim of the game is to save Faith's sister, who has apparently killed a man. But Faith, having spent 2 seconds at the crime scene, decides that her sister is innocent, and off we go! Okay, the story isn't the best story ever told, it's not even close. But i don't remember sliced bread having a story, nor do i remember pac man having a complex story, so let's just say this story is there only to set the scene. It's a light tale with which the gameplay can move around freely in.

Which brings me to the gameplay of Mirror's Edge... Contained within 10 levels, Mirror's Edge has Faith run, jump, wall run, balance on beams and use various other degree's of movement to naviagte the world, all in first person. On a console, rb, or r1 are your devices for jumping, and lb or l1 are your devices for ducking, it's as simple as that. If you jump towards a wall head on, Faith will run up the wall. If you jump towards a wall sideways, Faith will run along the wall. It's all in getting the correct execution of these moves that make the game what it is. If you don't jump at a fair angle, Faith won't do the move, so there is a learning curve here. The platforming mechanics carry over to the "trials" mode of the game where you must run Faith from one location to another, flagging down various checkpoints on the way, to beat a time. These are extremely addictive, and ultimately make the game infinitely playable because there will always be a time to beat. This mode of the game is where the men are seperated from the boys, as you'll have to know each run like the back of your hand to stand a chance of getting a good time, it's a never ending battle with the clock. Within the game's story mode you'll also encounter cops who want nothing more than for you to die, quite painfully. Thus Faith is kitted out with some combat capabilities, punches, kicks, flying kicks etc... These are all easy to pull off, again with use of triggers on the consoles, and there are just enough moves to provide a diverse fight each and every time. Faith can also disarm cops if need be, and then you have the power of a gun in your hands. The great thing about having this within the game is that you don't want the gun. The gun slows Faith down to a snails pace and takes away all your free running abilities, so whilst you may be able to take a guy down in two shots rather promptly, it's going to take a while to find him. No, it's much more satisfying to play like some sort of cargo pants wearing ninja. Pouncing out from the shadows at each unsuspecting cop and beating them down with your karate fists!

The graphics in Mirror's Edge i think to this day are superb. Each character you come into contact with in first person looks amazing, their face rendered with time and care. This really shows off the lighting engine which works wonders in this game too. The environment of this city Faith explore's is just so sleek. All the buildings will be white and possibly have one other colour to accentuate themselves, this gives each level a colour scheme, somehow also making an urban scene quite beautiful to look at. Another important thing to mention within the graphics is that there is a setting called "runner vision" which will be on by default that makes anything Faith can clamber up, or any door's she can smash through red to give the player some direction.

Mirror's Edge has no real soundtrack, the two things that define it are the Lisa Miskovsky song: Still Alive, constructed for the game, everyone should give it a listen. Then there is the sound of Faith breathing constantly surrounding you. It really is amazing that something so obvious could be so effective in immersing you within the game, but you really feel like faith is just a human within this game because of it. An easily broken person. Essentially the sound is brilliant.

Mirror's Edge breaks the mould of the FPS and creates the First Person Platformer genre, executing it brilliantly too. There is no excuse for not buying this game as it's been out for two years and is so cheap you could probably buy it instead of a coffee, and who needs an excuse anyway? This is a pinnace of innovative game design that should be admired and commended. The only thing we need to ask DICE is: "Are you going to make a Mirror's Edge 2?"

I sure as hell hope they do.

image credit: Kotaku and Zombie gamer respectively